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The Fixed Gaze as a Mystical Space. The Transgression of Symbolic Spaces from Antiquity to the Middle Ages

Le regard fixe comme lieu mystique. La transgression des espaces symboliques depuis l’Antiquité jusqu’au Moyen Âge
Jorge Tomás García

Résumés

L’expérience rituelle et liturgique des communautés pieuses dans la sphère géographique et culturelle de la Méditerranée antique et médiévale est généralement analysée dans une perspective éminemment spatiale. Cependant, il existe d’autres catégories de problématisation communes à certaines liturgies du monde antique et médiéval. Dans le cas présent, nous étudierons les attestations textuelles de certaines formules verbales liées au regard fixe, présentes dans un vaste corpus de textes décrivant les liturgies, et les relations avec le divin, du monde grec au début du Moyen Âge. Ainsi, la corporéité, les gestes et le regard adoptés par les communautés pieuses acquièrent un caractère presque protocolaire. Celui‑ci leur permet d’entrer en contact avec un signum divin à travers la sensorialité liée à certaines attitudes physiques.

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Entrées d’index

Index géographique :

Orvieto, Milan, Annaba

Index chronologique :

Late antiquity, Early Christian

Index thématique :

liturgie, espace, gestuelle, dévotion, spiritualité
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Texte intégral

A Mediterranean Ritual Culture of Transference

  • 1 ‘Augustine(s) far from God in the region of dissimilarity.’; I translate.
  • 2 Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones, 7.10.16: Et reverberasti infirmitatem aspectus mei radian (...)

1In the chapel of the Eucharist in the cathedral of Orvieto, Ugolino di Prete Ilario and his workshop painted the most significant mural cycles of 14th-century Italy. At the top of the left wall, St Augustine sits at a lectern desk. The scene is set within a large architectural ensemble in 14th-century style, where St Augustine is focused on reading in his study, as clearly explained by the inscription at the bottom: Augustinu(s) longe a Deo in regione dissimilitudinis (fig. 1).1 The painter justifies his presence through the saint’s link with the Eucharist, referencing a passage from the Confessions that includes an explicit mention of the body of Christ as spiritual nourishment.2 In the text, the saint recalls the moments preceding his conversion, when he felt distant from God, in a dissimilar region (in regione dissimilitudinis).

Figure 1. St Augustine in the region of dissimilarity, Ugolino di Prete Ilario, 1357‑1354

Figure 1. St Augustine in the region of dissimilarity, Ugolino           di Prete Ilario, 1357‑1354

Orvieto, chapel of the Eucharist in the cathedral

Credit: F.E. Hollas, A Monk’s Chronicle

  • 3 Mills 2021, p. 124.
  • 4 Augustine of Hippo, De doctrina Christiana, 2.1.2: Signum est enim res praeter spec (...)
  • 5 Regnier 2023, p. 231.
  • 6 Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones, 7.9.13.
  • 7 Harrison 2008.
  • 8 Iamblichus, De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum, 97.7‑15.

2This ‘region of dissimilarity’ held theological significance: God’s location is beyond the realm of human vision.3 For our proposal, it is crucial to locate that region of dissimilarity in the space from which the divine signum originates. Thus, the devout Christian must be able through his senses to experience the signum that comes from dissimilarity. To this end, the fixed gaze is a fundamental devotional tool, since a certain way of looking will enable him to acquire a corporeality and a normative gesturality that will facilitate his correct interpretation of the signum. The definition of signum given by Augustine aims to distinguish signum to prepare the devotee for a fruitful reading of the Holy Scriptures:4 a signum is something that, in addition to making an impression on the senses (ingerit sensibus), causes something else to come to mind. Within communal worship, the fixed gaze also helped to cultivate a spiritual atmosphere. Whether directed towards the altar, the celebrant, or a sacred image, the gaze helped to focus the attention of the faithful. By placing these traditions, I do not aim to suggest a shared ritual culture, but rather to demonstrate how Christian liturgy reoriented visual protocols inherited from pagan models. Augustine’s use of the regio dissimilitudinis reveals how deeply he had assimilated the Neoplatonic vision of ascension. The return of the soul (reditus) from the regio dissimilitudinis to God evokes the Neoplatonic movement of conversion (ἐπιστροφή) back to the One.5 In Confessions6 he recounts how, under the influence of ‘the books of the Platonists’ (libri Platonicorum), he was led to transcend sensible forms and contemplate ‘that which is’ (id quod est).7 Iamblichus8 focuses on ritual acts, symbols, and material mediations as being indispensable because they enable the incarnate soul to participate in higher realities that transcend rational discourse. Early Christian writers emphasized the importance of external discipline during prayer, often linking the direction of the gaze with the orientation of the soul.

  • 9 Deschodt 2014.
  • 10 For a definition of ‘devotional communities’ in the ancient Mediterranean, Chaniotis 2016, (...)
  • 11 Tomás García 2024, pp. 210‑212.
  • 12 Descola 2001.
  • 13 I translate Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones, 7.10: intravi et vidi qualicumque oculo anima (...)

