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Interesting read:
Thirty years ago, the art scholar Leo Steinberg published “The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion,” a book that does much to explain the connection between Pope Francis’s passionate devotion to the poor and afflicted and his seeming openness to gay Catholics. In “The Sexuality of Christ,” Steinberg argues that as a result of the rise of the Franciscan order, around 1260, an emphasis on Christ’s nakedness, and, thus, on his humanity, joined compassion to an acceptance of the role of sexuality in human life.
A credo of the Franciscan order was nudus nudum Christum sequi (“follow naked the naked Christ”). It was a radical call to cast aside worldly wealth and belongings and acknowledge the fragile, fallen nature of all men and women. But in casting aside Christ’s garments, the Franciscans made Christ’s nude body a focal point. As a result, according to Steinberg, from about the middle of the thirteenth century until the sixteenth century artists lavished particular care on Christ’s penis, the part of Christ’s body that made him most mortal, and which proved his union with humankind. “One must recognize,” wrote Steinberg, “an ostentatio genitalium comparable to the canonic ostentatio vulnerum, the showing forth of the wounds.”
Pope Francis and the Naked Christ : The New Yorker!
Thirty years ago, the art scholar Leo Steinberg published “The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion,” a book that does much to explain the connection between Pope Francis’s passionate devotion to the poor and afflicted and his seeming openness to gay Catholics. In “The Sexuality of Christ,” Steinberg argues that as a result of the rise of the Franciscan order, around 1260, an emphasis on Christ’s nakedness, and, thus, on his humanity, joined compassion to an acceptance of the role of sexuality in human life.
A credo of the Franciscan order was nudus nudum Christum sequi (“follow naked the naked Christ”). It was a radical call to cast aside worldly wealth and belongings and acknowledge the fragile, fallen nature of all men and women. But in casting aside Christ’s garments, the Franciscans made Christ’s nude body a focal point. As a result, according to Steinberg, from about the middle of the thirteenth century until the sixteenth century artists lavished particular care on Christ’s penis, the part of Christ’s body that made him most mortal, and which proved his union with humankind. “One must recognize,” wrote Steinberg, “an ostentatio genitalium comparable to the canonic ostentatio vulnerum, the showing forth of the wounds.”
Pope Francis and the Naked Christ : The New Yorker!
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