A Long Way To Emmaus: Almost A Samaritan Story

Pino Blasone

A Long Way to Emmaus Almost a Samaritan Story

1 – Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well, Catacomb on the Via Latina, Rome Two by Jacob’s Well Probably, an iconologist will remember the precedent of an iconography inspired by an apocryphal version of the Annunciation, so called of “Mary at the Well”. There, the figural characters are Gabriel and Mary, the announcing angel and the Virgin Annunciate. Also in our case they are a man and a woman by a well, but the former is Jesus. The latter is presented as a “Samaritan Woman”. What is told of her makes her more similar to a Magdalene, than to the Madonna. The well is not anonymous but a historical one, at least according to an ancient sacred tradition: Jacob’s well, in the old region of Samaria, today supposedly not far from the town of Nablus, the biblical Shechem or Sychem. One of the earliest subjects figured by religious artists, the episode is narrated in John’s Gospel, 4:3-42. The Saviour asks the woman for a drink. In return, he offers her the spiritual water of 1

his holy teaching and providential grace. She wonders for he, a Jew, treats with familiarity one whom the Jews considered a stranger and a heretic, such as the rest of Samaritans. Returning meanwhile to their Master, his disciples wonder for he is talking with an unknown woman – and a sinner –, what had to be unseemly at those times and places. In reality, here it begins a speech growing throughout the evangelical narration, as a core message of Christianity itself. It starts a focusing on that concept of “Neighbour”, which will transform not simply the conventional relation among perceptions as the Self, the Alien and the Other, but even between metaphysic perspectives as immanence and transcendence.

2 – Duccio di Buoninsegna, Christ and the Samaritan Woman, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid With no peculiar emphasis on the Gospels, the theme has been developed in the essays Alterity and Transcendence, by the Jewish thinker Emmanuel Lévinas. A concept as the “Absolute Other” is present also in the Christian theology of Rudolf Bultmann. Without complex philosophic implications though, all that was essentially intuited by early Christians. At Rome, the passage of the Gospel is illustrated as a fresco in the catacombs, for example in the Via Latina Catacomb (mid-4th century). And it is a relief at the front centre of a coeval marble sarcophagus, in the crypt of the Seven Maccabees, under the church of St. Peter in Chains. In Ravenna such image recurs in the mosaics of the basilica of 2

S. Apollinare Nuovo, and in a carved ivory panel on the chair of Maximianus, in the sacristy of the cathedral church (6th century). In most cases Jesus is depicted as a youth beardless and short haired, instead of a short bearded and long haired man as in later, far better known and more hieratic images of him. Both Jesus and the woman wear homely Roman robes. Already at that epoch, most Christians in Rome and elsewhere had to be converted Gentiles. That is originally non-Jews, reached and persuaded by the new ecumenical message of the Christ, thanks to his apostles and missionary disciples. Thus, easily and willingly they could identify themselves with the good Samaritans of the Gospels. Unfortunately, in the Gospels there are also different Samaritans, who had refused to listen to the Saviour and even to receive him into their villages. The apostles had invoked Jesus to call fire down from heaven, in order to destroy them. Yet he had harshly reproved them, replying that he had come to save men’s souls, not to ruin mankind (Luke; 10:51-56). Nay, the paradox of a predilection for Samaritans in the Gospels is rooted in these circumstances.

3 – Jan Wynants, Parable of the Good Samaritan, State Hermitage Museum , St. Petersburg The scene of the Samaritan woman at the well will be represented hundreds of times more along the centuries, and by the best artists. Here be it enough to mention Christ and the Samaritan Woman, by the Sienese painter Duccio di Buoninsegna (1310-1311; Thyssen3

Bornemisza Museum, Madrid). There Jesus is conversing seated on the edge of the well, against a golden, still Byzantine styled background. The pleasant woman is standing, with a pitcher balanced on her head. She is talking too, what we can infer from the gestures of their hands. On the right of the picture, we can see some disciples while coming out of a Samarian walled city, named Sychar (nowadays, Askar). They observe the dialogue from afar, in silence. Showily, the expression of their faces looks annoyed. Before getting aware that their Master is more or other than a “prophet” come to lead and free his own people, they have a long way to go further. Only then, they will grow able to practise his full lesson. Two on the Road to Jericho To a great extent, the evangelical narration is set in open air. Not seldom, literally it develops on the road. Let us recall the story of the Flight into Egypt, in Matthew’s Gospel, which inspired so many landscapists in the history of painting. Yet here we would like to focus on the parable of the Good Samaritan, also known as “The Good Neighbour”, and on the episode beginning on the road to Emmaus, both in the Gospel of Luke (10:25-37 and 24:13-35; cf. Mark, 16:12-13). Precisely, in the latter case we have two distinct moments; only one is in open air. At first, two Jesus’ disciples are walking in the direction of Emmaus, a village seven miles or more from Jerusalem. We are informed of the name of one of them, Kleopas. By comparing ancient sources, scholars and philologists made various hypotheses about the other: Luke himself, James the Just, Simon Peter... But really do we think an evangelist, and a writer as St. Luke, did not name him for any carelessness or forgetfulness?