3My argument on epiphanic experience is based on the idea that seeing is fundamental to the religious experience of communities of devotees who access higher knowledge of the divine presence through visual assessment of transcendental episodes. In the Mediterranean religious sphere,9 the occurrence of the Greek verb ἀτενίζω (‘to look fixedly’) determines a religious experience that defined the capacity of devout communities to encounter a luminous signum of divinity.10 Recurring in both biblical narratives and early Christian reflection, this term reveals how visual orientation functioned as a vehicle of spiritual receptivity and ecclesial participation. Our corpus of texts describes visual experiences from the ancient world to the early Christian period.11 In all of these texts, verbal formulae relating to the representation of an invisible signum allow us to propose common interpretative frameworks for such linguistic and religious experiences. This experience manifested itself in the ancient Mediterranean cultures in many different ways and through various testimonies, and visuality occupied a central place in ritual discourse.12 In particular, the category of signum occupies a central place in Augustine’s theology. In his Confessions, he describes how his soul was ‘drawn upward’ by contemplating divine truths, often through liturgical experience: ‘And I entered into the inmost part of myself, and with the eye of my soul, such as it was, I saw above that same eye of my soul, above my mind, the unchangeable light.’13 Although Augustine does not use the term ἀτενίζω directly, the concept of elevated visual perception as a means of accessing the divine parallels the function of the fixed gaze in biblical and Greek patristic sources.

  • 14 Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 72.23.39.14: ego, inquit, de sanctuari (...)
  • 15 García Avilés 2009, p. 35.
  • 16 Gaifman 2018, pp. 453‑455.
  • 17 Walker 2015, p. 77; Palazzo 2020.
  • 18 Forest-Hill 2000, p. 12.
  • 19 Von Balthasar 1994, p. 1.

4In the study of early Christian liturgy, the fixed gaze emerges as a significant element of embodied religious expression. Augustine describes this visual experience within the Christian realm, stating that it is possible for the devotee himself to transcend the corporeality of his physical presence fixing his gaze on final contemplation.14 The expression transgredior praesentia is linked to the notions of space and ritual that lie at the origin of some devotional practices of the Early Middle Ages. This notion of transgression has profound implications for Christian liturgy: Augustine emphasizes that liturgy is the place where transgression is confronted through divine grace. The prefix trans- implies movement, translation, dynamism, and change: a ritual culture of transference. Alongside this transgression of presence, other fundamental dynamics of medieval liturgy contain the same semantics of transformation: transitus as iconic theory of cult images – which explains the disappearance of the boundaries between the image and its prototype –, the portrait and the portrayed, as the object of worship;15 transubstantiation as the conversion of the entire substance of the bread into the substance of the body of Christ, and of the entire substance of the wine into the substance of His blood. Moreover, this Mediterranean culture of transgression requires liturgical objects that facilitate interaction with ritual, from the Greek ceremonial phylae cited in the magical papyri, to the altars found in Roman Mithraeums, or Christian ecclesiastical furnishings such as all liturgical instruments present at baptisms, homilies, or Eucharists.16 In this ritual culture of transference, all awakened senses came to involve a kind of synaesthesia.17 As Lynn Forest-Hill affirms, ‘metaphors of transgression are ubiquitous in medieval discourse’.18 Although these metaphors are often conventional, they are deeply rooted in the Bible and patristic writings. As such, they evoke a complex concept in which the boundaries between the legal, the religious, and the moral become blurred. The act of transgression is present in medieval culture inherited from the ancient world, where people also had to overcome the physical boundaries of those ritual spaces. Devotees’ participation in liturgy acquired a theodramatic and performative nature.19

  • 20 Heath 2015, p. 221.
  • 21 Boivin 2009, p. 281.
  • 22 Buxton 1999, p. 195.
  • 23 Collins 2008, p. 24.
  • 24 Palazzo 2010; Watts 2019, pp. 7‑8.
  • 25 Vernant 2013.

5Following this framework, an intertextual analysis is required between the lexicon and the initiatory experience of the mystical spirit in the Greek Magical Papyri, the Mithraic mysteries, and Christian communities, especially those from the first centuries, because the ‘language of epiphanic seeing was familiar from Graeco-Roman ideas to Hellenistic Jewish traditions’.20 This culture of transfer and signum is constructed through a metaphorical use of language: as Nicole Boivin stated, material metaphors address ‘a non-linguistic side to understanding’.21 In both ancient and medieval contexts, the definition of ‘signifying’ as ‘one way to deal with the invisible, to work on the border between what one has and hasn’t seen, what one can and can’t see’22 is pertinent. Therefore, epiphanic manifestations during the religious experience of these communities had to be interpreted as signa of the divine intervention perceived through the fixed gaze. Language plays an important role in propagating metaphors, but ritual activity and material culture evoke such comparisons on a physical level.23 For our analysis, it is fundamental to consider the rituals contained in the primary sources as part of a demonstrative corpus, in which metaphors, similes, and imitative acts affecting the sensory experience of those involved acquire special relevance.24 In this way, the invisible presence of the divine is translated through a figurative signum, normally related to light.25

Signum, Fixed Gaze, and vestigium

  • 26 Belting 1994.
  • 27 Hamburger 1998.
  • 28 Augustine of Hippo, De doctrina Christiana, 2.1‑6.
  • 29 Bacci 2013, pp. 178‑180.
  • 30 PGM 13.705 (transl. Smith in Betz 1986): εἰσέλθοντος δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ μὴ ἐνατένιζε τῇ ὄψει, ἀλλὰ (...)

