Transfiguration

TRANSFIGURATION (Gr. Metamórphōsis). -

I. THE EVENT

Miraculous apparition of Jesus Christ, toward the end of his preaching, to the three beloved disciples, Peter, James and John, in glorious form.

The event is described with many details by the Synoptic Gospels, each of which shows its own characteristics, while agreeing on the substance of the fact. The three Apostles were struck not only by the splendor of Jesus' garments, but also by the presence of Elijah and Moses, whom they heard speaking, and by the mysterious voice that through a cloud uttered the words: "This is my beloved Son (Mt. adds 'in whom I am well pleased'), listen to him." Coming down from the mountain, Jesus requires the Apostles to keep silence about what they have seen and heard. Lk. 9:28-36 limits its account here; whereas Mt. 17:1-13, with Mk. 9:1-12, adds the question, raised by the disciples, about the second coming of Elijah. Jesus explains that the mission of this prophet has already been carried out by John the Baptist.

The event of the T. is also recalled by II Pt. 1:16-18, where it is affirmed that the three Apostles were able to contemplate "the majestic manifestation" (μεγαλειότης) and that they heard the words of the heavenly Father. From the Pauline antithesis (Psal. 2:6) between the "form of God" (μορφὴ τοῦ Θεοῦ) and the "form of a slave" (μορφὴ τοῦ δούλου) and from the various statements of the Evangelists one must conclude that from the whole together there resulted the presence of a divine nature. The phenomenon is described in relation to the impression produced on the Apostles. It is not required at all that the human nature had ceased (cf. John Damascene, Hom. in Transfig. Domini, 12: PG 96, 564; St. Thomas, Sum. Theol., 3ᵃ, q. 45, a. 2). With the T. Jesus confirmed Peter's confession, comforted the Apostles, to whom shortly before he had foretold his passion and death, showed his own superiority and that of the Gospel with respect to the most famous ancient figures and to the Mosaic law. He manifested his divinity, while the words of the Father affirmed his eternal, real, transcendent sonship.

All exegetes prior to biblical rationalism admit the authenticity of the account and the objective reality of the miracle. Those who do not believe in the supernatural give a "naturalistic" explanation of it (Paulus, Spitta, Schleiermacher), perhaps attributing a large part to the illusion of the Apostles (Neander, Gratz, Bleek, Weizsäcker, B. Weiss, A. Reville, A. Harnack, Ed. Meyer), or else they resort to a "myth," due to Hebrew (Strauss, De Wette, Reisenfeld), Greek (Lohmeyer, W. Bousset) or Indian (Seydel, Van den Bergh van Eysinga) influences.

Angelo Penna

II. THE PLACE OF TRANSFIGURATION

The place of the mystery of the T. is indicated by the synoptic evangelists as "a mountain" (Lk. 9:28), "high" (Mt. 17:1; Mk. 9:1), and called "holy" by St. Peter, an eyewitness (II Pt. 1:18), without its name or its topographical position being specified. Eusebius, who collected the local traditions of Palestine, showed himself perplexed about the site of the T. Explaining Ps. 88:13, "Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice..." (PG 13, 1092), he writes: "I think that on these mountains the extraordinary T. of our Savior took place"; in the Onomasticon, describing the two mountains, he makes no allusion to it. A tradition of the 4th century (the text of Selecta in Psalmus attributed to Origen, which affirms the T. on Mount Tabor, does not seem authentic: cf. R. Devreesse, in DBs, I, coll. 1120-22), constant down to the present day, recognizes Tabor as "the holy mountain of the T."

The first witness is St. Cyril of Jerusalem, d. in 386 (PG 33, 743-44), followed by St. Jerome, who, describing the itinerary of St. Paula, says that she "scandebat Montem Thabor, in quo transfiguratus est Dominus" (PL 22, 889, cf. 491). Some modern authors, both Catholic and Protestant, have preferred Mount Hermon, for the reasons that it is in the region of Caesarea Philippi where Jesus was, it is the highest mountain (2759 m.), and because the snow that covers its summit offers an analogy with the whiteness of the Transfigured One's garments. But in favor of Thabor it is pointed out that "the journey of a week" would be too long to reach Hermon, sufficient, instead, to go from Caesarea Philippi to Thabor; that, having come down from the mountain, Jesus found a crowd of Jews around the epileptic whom the disciples had not been able to cure; but at the foot of Hermon he would have found only pagans. Thabor (v.), 588 m. high and isolated on the vast plain of Esdrelon, appears like a high mountain. It is also objected that, since the summit was occupied by a fortress, it was not an isolated place; but the fortress was put in a state of defense by Flavius Josephus, at the time of the revolt of the Jews against Rome in 67 B.C. (Bell. Iud., I, 8).