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4 – Rembrandt, The Good Samaritan 1630, The Wallace Collection, London More probably the Greek physician and St. Paul’s collaborator, a supposed friend and legendary portrayer of the Madonna, left that blank space, because we get free to fill it with our own names or with the scriptural characters we deem more pertinent. As to Kleopas, we find this name once more only in John’s Gospel (19:25), but in the variant “Klopas”, so that we cannot be sure he is the same person. Of course per absurdum, among the specific characters of Luke’s Gospel, then we might even imagine the two fellows were none but those in the parable of the Good Samaritan. After all, ancient later traditions tell not few Samaritans and Kleopas himself inhabited Emmaus. The roads from Jericho to Jerusalem, and from there to Emmaus, ran with no real solution of continuity. Though if walked in different times and circumstances, they could result one way. A long one from a selfish perception of identity, through the dangers of alienness, toward an open feeling of alterity. Most likely, Luke himself was an early “gentile” Christian: nearly as the Samaritans, a stranger and an infidel in the eyes of the Jews. No wonder, such a theme, we find in John’s Gospel too – in the figure of a good Samaritan woman: see here above –, had to be one of 5

his favoured grounds of reflection. Also later, the relation between otherness and alienness will be well present in the Christian doctrine. In To Consentius, Against Lying, a writing by Aurelius Augustine, the most famous Latin Church Father, that grows a problematic argument: Dominus alienigenam Samaritanum proximum eius ostendit, cum quo misericordiam fecit. Proximus ergo habendus est, non alienus, cum quo id agendum est, ne remaneat alienus (“The Lord showed the alien Samaritan to be neighbour to him unto whom he showed mercy. A neighbour then, and not an alien, is that man to be accounted, with whom our concern is that he remain not an alien”). Yet, exactly, how can it be done?

5 – Claude Lorrain, The Walk to Emmaus, Christie’s Gallery, London No doubt, for Augustine the main way is a conversion of the “alien” subject – or his reconversion – to Christianity. But this sounds a bit different from the conclusion of original Jesus’ parable, which now we had better going to read again: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead with no clothes. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he travelled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on 6

him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’ “Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise”. Let us notice, this “doing likewise” is set as a priority, even with regard to any possible and desirable conversion. Actually, in the parable conventional religious figures as the priest and the Levite seem “aliener” not simply than the Samaritan, but than the robbers themselves. Obviously they were not, could not be, yet Christian. Yet even an impossible or improbable conversion of them to Christianity would have made not sense, at least till they did not fell into the concept of “Neighbour”. Inward as well as outward any Church to come, thus becoming neighbour results a condicio sine qua non. If the baptism will be the gate, we dare say, that is the door. Jesus was extensively clear about, since with his parable he answered not only the well known question “Who is my neighbour?”, but also a previous one put by the same “expert in the law”: “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

6 – Arnold Böcklin, The Walk to Emmaus, Schack-Galerie, Munich Three on the Road to Emmaus 7

Not seldom, themes as the Samaritan Woman at the Well and the Good Samaritan were inserted by the landscapists, within their works. Yet they better rendered the atmosphere of the first part of the episode, which we are going to deal with. For instance, the German Johann König, the Dutch Gillis d’Hondecoeter, the French Claude Lorrain, in the 17th century; the German Fritz von Uhde, the Swiss Robert Zund and Arnold Böcklin, in the 19th century. Usually, the characters of the pilgrims are projected into a country scenery. Across this, their mobile figures grow small at sight, as if going to merge into it. Sometimes, urban details appear somewhere in the background or in the foreground. Mostly, these are ruins or impending fortresses. Like the Holy Family during the “Flight into Egypt”, what they have left behind is a false civilized world, which has fiercely persecuted or sorrowfully disillusioned them. For a while at least, they have dropped out of history, into the nature. Sad and confused after their Master’s murder, two disciples are walking to Emmaus. All of a sudden, a third one reaches them, starting to talk with them. Probably it is an evening, casting long shades around. They cannot discern well his face. His entire figure is indistinct. So, they do not know him, or are unable to believe he is who he seems to be, even when they hear his voice. Nothing better than this modern verse from the poem The Waste Land, by Thomas S. Eliot, renders a suspense of the while before they can listen to that sound, and be reassured by its words: “Who is the third who walks always beside you?/ When I count, there are only you and I together/ But when I look ahead, up the white road/ There is always another one walking beside you,/ Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded/ I do not know whether a man or a woman/ – But who is that on the other side of you?”

