Conclusion: The Narrow Road to Martyrdom

The conclusion of this collection of studies endeavors to recapture five major questions that this special issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies poses on the subject of martyrdom: Is this gesture a form of imitation of Christ (or imitatio Christi) or is it itself a sacrifice? How does it get rid of the shadow of suicide or voluntary death? How do the singularity of its experience and the community within which and in the name of which it is exercised articulate? Can martyrdom be defined as a renunciation of human love, and in this sense as the ultimate step in a process of conversion? How does martyrdom take its place in the writing of the religious history of the modern era, in particular, as far as the Society of Jesus is concerned, in the historiography of the nineteenth century? These five questions open this collection of essays to a field of research that remains to be pursued.

Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna of the Meadow, ‘Meditational Poesia’, and the Imitatio Christi

This essay examines Giovanni Bellini’s Madonna of the Meadow as a ‘meditational poesia’, focusing upon formal aspects that differentiate between embracing landscape and figural group and upon Bellini’s approach to this landscape and its contrasting staffage that elicits contemplative reflection. I examine three treatises that may have stimulated the artist and contend that Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ (translated as Imitatione de Cristo, Venice, 1488) provides thematic structures that most closely align with those characterizing Bellini’s painting and intimate its role in articulating a meditational approach by which a viewer can effectively appraise the Madonna of the Meadow.

From the IJssel Valley to Paris and Rome via Montserrat

This essay aims to analyze the hitherto neglected (or deliberately avoided?) link between De spiritualibus ascentionibus (On spiritual ascents) by Zerbolt of Zutphen (1367–1398) and the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola (c. 1491–1556). Indeed, there is a more direct relationship between these two texts than between Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises and the Exercitatorio spiritual by Abbot García Jiménez de Cisneros (1455–1510) and the Imitatio Christi (Imitation of Christ) by Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1441), which has received much more attention in the existing literature. A careful synoptic reading of these works reveals not only an intriguing congruence between Zerbolt and Loyola in terms of the scope and definition of their works; the general structure and vocabulary; humanistic soteriology and optimistic anthropology of human will; the role of introspection in reforming inordinate affections and affective devotion; the role of examen of conscience (both daily and general); frequent sacramental confession and Communion; the role of spiritual guide; the use of the five senses and composition of place as meditative techniques and importance of methodical mental prayer; and the centrality of imitation of Christ’s humanity, but also direct textual reciprocity. Zerbolt’s Spiritual Ascents appears to be a blueprint for Loyola’s Exercises.

“Crime and Punishment”: A Mystical Novel about Saving the World through the Love of Jesus Christ and Sophia

This article is a continuation of the interpretation of F.M. Dostoevsky’s novel “Crime and Punishment”. A detailed analysis of the central episode of the novel, Raskolnikov's visit to Sonya Marmeladova, Is here offered, and, as a result, many hidden allusions to the story of Jesus Christ are revealed. Attention is drawn to the dual meaning of Raskolnikov's statements about the need to gain power over the world: this is either material power, based on the laws of the evil world (in imitation of Napoleon), or spiritual power, canceling the laws of the world (in imitation of Christ), which includes serving people and accepting suffering for everyone. It is proved that all the mysterious and incomprehensible details of the narration receive a natural explanation when the Gnostic myth of the salvation of the world through the love union (sizigiya) of Jesus Christ and Sophia is put at the basis of the symbolic plan of the novel. This connection takes place in the epilogue of the novel, where the symbolic plan completely prevails over the realistic, which allows to explain the change in the style of the narrative, which was paid attention to by many researchers.

Christian Duty to Bury the Dead and its Contemporary Challenges

The custom of burying the dead is not merely commonly accepted by Christianity the way of disposal of the human body after the death. It is most deeply rooted and perfectly expressing Christian anthropology, revealed in the Holy Scriptures as a consequence of original sin, sign of hope in the Resurrection, and imitation of Christ, who was buried in the tomb. In Catholic view the burial is a corporal work of mercy, act of care for the dead and their loved ones. Gaining popularity the practice of cremation is accepted by the Church for the sake of hygiene, economy, or community. Human remains, also in the form of ashes, always must be buried or placed in the columbarium. Church does not allow the human body to be disposed via resomation or promession. Alternative forms of memorializing the deceased, though attractive esthetically and sentimentally, are not only outlandish in Christian culture, but also contrary to the Christian teaching on origins, nature, and destination of the human person.

Interior Conversion

In the early Middle Ages, the monastic model of conversion represented Christianity’s highest form of spirituality. Conversion meant becoming a religious or entering a religious order; it represented withdrawal into a cloistered community where the soul’s quest for perfection in imitation of Christ could be fully realized. Conversion signified a lifelong pursuit of God, a desire for a final conversion culminating in the beatific vision. By the High Middle Ages, however, this monastic model was increasingly challenged by friars and lay movements (e.g., Beguines, tertiaries, and the Devotio Moderna movement in the Low Countries). For them, conversion meant a call to return to the primitive church in active pursuit of holiness in the world, not a retreat into the confines of the monastery.

The Ambiguity of Mimesis: Kierkegaard between Aesthetic Fantasy and Religious Imitation

This paper attempts to investigate Kierkegaard’s thought through the category of mimesis. First, two meanings of the word are distinguished and analyzed: the archaic meaning that links it to the concept of re-enactment, and the traditional meaning that links it to the aesthetic field of art. These two meanings are then considered in relation to Kierkegaard’s opus, showing the oscillation of mimesis as corresponding to that between the aesthetic, which lives in fantasy and in the unfulfilled possibility, and the religious, which finds its identity in the imitation of Christ and in the transparent relationship to God.