The history of the mountain from the 4th century on is indistinguishable from that of the Sanctuary, erected in memory of the mystery. The anonymous pilgrim of Piacenza (570) finds there three basilicas in memory of the three tabernacles mentioned by St. Peter, and Arculf (670) notes there a great number of monks ("monachorum inest grande monasterium et plurimae eorundem cellulae"). In 808 the Commemoratorium de casis Dei speaks of the bishopric of Thabor with 18 monks in the service of 4 churches. In 1100 a community of Benedictines settled there, which Tancred, prince of Galilee, endowed with great revenues. In 1113, 72 Benedictines were slaughtered there by the Turks, but a new community repopulated the ruins, rebuilding and fortifying the monastery and completing the works of the Church. The community held out in 1183 against Saladin, while the Greek convent was despoiled and sacked, but after the crusader defeat of Hattin (1187) the Benedictines too had to abandon it.

The sultan al-Malik al-'Adil had a fortress rebuilt there, finished in 1212 and by his order demolished in 1218. Transferred by Alexander IV in 1255 to the Hospitaller Order, church and religious buildings were ruined by Bajbars' campaign in 1263. The place, left in abandonment for more than 4 centuries, was visited by pilgrims, accompanied by the Franciscans of Nazareth; it was purchased by these in 1631; but only in 1924, above the ruins of the ancient churches, raised again in the same place, did the Custody of the Holy Land bring back to life the magnificent Basilica (architect A. Barluzzi).

Donato Baldi

III. THE LITURGICAL FEAST OF TRANSFIGURATION

The feast of the Transfiguration is celebrated today in the Latin Church on August 6 with the double rite of the second class. The Mass has an Oremus of magnificent composition, the Office a proper psalmody, and it is of a very solemn tone.

The pericope from Matthew (17:1-8), the only one that has entered liturgical use, is also read on the Saturday of the Lenten Ember Days, and on the following Sunday. It is erroneous, or at least very equivocal, to speak of a "feast" of the Transfiguration celebrated in the 5th century by the Roman Church in Lent, which would then have been transferred outside the Lenten season: what is involved is the reading of one of the many Lenten pericopes for a purely doctrinal purpose, within the framework of the Lenten instruction that concentrates on the idea of redemption, which is the passage from the state of sin to that of grace, through participation in the Passion and Death of Christ. The episode of the Transfiguration, which reveals the final state of glory of Christ and, with him, of the elect, is joined by the Lord himself to his Passion, in the words that conclude the episode itself. The sermon of St. Leo the Great, delivered on this Saturday (the Sunday Mass is later; in his time it was still aliturgical; or rather, the concluding Mass of the Saturday vigil already fell on the same Sunday), is not a festal sermon, but one of the series of Lenten sermons, perhaps more solemn and longer, because pronounced at the vigil of the Ember Days (Serm., 51: PL 54, 308-13). The sermons of the Greek Fathers generally form part of the current gospel exposition, such as the celebrated sermon of St. John Chrysostom, Hom. 75 in Matth. (PG 57, 549 ff.).

In the East, however, apart from and outside of Lent, the Transfiguration soon appears as the object of a true liturgical feast. The Armenians trace this feast (celebrated on the seventh Sunday after Pentecost) directly to their "Illuminator," St. Gregory (4th century), who is said to have replaced the popular feast of Venus "Rosa flamma" with that of the feast of the glorified Lord; thus at least the tradition of the 7th century would have it, preserved by Gregory Arbauni (c. 690). Shortly afterwards (5th-6th centuries), the Nestorians of the Sassanid kingdom celebrate it as the "feast of tabernacles." In Ethiopia it appears at the same time, on August 13.

