In 1837, a Belgian artist named Joseph Geefs was commissioned to create a statue of Lucifer for St. Paul’s cathedral in Liege, Belgium.
the statue the cathedral
The installation was originally intended to have a statue of Lucifer surrounded by angels. Lucifer then turns his back to their overwhelming glory, symbolizing his defeat at the hands of the Divine. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately, for our purposes), something went awry: Lucifer was too sexy for church. Citing distraction of the “sensitive” women of the congregation, the Church had Geef’s statue removed and commissioned his older brother, Guillame, to sculpt a new, less provocative statue. There was only one problem; Guillame’s statue was, somehow, even more erotically charged.
Guillame’s statue: obviously much hotter, especially to the modern eye
Where the first Lucifer was gracefully beautiful, with delicate features and musculature, the second was the exact opposite. Guillame, in attempting to make the Devil less beautiful, added extra muscles to make him look more rugged. Unfortunately, less beautiful did not translate to more ugly – it simply made Lucifer even more alluring. Bizarrely, St. Paul’s cathedral installed this statue with minimal fuss, admitting defeat to the statue’s hotness in the process. Aside from being utterly hilarious to the modern gaze, this historical event raises an interesting question about the Church’s struggle against the eroticism of divinity: why was there a struggle in the first place? Could it be that the repressed sexual desires of devout Christians, with no healthy outlet, were only able to find an outlet in the eroticism of the Divine? Let’s unpack that.
In The Life of Christina of Markyate, a seminal text in the field of medieval history, one scene seems particularly important. Despite using descriptors such as “grace,” “chastity,” and “charity” to describe the ensuing scenario, the imagery this scene presents is anything but. In the scene, Christina is lying “prostrate” on the floor of her close friend and spiritual mentor, Roger’s, chapel. Strangely, Roger chooses to step over her prone form, craning his neck to “see how modestly… she had composed herself for prayer,” (The Life of Christina of Markyate, 39). Obviously, that’s a strange image, and if that’s not also an extremely roundabout way to describe Roger’s leering at Christina’s submissive form on the ground, then I don’t know what is. This scene, for all of its religious language and overtones, has a strong undertone of sensuality and, even, eroticism. And it doesn’t end there.
In Bernard of Clairvaux’s religious analysis of the Bible’s Song of Songs, he spends five speeches analyzing just the first line of the poem: the phrase, “kiss me with the kiss of his mouth,” (Clairvaux, 1). In a modern-day reading of the Song of Songs, most readers would assume it’s a sex poem – it possesses copious amounts of erotic imagery, most it centered around taste and smell, as well as suggestive, euphemistic language. To Clarivaux, though, this poem is about God’s kiss of salvation to Man, the kiss taking the form of Christ and literally representing the imparting of grace, rather than a physical kiss. But is this really the case? Or does even Clairvaux unwittingly contribute to the eroticism of the poem? At the end of his sermon, Clarivaux makes this statement: “And finally, when we shall have obtained these favors through many prayers and tears, we humbly dare to raise our eyes to his mouth, so divinely beautiful, not merely to gaze upon it, but – I say it with fear and trembling – to receive its kiss,” (Clairvaux, 9). I don’t know about you, but the phrasing of this sentence feels incredibly intimate and erotic. Especially the use of the words “fear and trembling” in regards to receiving the kiss; to put it mildly, “trembling” is a term with many less holy connotations than how it has been used here. But isn’t it strange how similar fervor for the Divine and sexual desire are portrayed? One can “burn” with love for God in the same way that one can “burn” with sexual desire for a lover (The Life of Christina of Markyate, 39). Maybe this seeming transitivity between the Divine and the erotic is due to the Church’s control of what is acceptable sexually and what is not. In a time period in which sexuality and the human body’s natural urges were relentlessly demonized and suppressed, it would not be surprising if some of that pent up sexual energy found its way into a socially acceptable outlet: religious fervor. After all, being “excited” about the Divine is the goal of religion, right?
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Alright, maybe not that excited.
Works Cited:
https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/artistry/2020/11/18/the-devil-is-too-sublime/
The Life of Christina of Markyates
Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermon on the Song of Songs
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