6As Hans Belting26 and Jeffrey Hamburger argued,27 medieval visual culture cultivated the devout gaze as a means of participating in the sacred. Liturgy became a theatre of the senses, designed to guide the faithful from visible signa to invisible grace, an idea deeply consonant with Augustine’s own reflections.28 In the liturgical context, Michele Bacci demonstrates that the peripatetic vision can take place not only visually or imaginatively, but also visionarily.29 The recreation of sacred events is part of the devotee’s vision of the signum as the liturgy’s culminating act. The action of staring at the signum has been present since the time of the Greek Magical Papyri. For instance, the formulas used to describe the physical and visual disposition of the initiate: ‘when the god comes in do not stare [μὴ ἐνατένιζε] at his face, but look [βλέπε] at his feet while beseeching him’.30 The appearance of ἀτενίζω evidences the direct visual relationship between the devotee and the divinity, and the paralysing effect on the devotee must have been transformative. The fixed gaze is a corporal disposition sine qua non for the effective contemplation of the signum.

  • 31 The categories of ‘heterovisuality’ and ‘homovisuality’ were defined by Neis 2013, pp. 41‑8 (...)
  • 32 Giraud 2011, pp. 253‑255.
  • 33 Augustine of Hippo, De doctrina Christiana, 2.1.1.
  • 34 Rubín 1991.
  • 35 On the Augustinian debt to Origen, and Iamblichus’s theorizing of the Christian Eucharist i (...)

7A second group of texts describes how the fixed gaze establishes a heterovisual relationship.31 The devotee does not look directly at the divinity but establishes fixed visual contact with some of the liturgical instruments that participate in the ritual, or with the physical elements that define the sacred space. This particularity of the heterovision of the signum introduces us to the Augustinian problem of the vestigium:32signum is something that, in addition to the appearance it impresses on the senses, causes something more of itself to enter into thought. Just as when we see a footprint, we infer the passage of the animal that made it (vestigium est).33 This related definition of signum and vestigium connects the region of dissimilarity with the material traces that make up the liturgy. Medieval liturgy explicitly applied the category of vestigium, which, in the Eucharistic ritual, acquires a concrete materiality offered to the senses.34 These vestiges, imprints, or traces of the signum take the form of ritual objects that facilitate the transcendence of physical presence. Medieval devotees participate in the liturgy through matter, especially in the sacraments, in which God promises to be present in the tangible things that we can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. Thus, it becomes clear that Augustine is also invoking notions of mediation that are characteristic of the ancient world’s theurgical systems because the rhetorical context suggests that he intends to interpolate his own system within a preexisting pagan model.35

  • 36 Aristotle, De philosophia, frag. 15; I translate.
  • 37 PGM IV, 475‑834.
  • 38 Dieter 2003.
  • 39 Panagiotidou 2018, pp. 667‑679; Nadeau 2020.
  • 40 PGM IV, 628‑661.
  • 41 PGM IV, 624‑630.
  • 42 Clauss 2000, pp. 146‑162.
  • 43 Roselaar 2014, p. 190.
  • 44 Porphyry of Tyre, De Antro Nympharum, 6.8‑9.
  • 45 Turner 1967.
  • 46 McCauley 2014.

8The textual evidence of the Mithraic community in the Roman world allows us to analyse the fixed gaze as a strategy for entering into contact with the signum beyond physical spaces. According to Aristotle: ‘A marvellous light shone; sacred objects were revealed; the initiate beheld them in silence.’36 This vision was visual and metaphysical, and was thought to impart knowledge of the divine and the afterlife. The Great Magical Papyrus of Paris37 describes part of the ritual associated with the figure of Mithras.38 Moreover, studies on emotions have greatly enriched the traditional framework, which focused on ancient Mediterranean religions as social phenomena that were part of a collective enterprise.39 In these communities of initiates, the signum perceived through the fixed gaze instilled in participants ‘a deep conviction, which lives in the memory and brings back to them a great idea’. In the encounter between Helios and Mithras (‘Immortalization’40), the initiate ascends to a higher level of the cosmos and is now ready to fix his gaze on the blinding presence of the god.41 The presence of the verb ἀτενίζω (‘to gaze intently’) verbalizes this visual relationship with a solar and epiphanic divinity like Helios-Mitra.42 In this ritual for initiates, the Mithraic signum manifested itself in a variety of ways, such as flashes of light, sounds, or smells, which testified to its presence.43 According to Porphyry,44 Mithraists designed their meeting places as authentic replicas of the cosmos. In this space, the concatenation between ritual, myth, and the cognitive experience of the initiative took place.45 Robert McCauley has pointed out that symbolic boundaries are not always defined by physical demarcation, but may be implied by changes in the direction of gaze, light, or colour.46

  • 47 Bovon 2022.
  • 48 Book of Deuteronomy 6:22: καὶ ἔδωκεν κύριος σημεῖα καὶ τέρατα μεγάλα καὶ πονηρὰ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ (...)
  • 49 Book of Genesis 9:12‑16: καὶ εἶπεν κύριος ὁ θεὸς πρὸς Νωε τοῦτο τὸ σημεῖον τῆς διαθήκης ὃ ἐ (...)
  • 50 Martin 1986, p. 68; Barclay 2000, p. 23.
  • 51 Seifrid 2014, p. 154.
  • 52 Second Epistle to the Corinthians 3:7: Εἰ δὲ ἡ διακονία τοῦ θανάτου ἐν γράμμασιν ἐν (...)
  • 53 Downs 2013, p. 424, n. 23.
  • 54 Acts of the Apostles 7:55: ὑπάρχων δὲ πλήρης Πνεύματος Ἁγίου ἀτενίσας εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν εἶδεν (...)
  • 55 Acts of the Apostles 1:10: καὶ ὡς ἀτενίζοντες ἦσαν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν πορευομένου αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἰ (...)