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7 – The Caravaggio, Supper at Emmaus, National Gallery, London He who speaks here is the self of one of the two fellows. He is speaking to the other, since each of them is already another’s other. In this case, along the way we have not the alienness of indifferent travellers or the alienity of robbers, but the alleged one of a whole world behind and around them. Yet again, from behind or ahead, an alien occurs and makes himself a neighbour beside them. Probably he has been always there, somewhere close to them. They did not realize well his presence, so absorbed in and talking about their worries. Perhaps, still now they are a bit suspicious for the alienness of the new unknown fellow traveller. They need more time, to fully realize that this alien is not simply a third person. Indeed, he is a special kind of other, a good neighbour and the absolutely other at once. He explains the fulfilment of old biblical prophecies, and exhorts them to be trustful. In the meantime, the night falls and finally they arrive to Emmaus. The two fellows invite him, whom they now consider a foreigner, to take supper with them and to rest below the same roof. At the beginning of their meal, the “foreigner” blesses the bread, breaks and gives them it with his hands, while a lamp lightens his face. At that very moment, they can recognize he is the resurrected Christ. Soon after, he disappears out of their sight. We may wonder why that happens at the breaking of bread. As in the Last Supper, notoriously the gesture is typical of the Eucharist. Not by chance, this sacrament is called Communion too.

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We might also guess, it represents the conversion of alienness into otherness, of the alienity of this world into a proximity to others, whose Jesus the Christ is the first, main example.

8 – The Caravaggio, Supper at Emmaus, Pinacoteque of Brera, Milan How Many, at that Table? From the viewpoint of a religious painter, the latest scene is a further inviting subject. Actually, it is one of the most dramatic scenes depicted throughout the history of art. With a play on words, we may affirm, the representations of the Supper at Emmaus by the Caravaggio or Rembrandt are absolute masterpieces. In fact, in no better circumstances than those, an effort to represent the “Absolutely Other” is required. In such a deed, few genial or inspired artists were able to success. Yet more popular, and impressive ones, are not lacking. In the past, the three on the road and their supper could form one narrative sequence, with the former scene in foreground and the latter in the rear or sidewise. This is the case of a Carolingian ivory plaque carved in 860–880, today in the Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York; of the paintings by the Venetian Lazzaro Bastiani or the Flemish Pieter Coecke van Aelst; of several Bible illustrations printed in the 16th century. Michelangelo Merisi, the Italian painter from Caravaggio, depicted the Supper at 10

Emmaus twice, respectively in 1601 and 1606. The former is currently in the National Gallery at London. There, an unusual detail is the figure of a beardless Jesus. The three are sitting around a laid table. Reliably a host or a waiter, a forth character is standing by them, observing perplexed the scene. The intensity of the emotions is rendered mainly through the expression and gestures of the disciples, while the Master consecrates the bread, so that they begin to “open their eyes”. We can watch him frontally, nearly in the centre, but cannot meet his stare because he is looking down at the bread, absorbed in the holy mystery. In the latter version, housed in the Pinacoteca di Brera at Milan, there are few differences: Jesus is now bearded; a fifth character is a standing, old female servant. Above all, there are no longer shadows cast on the background wall. It is completely dark. In a very Caravaggian manner, any true light is a conquest and a grace, deep inside our unconscious dimension.

9 – Rembrandt, The Pilgrims at Emmaus, Musée du Louvre, Paris Moreover, as one can see, the presence of minor characters is not accessory. They might be each of us. Their indiscreet curiosity drives their attention to participate in an intimacy of the event, so that they can start wondering about the mystery they have attended, just “by chance”. In the Supper at Emmaus, by Rembrandt H. van Rijn (1648; Musée du Louvre, Paris), Jesus’ gaze is turned to heaven while he breaks the bread. His 11

head is haloed with light. The waiter is a young man, almost a boy. He looks kinder than the rustic characters by the Caravaggio. This whole composition seems a bit more traditional. But the presence of the youth could have been a signal or a good wish, for a then adolescent modernity. As to Jesus depicted by Rembrandt, in a letter addressed to Émile Bernard and dated 23 July 1888, Vincent van Gogh will write: “Exceptionally, he painted figures of Christ. […] Yet that strange Christ came about for he knew him, felt that he was there”. Indeed, our theme was recurring in the production by the Dutch painter. In Pilgrims at Emmaus (1642?; Musée du Louvre, Paris), the characters depicted are apparently four. On the extreme right of the room, one of them is seated in the rear and in the dark. His figure is so indistinct, as to seem a remote, surreal reflection of the Christ himself. He is the same now; yet he is the other too: an absolute other. Through an open window on the left, a late sunset or full moon light illuminates the dim scene. Here the Saviour is looking at us, out of the picture. His hands hold a bread fast on the table, as if he is expecting we possibly recognize him, before breaking and sharing it. Another painting with the same title (16281629; Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris) is not less disconcerting. A disciple is already kneeling down to the Master. His companion is still facing him. We cannot see Jesus’ face. On that of the latter disciple, what we can read is a sequence of doubt, of fear and hope.

