Set in the Garden
of Eden, Eve’s history marks the beginning of the history of women, and her
fall is the primeval story of humankind. Her figure and character shape human identity,
which is grounded in the earth.
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Lintel fragment of
Eve from Autun Cathedral, ca. 1120, now in Rolin Museum. Photo © A.-M.
Moubayed
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n Genesis, God first created Adam and then Eve from
Adam’s rib to serve as his female counterpart and companion (Genesis 2:23-25).
The first man and woman were destined to live eternally, deprived of shame in
Eden, the garden of God. They were free to eat fruit from any tree, except the
Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; however, symbol of chaos and the
underworld, a serpent – the Devil disguised – seduced Eve and persuaded her to
eat the forbidden fruit from the tree, which she also offered to Adam, bringing
about the Original Sin (Genesis 3:1-10). Eve’s curiosity and vanity spark the
fall of humanity; her and Adam’s disobedience to God resulted in their
expulsion from Paradise, after which they and their descendants would
experience pain, evil, and death. In
this biblical narrative, Eve triggers the fall of humanity, as she is depicted
as its main protagonist.
Traditionally unclothed, the figure
of Eve made a sudden appearance on highly visible areas in interiors and
exteriors of churches throughout Europe, built during the great architectural
effervescence of ca. 1100, now characterized as the ‘Romanesque.’ Adapted,
re-read, and sexualized in the medieval period, the story of Eve advanced
agendas surrounding sex and gender. She became a plastic
translation of socio-religious ideology, which imagined her
body as a site of sin. Eve’s
presence on the Romanesque portal re-enacts and narrates the history of
humanity as created by God where time, as Saint Augustine explains, has neither
understandable boundaries nor measure:
In eternity nothing
moves into the past: all is present (totum esse praesens). Time, on the
other hand, is never all present at once… What then is time? If no one asks me,
I know. If I wish to explain it to someone that asks, I do not know... It is
now plain and evident that neither future nor past things exist. Nor can we
properly say, “there are three times: past, present, and future.” Instead, we
might properly say: “there are three times: a present-of-things-past, a
present-of-things-present, and a present-of-things-future.”
Eternal time belongs to God’s Knowledge, which was
lost by Eve and her descendants when she ate the fruit from the Tree of
Knowledge of Good and Evil. The three times — past (memory/memoria),
present (observation/contuitus), future (expectation/intentio) — are
defined by a presence of things in an eternal setting, where the past, present,
and future alone do not exist, yet their presence does.
French philosopher Paul Ricœur presents an extensive
study of the relationship between temporality and narrativity to explain Saint
Augustine’s understanding of time and his unsuccessful attempt to explain
effectively its nature. Ricœur’s analysis of Augustine’s Book 11 focuses on the
pairing between intentio animi (distention of the soul by time: the
soul’s passive subjectivity of time) and intentio (the intention: the
soul’s ability to act freely in time), with which Saint Augustine struggles to
measure time. The philosopher’s main argument is that time
and narrative are interdependent:
Ultimately at stake
in the case of the structural identity of the narrative function as well as in
that of the truth claim of every narrative work, is the temporal character of
human experience. The world unfolded by every narrative is always a temporal
world… between the activity of narrating a story and the temporal character of
human experience there exists a correlation that is not merely accidental but
that presents a transcultural form of necessity.
Ricœur also states that “time becomes human to the
extent that it is articulated through a narrative mode, and narrative attains
its full meaning when it becomes a condition of temporal existence.” Time, as we perceive it, is thus measured in
terms of the memory and expectations and memory of the past things and the
future. The history of humanity and its three
temporal intentions — past, present, future — as well as God’s eternal time
are commemorated on the Romanesque façade to serve the memory and expectations
of medieval Christians, who understood the measurement of time as a human
construct. Starting in the Garden of Eden, with Eve’s
Original Sin and leading to God’s Incarnation, Sacrifice and Redemption on an
eternal time line, the early events of humanity write its end. Taking roots in
Eve’s Original Sin, it is this clear, and yet complex idea that is frequently
articulated on Romanesque portals across Europe. Eve’s acquisition of power through
knowledge, her display of flesh and the emphasis it places on sexuality
generated a domino effect, leading Adam to sin, which culminated in their loss
of the Garden of Eden.
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Temptation and Fall of Adam and Eve, ca. 1150, Poitiers Cathedral. Photo
© A.-M. Moubayed
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Our human
condition, from the perspective of the Western tradition, has been portrayed in
terms of our understanding of Eden. The idea of Eden, or Paradise, fuels our
imagination and creativity, as it did for the medieval monastic communities who
developed Eve’s iconography and for the churchgoers who gazed upon historiated
Romanesque portals in their quest for perfection. It is from this primeval
story that features a mysterious tree and talking snake that once made Eve and
then Adam drift away towards sorrow, pain, and the flesh's earthliness, that
our human condition is constructed. Within this story, the garden is the space
where our morality, sexuality, status, and gender roles, as well as our
artistic and literary traditions, are defined. In that light, Romanesque
sculptural programs reflect humankind’s quest for perfection and identity in
narrating Messianic Redemption, where Eve and her flesh play a powerful leading
role in shaping Western socio-religious and visual culture.
Anna-Maria
Moubayed, PhD
Concordia University, Canada
