Dear friends, who had the Magi already marched outside their windows that evening, looking at the star! Every year, in every Christian country in the world where Christmas is celebrated, nativity scenes appear and nativity scenes are played out whose characters look like our neighbors and friends. They might look like Paulo, a Spanish shoemaker, and his wife, Maria, who live on the street next door, or they might look like Giovanni, an Italian hardware salesman who exchanges news with you every morning, peeking out of his shop. While traveling across Europe, I saw several nativity scenes with black-faced heroes. I prayed to the Black Madonnas in Poland and Spain. And I've never rejected their black statues. When I became interested in this issue and found out that the color of the Virgin's skin is not the influence of time, nor the centuries-old soot of candles. Art historians agree that her skin color was chosen intentionally by artists; this, in particular, is indicated by the fact that black covers only areas of her skin, but not clothes or supporting objects.
According to the allegorical reading of the Song of Songs, King Solomon's beloved can be considered the prototype of Our Lady, who says about herself: “Do not look at me that I am swarthy, for the sun has scorched me;...” (Song 1:5). In Vulgate, this place sounds like “Nigra sum sed formosa”. This quote is sometimes found in images of the Black Madonna. In the Greek Septuagint, the corresponding passage sounds like “alaumygama kala”, which can be translated as “I am black and beautiful”. Theologians' debates caused discrepancies in the last sentence, which was also translated as “I am black but beautiful.” I saw pilgrims from different countries and of different skin colors walk thousands of kilometers and climb high into the mountains to apologize to the Black Madonna for their sins or pray for the health of their loved ones. And pilgrims are not concerned about medieval prejudices about the black complexion of the Virgin Mary. I will suggest that black-faced Madonnas could be created by artists of dark skin, representatives of dark ethnic groups. Medieval artists in stone or wood embodied such images of the Mother of God and the baby Christ that would bring their peoples closer to them. Their work did not contradict the trend mentioned in his book Mimesis (1953) by philologist and specialist in Romance literature Erich Auerbach. The scientist noted that since the Middle Ages, an interpretive tradition has arisen in Europe, when it was necessary to “pour the content of Christianity into a form that would not only translate it, but also adapt it to its own tradition of worldview and expression”. Its essence was that biblical events were presented in literature as everyday events taking place before people's eyes. At this stage in the decline in biblical stories, the presentation was popular in nature: “a sublime event of ancient times should appear before the eyes of every viewer as a modern, always possible, comprehensible, intimate story” that was supposed to “grow into the life and feelings” of any person. And this desire to cut Our Lady out of black basalt or coat it with black lacquer, in my opinion, is also due to the desire to introduce her as your mother or a familiar laundress or a grape merchant. And this trend, which Auerbach writes about, shows the strong desire of artists to reveal precisely the human nature of the Son of God.
In 1894, Paul Gauguin began painting “Te tamari no atua” (Christmas) in Brittany, and finished it in 1896 in Tahiti. On it, Our Lady is Tahitian, and the baby Christ is depicted in the arms of a midwife. It is black with a barely noticeable halo above his head. Even if we didn't know the title of this picture, we would have guessed its plot. It is too recognizable, but it is also not canonical. But we, modern people, will not give a damn about this picture and curse the creator for showing us all what Man is. And the form that God's son took is not that of an African American, a Jew, or a Slav. He showed us Man in all his diversity and in all possible guises, from commoner to king.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton, an English philosopher and apologist for Jesus Christ, wrote about people's return to Christ throughout the history of Christianity in 1925 in his book “The Eternal Man”. The title of the philosophical work indicates the connection between the philosopher's optimism (“Christianity declines, but the Lord remains with us”) and the reason for this optimism — the democratism and realism of Christ's actions described in the Bible (“the story of Cana of Galilee is democratic, like Dickens's books”). Chesterton believes that Christ's human words and actions (“He and man and something more”) are timeless: “He did not utter a single phrase that made His teachings dependent on any social order.” At the same time, the philosopher never tires of reminding him of what his contemporaries would do if they saw such a person:
“It's good to remind us of Jesus' wanderings so we don't forget that He shared the wandering life of the homeless. It is very useful to think that the police would drive Him away, or maybe even arrest Him, because they could not determine what He lives on.” Christ in the form of a hippie, Christ as black, Christ as a Jew or a Georgian - none of this should matter to true faith. In my opinion, something else is important here. One of the manifestations of Christ's human nature in Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita and in the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar is his self-esteem, which is very difficult to preserve in the recurring historical conditions of disregard for personality. History knows only three main behavioral scenarios in such conditions: either to come to terms (a Christian form of humility as non-resistance to evil with violence), or actively fight against the arbitrariness of the authorities (rebellion), or victimize, identifying yourself with the aggressor/authority, and betray those who are not infected with victimization. Christ's pattern of behavior under these conditions is incomprehensible to people. This is a kind of humility /pacification of Man's pride who, at the cost of his humble sacrifice, has been condemning people to suffer from realizing their “created” community with Him, but also unable not only to follow Him in conditions of personal neglect, but also from time to time to become part of a crowd that demands another sacrifice.
Only the hero's actions, not the skin color of Christ and his mother, have made us think about our community with him for two millennia, sympathize with his torments, rejoice to receive the news of his Resurrection.
And on this Christmas Eve, I would like to wish us all never cease to be happy and surprised at the beautiful and tragic things that make us all related to Him. Merry Christmas friends!
Paul Gauguin, Christmas
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