To find (with great probability) the reason for the more usual date, August 6, one must return to Mount Tabor itself, regarded very early as the place of the Transfiguration (Origen). Even if the report of the foundation of a church (oratory) on the said mount by St. Helena does not appear certain, nevertheless an oratory, if not a basilica, existed on the summit of Tabor since the 4th century; the bishopric erected with its seat on Tabor in 553, by the Fifth Council of Constantinople, contributed to the formation of a group of churches, oratories, and monasteries, as the Anonymous of Piacenza saw it in 570.

Now, the date of August 6 would be explained as the date of the consecration of the episcopal church, and of its anniversary. Be that as it may, even in the West traces of a feast of the Transfiguration appear very early, but with dates not always certain. In Visigothic Spain the feast was celebrated on August 6, as St. Isidore assures us (indeed, three Masses were celebrated, as at Christmas). In the versified Martyrology of Wandalbert of Prüm, written in 847, the feast is found on the same date. Various calendars of St. Gall, Tegernsee, Cologne of the 8th-11th centuries have the feast on the dates July 27, August 5, 6, 8; the autograph Calendar of St. Willibrord (702-706) on July 27. During the Middle Ages the Transfiguration was solemnized in various places, and on different dates; at the end of the Middle Ages, to give some indication, at Meissen the feast was celebrated on March 17 (it had remained in the vicinity of the Saturday of the Ember Days!); on July 26 at St-Omer, Bruges, Sion (Sitten), and in the ancient Irish Calendar of Aengus (9th century); on July 27, for example, at Cambrai, Paris, Amiens; on August 4 at Lebus, diocese of Poznań, on August 5 at Worms, Liège, Five Churches (Hungary), on August 26 at Passau, on September 3 at Halberstadt, etc.

The feast of the Transfiguration, therefore, especially toward the end of the Middle Ages, was no longer unknown; but its official extension to the whole Church and the unification of the date is linked to the pontificate of Callixtus III, the Catalan Pope who devoted himself with such force to the struggle against the Turks. The news of the victory of Belgrade by the Christian arms (July 21 and 22, 1456), which reached him on August 6, was the occasion for elevating the feast of the Transfiguration to the rite of duplex and imposing it on the whole Church. Callixtus did so with the bull Inter divinae dispositionis arcona, dated August 6, 1457 (Bull. Rom., ed. Cocquelin, III, 3, Rome 1743, pp. 85-88), and with a series of briefs to princes he gave greater prominence to this liturgical imposition. The date of August 6 was chosen because it was already in use as the principal date of the feast and because of the happy coincidence recalled above. Callixtus III had a new office composed by the Dominican Giacomo Gil, which was however in part (lessons, hymns) changed by Pius V. Clement VIII gave the feast the rite, introduced by him, of dupl. maius; Pius X, in the reform of 1911-13, elevated the feast to its current rite, above all because it is the titular feast of the Lateran Basilica, head and mother of all the churches of the world. In fact, the Transfiguration is repeated as the titular feast of all churches dedicated to the Savior, without any particular title.

Among the various liturgical-popular customs it is to be noted that in certain places it was customary on this feast to press the first bunch of red grapes, to mix its juice with the wine of the Mass, in memory of the light emanated in the Transfiguration from the glorified body of the Lord.