10 – Rembrandt, Pilgrims at Emmaus, Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris 12

The Absolute Artist If we consider his late production at least, the French Eugène Delacroix was one of the cleverest religious painters of the 19th century. This is a very modern contradiction, he had the reputation of being a romantic artist and a sceptic thinker at once. One of his best and latest works is the small picture Le bon Samaritain (1852; private collection). We feel respectful and unable to decipher the enigmas of human souls. Yet, with special regard to his artistic career, metaphorically the author had the fortune to walk the road to Jericho. Presumably, he was not so lucky or patient as to cover all the way back, as far as Emmaus. What confirms though, a theme or a subject like that owns not simply a strict sacred value. Its implications maintain a moral appeal, also in a laic or secular, social and political ambit. The oil by Delacroix portrays the moment when the Samaritan hoists the man he has succoured, onto his own mount. Through the image, almost we can share the physical effort and agitation of that gesture. We may even perceive its representation as the expression of an inmost trouble, by which reason and faith strive to be reconciled. Several years later, the Dutch artist Van Gogh will return not only on the same subject, but on the same picture too. Nearly an artwork in progress. In his Le bon Samaritain, d’après Delacroix (1890; KröllerMüller Museum, Otterlo), the pictorial style is obviously changed. A difference is a detail on the left in the new composition, which is recovered from the medieval iconography. It is a foreshortening of the road to Jericho. In the distance, there we can still discern a little priest and a Levite while going away. Long before Delacroix, after St. Luke, the message is a transparent denunciation of anything unfeeling and hypocritical in this same old world.

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11 – Eugène Delacroix, The Good Samaritan, private collection Actually, the reflection on Luke’s text remained constant. In Van Gogh’s correspondence, he is mentioned more than once, as well as Delacroix and Rembrandt. The best contemporary religious painting grew the fruit of an intense collective elaboration, not only artistic but thoughtful too. “These thoughts,” the unlucky painter wrote in a letter dated 23 June 1888, “Bernard dear friend, lead us far, very far, afield; they raise us above art itself. They give us a glimpse of the art of life-creation, the art of being immortal and alive. They are bound up with painting. The patron saint of painters – Luke, physician, painter, evangelist – […] gives us hope”. Yet a major figure stands out of the background. In the same letter, we can read: “This great artist – Christ –, although he did not concern himself with writing books, felt considerably less disdain for the spoken word, and for parables in particular”. Evidently that of the Good Samaritan was, just to say so, in the foreground. At last, let us return to St. Augustine’s exegesis. After previous Church Fathers, he individuated in the Samaritan an allegory of the Saviour: “Even God himself, our Lord, desired to be called our neighbour. For our Lord Jesus the Christ points to himself under the 14

figure of the man who brought aid to him who was lying half dead on the road, wounded and abandoned by the robbers” (On Christian Doctrine: I,33). In his Sermons (131,6), consequently the exegete identifies the man succoured by the Samaritan with the whole mankind. He also notes, the “oil and wine” poured by the Samaritan may own a sacramental symbolism. Certainly this interpretation is partial, even questionable, when the preacher compares with the Church the inn where that man was sheltered and healed – on payment. Anyhow, it attests an old propensity to see the Other and an “Absolute Other”, joined in the figure of the Samaritan. Once more, Jericho is an ineludible starting point toward Emmaus.

12 – Vincent Van Gogh, The Good Samaritan, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo Copyright [email protected] 2008 Articles by the same author on similar subjects, at the Websites below: http://www.pdfcoke.com/doc/2531940/Space-and-Time-of-the-Annunciation http://www.pdfcoke.com/doc/2681466/The-Cat-and-the-Angel-of-the-Annunciation 15

http://www.pdfcoke.com/doc/2913375/The-Hands-of-Mary-States-of-Mind-in-theAnnunciate http://www.pdfcoke.com/doc/2988387/Hail-Mary-Nazarene-and-PreRaphaeliteAnnunciations http://www.pdfcoke.com/doc/3817130/Women-and-Angels-Female-Annunciations http://www.pdfcoke.com/doc/4597267/Byzantine-Annunciations-An-Iconography-ofIconography http://www.pdfcoke.com/doc/5837944/Marian-Icons-in-Rome-and-Italy http://www.pdfcoke.com/doc/8650381/The-Flight-into-Egypt-A-Transcontinental-Trip

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