The individual, who in his separation from God lives in a condition of sinfulness and conflict with the immediacy and frailty of finite existence, possesses the eternal destiny to come into reconciliation with himself and God. Inasmuch, however, as we find that in the redemption-history of Christ the negative relation of immediate singularity is affirmed and declared an essential feature in the spiritual process, so, too, every particular individual is only through a conversion from the natural state and his finite personality uplifted to the free condition and into the peace of God.
This abrogation of finitude asserts itself in a threefold manner as follows:
First, as the repetition in actual life of the history of the Passion, a repetition of real bodily suffering—martyrdom.
Secondly, the above conversion is removed to the inmost life of soul, as spiritual mediation by means of repentance, penance, and conversion.
Thirdly, and finally the manifestation of the Divine is so conceived in the world of Nature's reality that the ordinary course of Nature and the natural mode of occurrences as they otherwise take place is arrested, in order to display the might and presence of the Divine. Wonder or miracle is consequently the form of presentation.
(a) The Martyrs
The earliest mode under which the spirit of the community makes itself actively present in the human consciousness is effected when man forms a mirror in himself of the Divine process and so makes himself a new form of existence for the eternal Life[236] of God. Here we find once more that the expression of that immediate and positive reconciliation disappears, inasmuch as man can only attain to this by abrogating his finite existence. Everything, therefore, that was of central importance in the first stage returns to us again here only in an aggravated degree, because the incompatibility and unworthiness of our humanity is here presupposed, and to remedy this defect is assumed to be man's supreme and unique duty.
(α) The specific content of this phase is consequently the endurance of torments, and along with such the individual's willing renunciation, sacrifice, and self-imposed renunciation with the express aim of arousing sufferings, tortures, and anguish of every kind in order that Spirit may reveal itself therein, and feel itself in union with the fruition and blessedness of its heaven[237]. The negative aspect of pain is an object in itself for the true martyr, and the greatness of the revelation is such that it can treat with indifference the awful aspect of that which man has thus suffered, and the dreadful nature of that to which he submits himself. The first thing, then, which will be brought beneath the ruthless mace of negation in order that the individual who still experiences this drought of the soul may wean himself from the world and become sanctified, will be his natural existence, his life, the satisfaction of the most essential necessaries of his bodily existence. The main subject-matter therefore of the type we are now dealing with will be torments of the body, sufferings which have been perpetrated on the believer either by his enemies and persecutors out of hatred and persecution, or have been deliberately accepted by himself on principle by way of expiation. In both cases the individual accepts them in the full fanaticism of his readiness to endure, not, that is to say, as an injustice to himself, but as a blessing through which alone he is enabled to break down the walls of what he feels to be his sinful flesh, heart, and soul, and so obtain reconcilement with his God.
In so far, however, as this conversion of the soul can only manifest itself in such situations, in atrocities and awful treatment of the bodily frame the beauty of the presentation of such subjects may be very readily impaired; and, in fact, we may say that the treatment of all subjects of this kind is a perilous undertaking for art. For, on the one hand, it is obvious that individuals here, impressed as they are wholly with the hall-mark of finite existence, and its inevitable blemishes and defects, will have to be represented in an entirely different atmosphere from that we claimed for the history of Christ's Passion; and, from a further point of view, we unfortunately meet with unheard of agonies and horrors in such cases, distortion, and dislocation of limbs, bodily torments, scaffolds, decapitation, burning or roasting in oil, flaying alive, and every other sort of frightful, repugnant, and loathsome abuse of the body, such as lie much too remote from beauty for any sane art to think of selecting them for its subject-matter. The artistic dexterity of the artist may, in such cases, no doubt, so far as execution is concerned, be of the highest class; but, at best, such manual dexterity will merely possess a personal interest, we may indeed find before us the technique of an admirable painter; but it will be equally obvious that all his efforts have been unable to produce out of such material a harmonious work of art.
(β) For these reasons it will be necessary that the artistic presentation of this negative process should emphasize another aspect of it, which stands out thereby above this agony of the body and soul, and establishes in relief the positive presence of reconciliation. This is just that essential reconcilement of Spirit which is finally won as the result sought for of the pain suffered. Under an aspect such as this the martyrs may be depicted as the guardians of the Divine in conflict with the grossness of material force and barbarism of unbelief. For the sake of their heavenly treasure they endure pain and death, and this courage, steadfastness, endurance, and consolation must consequently, with equal truth, appear upon them. And yet for all that this intimate possession of their faith and love in its spiritual beauty is no sanity of soul which brings to them a sense of the sanity of their body; rather it is a sense of inward life, which has worked its way through their pain itself, or at least is made manifest in their suffering, and which, even in the moment of their ecstasy, retains the experience of pain as an essential condition of their beatitude. The art of painting has, in particular, made this attitude of saintly humiliation the object of its efforts. What this art mainly should strive after here is to delineate the bliss of such torments in the pure and simple lines of the countenance and its expression, as contrasted with the offensive laceration of the flesh; and to present such an ecstasy as may reflect the surrender and victory over pain, the fruition, in short, of the Divine Presence in the temple of the soul. If, on the contrary, the art of sculpture seeks to give a visible form to such a content, it will inevitably find itself less qualified to depict this ecstasy of soul-life at this strain of its intensity with such a concentrated power, and will consequently be compelled to emphasize that aspect of pain and laceration in so far as it declares itself in its full force on the bodily frame.