9The vocabulary used to describe the contemplation of the signum in the mystical experiences of early Christian communities is very similar to that discussed above.47 In some of these passages, God gives the signum to his people during the founding Exodus,48 when he offers the rainbow to Noah after the flood.49 In these cases, the Christian god communicates his invisible presence through visible figurative signa. The use of the verb ἀτενίζω demonstrates that various forms of visual communication with the divine were established in early Jewish and Christian culture.50 Thus, there would be a distinction between Paul’s use of ἀτενίζω,51 and the plain meaning of εἶδον (‘to see’, ‘to watch’), since Paul uses ἀτενίζω specifically in reference to Israel’s inability to behold directly52 and continually the glory of God in a way that would affect them.53 In other words, ἀτενίζω does not simply mean to gaze, but to gaze intensely and thus to behold the glory of God directly. Luke emphasizes the reality and visual nature of the main character’s visionary experience as he looks (ἀτενίζω) into heaven and sees (ὁράω) the glory of God and Jesus exalted standing at the right hand of God.54 In the same way as non-physical boundaries in the Mithraic liturgy, ἀτενίζω in Acts describes situations in which the rational boundaries between the earthly and heavenly spheres disappear, and the human and the divine intermingle. The vertical directionality of epiphanic divine appearances implies dazzling and passing blindness caused by divine light, in which ἀτενίζω narrating a homo-visual relationship with his eyes is fixed on heaven.55

A Liturgy of signa and Dissimilarity

  • 56 Bergmann 2007, p. 361.
  • 57 Augustine of Hippo, Tractatus in Iohannis Evangelium, 80.3.

10Liturgical acts in the Middle Ages can be understood as representations of signa. In both Christian liturgy and Neoplatonic philosophy, sensoriality was not merely considered a distraction from spiritual ascension; rather it was viewed as a structured means of mediating access to the transcendent. The fixed gaze activates the semiotic function of these signa, transforming sensory perception into spiritual cognition. By emphasizing the role of physical space in shaping religious experience, this approach highlights how the architecture, spatial arrangement, and movement within sacred sites influenced the performance of liturgy.56 Instead of proposing a homogeneous ritual culture extending from paganism to Christianity, I emphasize the process of transition between signa systems, in which elements of Greco-Roman ritual practice were critically reinterpreted within early Christian communities and subsequently developed in medieval liturgies. This Christological reinterpretation of the signa and liturgy extends directly to Augustine’s sacramental theology. The Eucharist, for example, is a signum that not only conveys intellectual knowledge, but also real participation: Accedit verbum ad elementum, et fit sacramentum.57 In these ritualized spaces, the beatific vision is not achieved through human effort but is received as a gift of grace – a distinctly Christian transformation of the Neoplatonic ἐπιστροφή.

  • 58 Jørgensen et al. 2004, p. 178.
  • 59 Williamson 2013, p. 12.
  • 60 Gavrilyuk and Coakley 2012, p. 1.
  • 61 Psalm 34:8: γεύσασθε καὶ ἴδετε ὅτι χρηστὸς ὁ Κύριος μακάριος ἀνήρ, ὃς ἐλπίζει ἐπ' αὐτόν. (‘ (...)
  • 62 Acts of the Apostles 1:10: καὶ ὡς ἀτενίζοντες ἦσαν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν πορευομένου αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἰ (...)
  • 63 Matthew 5:8: μακάριοι οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ, ὅτι αὐτοὶ τὸν Θεὸν ὄψονται. (‘Blessed a (...)
  • 64 First Epistle to the Corinthians 13:12: βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι, τότε (...)
  • 65 Second Epistle to the Corinthians 2:15: ὅτι Χριστοῦ εὐωδία ἐσμὲν τῷ Θεῷ ἐν τοῖς σωζομένοις (...)
  • 66 First Epistle of John 1:1: Ὃ ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς, ὃ ἀκηκόαμεν, ὃ ἑωράκαμεν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἡμῶν, ὃ (...)
  • 67 Origen, Contra Celsum, 7.39: ἐὰν αἰσθήσεσι μύσαντες ἀναβλέψητε νῷ καὶ σαρκὸς ἀποστραφέντες (...)
  • 68 Origen, Contra Celsum, 7.34: ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐπὰν λέγῃ ὁ σωτὴρ ἡμῶν·“ὁ ἔχων ὦτα ἀκούειν ἀκουέτω”, (...)
  • 69 Origen, Contra Celsum, 3.17, 76; 7.19‑20, 52, 63‑65.