Giuseppe Löw

IV. ARCHAEOLOGY

St. Augustine teaches that in the Transfiguration Jesus Christ signifies the Gospel which receives its testimony from the Law, represented by Moses, and from the Prophets, represented by Elijah (Tractatus XVII in Evangelium Iohannis: PL. 35, 1529). In the cycle of the Basilica Ambrosiana in Milan the Transfiguration was represented, accompanied by the distich: «Maiestate Sua rutilana sapientia vibrat discipulisque Ducem si possint cernere monstrat» (G. B. De Rossi, Inscr. christ., II, Rome 1888, p. 242; S. Merle, Die Ambrosianischen Tituli, in Römische Quartalschrift, 10 [1896], p. 214). The scene is also found depicted in ivories, from the casket of the Lipsanotheca of Brescia, to an ivory formerly Barberini, to another in the British Museum. At Ravenna, in the apse mosaic of S. Apollinare in Classe, in place of the Redeemer there is the gemmed cross between Moses and Elijah; below, three Apostles are symbolized by three lambs. R. Garrucci recognizes the representation in a miniature of the Evangelary of Rabbula of the year 586 (Storia dell'arte crist., Prato 1873-81, pl. 133, 1). In the mosaic on the triumphal arch of SS. Nereus and Achilleus (795-816) Jesus Christ is in a mandorla on a blue background, wearing a tunic and pallium, with a cruciform nimbus, his right hand in an oratorical gesture, his left holding a scroll; to the right and left, smaller, are Elijah as an old man and Moses as a young man, and prostrate and nimbed are the three Apostles. Slightly later is the scene in the chapel of S. Zenone in S. Prassede (817-24). In Milan the scene of the Transfiguration was represented on the altar of Volvinius in S. Ambrogio (824-59) according to the Byzantine type. In the Greek manuscript of the homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzus, at the eighth sermon, fol. 75, Jesus is on the mountain with a golden nimbus, a blue tunic bordered with purple, making the oratorical gesture with his right hand, while with his left he clasps the volume; on the right is Moses as a young, beardless man, on the left Elijah as an elderly, bearded man. The scene is indicated by the inscription in uncial letters: Ἡ ἁγία μεταμόρφωσις. At the foot of the mountain and of two palm trees are

Peter, John and James. The scene in the mosaic calendar of the Treasury of S. Giovanni in Florence (10th century) is inspired by the miniature, as is also the 10th-century miniature of the Greek codex 1156 of the Vatican Library and a portable mosaic in the Museum of the Louvre in Paris. Of the same type is the representation in the chapel of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai and in an evangelary of Iviron on Mount Athos.

Enrico Josi

V. ART

Apparently, the mandorla depicted in the mosaic of Sts. Nereus and Achilleus would be the oldest known so far, and the use subsequently made of it in sacred representations, down to the 16th century, would have to be considered as derived from the iconography of the T. and also of the Ascension of Christ.

The iconographic scheme of the T. in the so-called dalmatic of Charlemagne, a very fine Oriental embroidery, of the end of the 13th century, in the Treasury of the Vatican Basilica (reproduced under the entry BIZANTINA ARTE) does not substantially depart from that of the manuscript of the homilies of St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Christ is seen in the upper part of the scene flanked at a certain distance by the two prophets, presented in profile, while below are three Apostles dazzled by the divine whiteness. This iconographic arrangement would later become established in all the depictions of the T. of Christ. Among these, mention is made, as a typical example for 14th-century art, of a panel painted by Taddeo Gaddi, at the Accademia in Florence, and for the art of the first half of the 15th century, of a bronze panel by Lorenzo Ghiberti, in the first door of the Florentine Baptistery. Fra Angelico frescoed, in a cell of the convent of St. Mark in Florence, a T. in which Christ is presented with ingenious simplicity; the figures of the two prophets, and also of the Virgin and of St. Dominic, who here witness the Holy Mystery, are barely outlined at the sides. Fra Angelico's model was imitated some years later by Alessio Baldovinetti, in the painted doors for the cabinet of the Santissima Annunziata, now in the Museum of St. Mark in Florence. On the threshold of the 1500s Giovanni Bellini painted the very beautiful T. of the National Museum of Naples, while Perugino frescoed its representation on the walls of the Collegio del Cambio in Perugia, following more rigorously the traditional iconographic scheme. The most famous representation of the T. of Christ is that of Raphael, in the Vatican Pinacoteca. This grandiose work, left unfinished at the master's death, and completed in its lower part by Giulio Romano and Giovanni Penni, in the representation of the people witnessing the divine mystery appears as a free iconographic innovation, certainly due to the genius of the Urbinate. The Flemish master Gerard David painted in a notable panel of the church of St. Mary the Virgin in Bruges, in the early years of the 16th century, a T. of Christ, where to the traditional iconographic scheme was added the blessing figure of the Eternal Father, placed on high among the clouds, above the white figure of Christ. - See plate XLV.

Witold Wehr