11The sacramental nature of the signum defines the sacredness of the epiphanic experience of Christian devotees. This tradition, rooted in the ancient world, would persist in the spatial construction of liturgical architecture during the Middle Ages, transforming the sacred space into a hagioscopic one.58 The spatial organization of wide expanses and visual openness thus corresponded to the peripatetic and public nature of the worship. In this historical context, the fixed gaze and the bodily senses were the main ritual protocol for assimilating the signum. Whether directed at the Eucharistic elements, the altar, or sacred images, fixed visuality functions as a ritual of dissimilarity, representing a physical transition from absence to presence. In this sense, regio dissimilitudinis became a useful concept for understanding medieval ritual spaces, as it defined the threshold at which the faithful, through gesture and sight, represented the transition from bodily dissimilarity to sacramental assimilation. This primacy of sight reflects continuity with earlier Greco-Roman religious practices, in which visual attention in temples, theatrical processions, and ritual performances facilitated divine apprehension.59 Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley recount in detail how ‘Christian authors […] have used sensory language to express human encounters with the divine’:60 through taste and sight,61 the ear,62 the taste of the purity of the heart,63 the vision of God ‘face to face’,64 the aroma of Christ,65 or the carnal touch of the devotees.66 For these reasons, my main argument when regarding the textual and visual sources will be the gaze understood as a voluntary action of a specific ritual attitude related to the epiphanic. Origen speaks of seeing God with the ‘eyes of the mind’,67 ‘ears of a diviner kind’.68 He repeats that the presence of God is universal, that the only true temple of God is the soul, and that it is impossible to consecrate a space built by human hands to God.69

  • 70 Origen, Homilies on Luke, 4.20.
  • 71 Constitutiones apostolicæ, 2.57; transl. Chase 1848, p. 70.

12Early Christian writers were sensitive to the theological implications of such gestures. Origen of Alexandria,70 reflects on the moment when Jesus, having read from Isaiah in the synagogue, ‘sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him’. Origen interprets this gaze not merely as curiosity, but as an emblem of expectation and openness to revelation. Therefore, through all the actions related to the perception of God, the Christian devotee can participate in an assimilation of the divine that is at the beginning of an eminently sensorial liturgy. The significance of transgression, presence, signum, and vestigium, are grounded in the predominance of sensory cognition of architectural spaces in the liturgical experience during the early centuries of Christianity. Liturgically, the gaze was central to structuring sacred space and community focus. The Apostolic Constitutions (4th century) instruct clergy and laity to maintain proper bodily posture, including visual orientation, during the Eucharist: ‘After this, let all rise up with one consent, and, looking towards the east, after the catechumens and the penitents are gone out, pray to God eastward, who ascended up to the heaven of heavens to the east’.71 This gaze towards the east (ad orientem) was not arbitrary; it symbolized the expectation of Christ’s return and the light of resurrection, as well as being a unifying gesture of eschatological hope. The gaze thus functioned as a liturgical action, not merely a spatial one, aligning the assembly with divine temporality.

13Archaeological studies of early Christian sites corroborate the principle that the movement of ritual gestures aligns bodily movement with visual focus. It is particularly apt to link Augustine’s formulation of regio dissimilitudinis to a specific ritual architecture in Milan, where he was baptized by Bishop Ambrose in the octagonal baptistery of San Giovanni alle Fonti (378 CE), the remains of which lie beneath the present-day Cathedral. The archaeological report highlights its eight-column ambulatory and central pool, forming a markedly centripetal space that guides the approach and lines of sight towards the baptismal font (fig. 2).

Figure 2. Ruins of the baptistery of San Giovanni alle Fonti in Milan, second half of the 4th century

Figure 2. Ruins of the baptistery of San Giovanni alle Fonti           in Milan, second half of the 4th century

Credit: Wikimedia Commons, A ntv, CC BY-SA 4.0:

  • 72 Ambrose, De mysteriis, 2.8: Quid vidisti? Aquas utique, sed non solas: levitas illi (...)
  • 73 Ambrose, De mysteriis, 2.6: Vidisti illic levitam, vidisti sacerdotem, vidisti summ (...)
  • 74 Ambrose, De mysteriis, 2.7: ingressus es igitur ut adversarium tuum cerneres, cui r (...)
  • 75 Augustine of Hippo, Sermones, 229.3.
  • 76 Augustine of Hippo, Sermones, 227.1.

14When read together with Augustine’s regio dissimilitudinis, Ambrose’s Milanese baptistery becomes a paradigmatic place where the devotee’s gaze is redirected towards likeness to God. The architectural octagon that brings together and returns the lines of vision to a single centre thus stages, in stone and water,72 Augustine’s transition from dissimilarity to likeness through an oriented gaze. The scrutiny preceding baptism, the ritual of turning westward to reject Satan and eastward to profess faith in Christ, and the immersions themselves were deeply spatial and visual gestures. In his mystagogic sermon De mysteriis, delivered to neophytes in Milan, Ambrose repeatedly instructs the newly baptized through verbs of seeing and turning, integrating the discipline of the gaze into the theological pedagogy of the rite: ‘You saw [vidisti] the deacon, you saw the priest […]. Do not consider the bodily forms, but the grace of the mysteries’.73 In this context, the rite orchestrates a conversion of vision: the reorientation towards the east, the rhythmic alternation of ‘seeing’ and ‘not seeing’, and the centrality of the baptismal font train the devotee’s gaze to move from the sensible surfaces to the sacramental depths.74 The baptismal liturgy in Augustine’s North African context was inspired by practices with which he was already familiar from his time in Milan under Ambrose. As Augustine later explained to his congregation, these movements were not mere gestures, but visible acts of conversion: ‘You converted to the Lord, you believed, you were baptized, you were transformed.’75 The ritual turn inscribed in space what Augustine had discovered during his own spiritual crisis: turning away from God meant facing the wrong direction and remaining in the regio dissimilitudinis; salvation meant reorientation and restoration of the gaze. Immersion in the baptismal font also dramatized the passage from the dark region of sin to the likeness of Christ’s death and resurrection.76

15Excavations beneath the modern basilica of St Augustine in Hippo Regius have revealed the foundations of a large Christian basilica with an adjoining baptistery, built in the late 4th or early 5th century (fig. 3). The focal point of these octagonal structures was not an image, but a sacrament, which required the devotee to see and, at the same time, look beyond. With its central baptismal font and surrounding ambulatory, it exemplifies the architectural choreography of baptism as a passage from estrangement to likeness. The circular movement around the baptismal font and the descent into it offered a physical analogy for Augustine’s insistence that catechumens, by renouncing Satan and reorienting themselves towards Christ, were leaving the regio dissimilitudinis and entering sacramental likeness.

Figure 3. Ruins of the baptistery in Hippo Regius, late 4th or early 5th century CE

Figure 3. Ruins of the baptistery in Hippo Regius, late 4th or           early 5th century CE

Credit: LiviusOrg, Jona Lendering, CC0 1.0 Universal

  • 77 Augustine of Hippo, De baptismo contra Donatistas, 6.36.
  • 78 Kessler 2024.

16In On Baptism, Against the Donatists, Augustine refers to how the baptismal liturgy serves to highlight the importance of the Church as a communal space: ‘Theogenes of Hippo Regius said: “According to the sacrament of the heavenly grace of God which we have received, we believe in the one only baptism which is in the holy Church” […] For we also believe in the one only baptism which is in the holy Church’.77 This implies that the baptismal ceremony is not only an internal act of devotion, but also a rite mediated by liturgy, with all its visible elements. In this ritual, water, as a visible bodily element, accompanies liturgical gestures and actions, relating its exterior nature to the invisible signum of divine manifestation:78

  • 79 Augustine of Hippo, Epistulae, 98.2 (Epistula Augustini ad Bonifatium episcopum).

By the water, therefore, which holds forth the sacrament of grace in its outward form, and by the Spirit who bestows the benefit of grace in its inward power, cancelling the bond of guilt, and restoring natural goodness [reconcilians bonum naturae], the man deriving his first birth originally from Adam alone, is regenerated in Christ alone.79

17Thus, the baptistery place became a space charged with transgression, metaphor, and symbolism, in which a series of words, poses, and images had to be dramatized to enable devotees to perform the sacraments.

*

18The concepts of regio dissimilitudinis, signum, and vestigium have enabled us to highlight the continuity and reinterpretation of the ancient epiphanic experience which transcends the verb ἀτενίζω, and the spiritual and liturgical landscape of the early centuries of Christianity, as evidenced by the analysis of the baptisteries with which St Augustine interacted. We have used the analytical framework of ritual culture of transgression to trace these continuities. During the Middle Ages an essentially visual and sensorial conception of liturgy was increasingly developed, based on body and gesture protocols that originated in the ancient world. Some of these ritual formulas were naturally passed on thanks to the intellectual and liturgical activity of St Augustine, who acted as a link between the still-active Greek and Roman worlds and the consolidating Christian world in critical centuries for its self-definition. Certain verbal expressions related to the fixation of the gaze and to bodily and gestural stillness appear at a homogeneous frequency in texts. This demonstrates the presence of an epiphanic signum directing the liturgical action during these decisive centuries in the development of Christian spirituality and mysticism since the ancient world. This approach to rituals is closely related to the historical reception of ecclesiastical architecture – the sacred spaces in which rituals took place. Ritual, architecture, and the reception of the sacred were deeply intertwined and underwent significant and parallel changes in the aforementioned centuries.

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Bibliographie

Abbreviation

PGM: Papyri Graecae Magicae

NASB: New American Standard Bible

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Notes

1 ‘Augustine(s) far from God in the region of dissimilarity.’; I translate.

2 Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones, 7.10.16: Et reverberasti infirmitatem aspectus mei radians in me vehementer, et contremui amore et horrore: et inveni longe me esse a te in regione dissimilitudinis, tamquam audirem vocem tuam de excelso: “Cibus sum grandium: cresce et manducabis me.” (‘And Thou didst beat back the weakness of my sight, streaming forth Thy beams of light upon me most strongly, and I trembled with love and awe: and I perceived myself to be far off from Thee, in the region of unlikeness, as if I heard this Thy voice from on high: “I am the food of grown men; grow, and thou shalt feed upon Me”’; transl. Pusey 1838).

3 Mills 2021, p. 124.

4 Augustine of Hippo, De doctrina Christiana, 2.1.2: Signum est enim res praeter speciem, quam ingerit sensibus, aliud aliquid ex se faciens in cogitationem place. (‘Natural signs are those which, apart from any intention or desire of using them as signs, do yet lead to the knowledge of something else’; transl. Schaff 1887).

5 Regnier 2023, p. 231.

6 Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones, 7.9.13.

7 Harrison 2008.

8 Iamblichus, De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum, 97.7‑15.

9 Deschodt 2014.

10 For a definition of ‘devotional communities’ in the ancient Mediterranean, Chaniotis 2016, pp. 93‑112.

11 Tomás García 2024, pp. 210‑212.

12 Descola 2001.

13 I translate Augustine of Hippo, Confessiones, 7.10: intravi et vidi qualicumque oculo animae meae supra eundem oculum animae meae, supra mentem meam, lucem incommutabilem.

14 Augustine of Hippo, Enarrationes in Psalmos, 72.23.39.14: ego, inquit, de sanctuario dei intendo oculum in finem; praesentia transgredior.

15 García Avilés 2009, p. 35.

16 Gaifman 2018, pp. 453‑455.

17 Walker 2015, p. 77; Palazzo 2020.

18 Forest-Hill 2000, p. 12.

19 Von Balthasar 1994, p. 1.

20 Heath 2015, p. 221.

21 Boivin 2009, p. 281.

22 Buxton 1999, p. 195.

23 Collins 2008, p. 24.

24 Palazzo 2010; Watts 2019, pp. 7‑8.

25 Vernant 2013.

26 Belting 1994.

27 Hamburger 1998.

28 Augustine of Hippo, De doctrina Christiana, 2.1‑6.

29 Bacci 2013, pp. 178‑180.

30 PGM 13.705 (transl. Smith in Betz 1986): εἰσέλθοντος δὲ τοῦ θεοῦ μὴ ἐνατένιζε τῇ ὄψει, ἀλλὰ τοῖς ποσὶ βλέπε ἅμα δεόμενος.

31 The categories of ‘heterovisuality’ and ‘homovisuality’ were defined by Neis 2013, pp. 41‑81.

32 Giraud 2011, pp. 253‑255.

33 Augustine of Hippo, De doctrina Christiana, 2.1.1.

34 Rubín 1991.

35 On the Augustinian debt to Origen, and Iamblichus’s theorizing of the Christian Eucharist in terms of religious and philosophical convictions that are fundamentally theurgic, see Parnell 2009, p. 11.

36 Aristotle, De philosophia, frag. 15; I translate.

37 PGM IV, 475‑834.

38 Dieter 2003.

39 Panagiotidou 2018, pp. 667‑679; Nadeau 2020.

40 PGM IV, 628‑661.

41 PGM IV, 624‑630.

42 Clauss 2000, pp. 146‑162.

43 Roselaar 2014, p. 190.

44 Porphyry of Tyre, De Antro Nympharum, 6.8‑9.

45 Turner 1967.

46 McCauley 2014.

47 Bovon 2022.

48 Book of Deuteronomy 6:22: καὶ ἔδωκεν κύριος σημεῖα καὶ τέρατα μεγάλα καὶ πονηρὰ ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ ἐν Φαραω καὶ ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ αὐτοῦ ἐνώπιον ἡμῶν. (‘And the Lord showed signs and wonders, great and sore, upon Egypt, upon Pharaoh, and upon all his household, before our eyes’; transl. King James 21st-century version).

49 Book of Genesis 9:12‑16: καὶ εἶπεν κύριος ὁ θεὸς πρὸς Νωε τοῦτο τὸ σημεῖον τῆς διαθήκης ὃ ἐγὼ δίδωμι ἀνὰ μέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ ὑμῶν καὶ ἀνὰ μέσον πάσης ψυχῆς ζώσης ἥ ἐστιν μεθ᾽ ὑμῶν εἰς γενεὰς αἰωνίους τὸ τόξον μου τίθημι ἐν τῇ νεφέλῃ καὶ ἔσται εἰς σημεῖον διαθήκης ἀνὰ μέσον ἐμοῦ καὶ τῆς γῆς. (‘God said, “This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations; I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth”’; transl. NASB).

50 Martin 1986, p. 68; Barclay 2000, p. 23.

51 Seifrid 2014, p. 154.

52 Second Epistle to the Corinthians 3:7: Εἰ δὲ ἡ διακονία τοῦ θανάτου ἐν γράμμασιν ἐντετυπωμένη λίθοις ἐγενήθη ἐν δόξῃ, ὥστε μὴ δύνασθαι ἀτενίσαι τοὺς υἱοὺς Ἰσραὴλ εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον Μωϋσέως διὰ τὴν δόξαν τοῦ προσώπου αὐτοῦ τὴν καταργουμένην. (‘But if the ministry of death, in letters engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, fading as it was’; transl. NASB).

53 Downs 2013, p. 424, n. 23.

54 Acts of the Apostles 7:55: ὑπάρχων δὲ πλήρης Πνεύματος Ἁγίου ἀτενίσας εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν εἶδεν δόξαν Θεοῦ καὶ Ἰησοῦν ἑστῶτα ἐκ δεξιῶν τοῦ Θεοῦ. (‘But being full of the Holy Spirit, he gazed intently into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God’; transl. NASB).

55 Acts of the Apostles 1:10: καὶ ὡς ἀτενίζοντες ἦσαν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν πορευομένου αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἰδοὺ ἄνδρες δύο παρειστήκεισαν αὐτοῖς ἐν ἐσθήσεσι λευκαῖς. (‘And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them’; transl. NASB).

56 Bergmann 2007, p. 361.

57 Augustine of Hippo, Tractatus in Iohannis Evangelium, 80.3.

58 Jørgensen et al. 2004, p. 178.

59 Williamson 2013, p. 12.

60 Gavrilyuk and Coakley 2012, p. 1.

61 Psalm 34:8: γεύσασθε καὶ ἴδετε ὅτι χρηστὸς ὁ Κύριος μακάριος ἀνήρ, ὃς ἐλπίζει ἐπ' αὐτόν. (‘Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him’; transl. NASB); First Epistle of Peter 2:3: εἰ ἐγεύσασθε ὅτι χρηστὸς ὁ Κύριος. (‘now that you have tasted that the Lord is good’; transl. NASB).

62 Acts of the Apostles 1:10: καὶ ὡς ἀτενίζοντες ἦσαν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν πορευομένου αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἰδοὺ ἄνδρες δύο παρειστήκεισαν αὐτοῖς ἐν ἐσθήσεσι λευκαῖς. (‘And as they were gazing intently into the sky while He was going, behold, two men in white clothing stood beside them’; tansl. NASB 1995).

63 Matthew 5:8: μακάριοι οἱ καθαροὶ τῇ καρδίᾳ, ὅτι αὐτοὶ τὸν Θεὸν ὄψονται. (‘Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God’; transl. NASB).

64 First Epistle to the Corinthians 13:12: βλέπομεν γὰρ ἄρτι δι’ ἐσόπτρου ἐν αἰνίγματι, τότε δὲ πρόσωπον πρὸς πρόσωπον· ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους, τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην. (‘For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known’; transl. NASB).

65 Second Epistle to the Corinthians 2:15: ὅτι Χριστοῦ εὐωδία ἐσμὲν τῷ Θεῷ ἐν τοῖς σωζομένοις καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἀπολλυμένοις. (‘For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing’; transl. NASB).

66 First Epistle of John 1:1: Ὃ ἦν ἀπ’ ἀρχῆς, ὃ ἀκηκόαμεν, ὃ ἑωράκαμεν τοῖς ὀφθαλμοῖς ἡμῶν, ὃ ἐθεασάμεθα καὶ αἱ χεῖρες ἡμῶν ἐψηλάφησαν, περὶ τοῦ Λόγου τῆς ζωῆς. (‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life’; transl. NASB).

67 Origen, Contra Celsum, 7.39: ἐὰν αἰσθήσεσι μύσαντες ἀναβλέψητε νῷ καὶ σαρκὸς ἀποστραφέντες ὀφθαλμὸν τὸν τῆς ψυχῆς ἐγείρητε, μόνως οὕτως τὸν θεὸν ὄψεσθε. (‘If you feel like you are being slandered, look up with your mind and, turning away from the flesh, raise the eye of the soul. Only in this way will you see God’; I translate.

68 Origen, Contra Celsum, 7.34: ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐπὰν λέγῃ ὁ σωτὴρ ἡμῶν·“ὁ ἔχων ὦτα ἀκούειν ἀκουέτω”, καὶ ὁ τυχὼν συνίησι περὶ θειοτέρων ταῦτα λέγεσθαι ὤτων. (‘But even though our Savior says, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” and whoever has the opportunity to hear about these divine things is said to have eyes’; I translate.

69 Origen, Contra Celsum, 3.17, 76; 7.19‑20, 52, 63‑65.

70 Origen, Homilies on Luke, 4.20.

71 Constitutiones apostolicæ, 2.57; transl. Chase 1848, p. 70.

72 Ambrose, De mysteriis, 2.8: Quid vidisti? Aquas utique, sed non solas: levitas illic ministrantes, summum sacerdotem interrogantem et consecrantem. (‘What do you see? Water, yes, but not alone; you see that there are clerics [deacons] there, ministering, and the high priest [the bishop] questioning and consecrating’; transl. Whiting 2011, p. 46).

73 Ambrose, De mysteriis, 2.6: Vidisti illic levitam, vidisti sacerdotem, vidisti summum sacerdotem. Noli considerare corporum figuras, sed mysteriorum gratiam. (‘You saw there the deacon, you saw the priest, you saw the chief priest [i.e. the bishop]. Consider not the bodily forms, but the grace of the Mysteries’; I translate).

74 Ambrose, De mysteriis, 2.7: ingressus es igitur ut adversarium tuum cerneres, cui renuntiandum in os putaris: ad orientem converteris; qui enim renuntiat diabolo, ad Christum convertitur, illum directo cernit obtutu. (‘You entered, then, that you might discern your adversary, whom you were to renounce as it were to his face, then you turned to the east; for he who renounces the devil turns to Christ, and beholds Him face to face’; I translate).

75 Augustine of Hippo, Sermones, 229.3.

76 Augustine of Hippo, Sermones, 227.1.

77 Augustine of Hippo, De baptismo contra Donatistas, 6.36.

78 Kessler 2024.

79 Augustine of Hippo, Epistulae, 98.2 (Epistula Augustini ad Bonifatium episcopum).

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1. St Augustine in the region of dissimilarity, Ugolino di Prete Ilario, 1357‑1354
Légende Orvieto, chapel of the Eucharist in the cathedral
Crédits Credit: F.E. Hollas, A Monk’s Chronicle
URL http://journals.openedition.org/frontieres/docannexe/image/4957/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,1M
Titre Figure 2. Ruins of the baptistery of San Giovanni alle Fonti in Milan, second half of the 4th century
Crédits Credit: Wikimedia Commons, A ntv, CC BY-SA 4.0:
URL http://journals.openedition.org/frontieres/docannexe/image/4957/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,1M
Titre Figure 3. Ruins of the baptistery in Hippo Regius, late 4th or early 5th century CE
Crédits Credit: LiviusOrg, Jona Lendering, CC0 1.0 Universal
URL http://journals.openedition.org/frontieres/docannexe/image/4957/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,2M
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Jorge Tomás García, « The Fixed Gaze as a Mystical Space. The Transgression of Symbolic Spaces from Antiquity to the Middle Ages »Frontière·s [En ligne], 11 | 2025, mis en ligne le 23 janvier 2026, consulté le 18 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/frontieres/4957 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15jyv

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Auteur

Jorge Tomás García

Professor of Ancient Art, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

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