FAITH TIBBLE traces the representation of the Crown of Thorns, in Western iconography, from the so-called Passion Sarcophagus (c.350, Vatican Museums) to the present day. A concluding chapter races from the 14th century to the present and includes Mel Gibson’s 2004 film, a contemporary sculpture from the 2012 RA Summer exhibition, and Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1955).
The Gospels refer to Jesus’s being mocked as a king, wearing a crown of acanthus leaves (acanthus stefanon). Acanthus (“bear’s breeches”), some varieties of which have spiky leaves, is widely known across the Mediterranean; it informed the architectural order of Corinthian capitals. Tertullian (c.160-240), following Pliny’s Natural History, translated the Gospel passage as spineam coronam, as later did St Jerome and the Vulgate.
Roman generals were often accorded a plaited crown of foliage, and this corona graminea became a sign of triumph, placed gently on the victor’s brow, or held above his head. Similar vegetal wreaths were often tied to military standards which had a quasi-divine significance, much as regimental standards hold day. On the Passion Sarcophagus, the central cross is topped with a wreathed Chi Rho monogram, to represent Christ’s triumph.
Tibble omits the mosaics (432-440) of the Roman basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where Pope Sixtus III placed a richly jewelled and enthroned cross with a pearl- and gem-encrusted golden diadem wreath as the Lamb of God, and the fresco (c.740-750) in the chapel of the Primicerius Theodotus, in Santa Maria Antiqua in the Forum, where a thin gold filet is threaded through the Crucified’s hair.
The later coronation rites of the imperial courts of Ottonian and Salian monarchs offer parallels with the mocking “coronation” of Jesus by Pilate’s men in which a thorny crown has become another instrument of torture.
The recovery of the relic of the Crown of Thorns from Jerusalem, sold to Louis IX of France to bail out the bankrupted Crusader King Badouin II, brings a whole new cultic dimension to history as the Sainte Chapelle in Paris was built as a reliquary to house it. Emily Davenport Guerry has found that, in the original murals there, the crown still comprised plaited foliage. Likewise, 15th-century German woodcuts often have such a thornless foliate crown as appears, too, in an illuminated manuscript (pre-1470) by Hans Burgkmair.
This reader would have appreciated inclusion of Spanish and Latin American painting and sculpture. The most perplexing image of the crucifixion which I know is that of 1660/70 by Juan Carreño de Miranda (Madrid, The Prado P.1574). It depicts Christ wearing a crown of pink and white roses, his nakedness covered by a red tutu, or fustanella, trimmed with silver lamé.
Previous books in this helpful series — Joan E. Taylor (Books, 23 March 2018) and Diane Apostolos-Cappadona (Books, 6 April 2023) were rather better illustrated.
The absence of the image of folio 21 from Henry III’s Lectionary from Saint Willibrord’s Abbey is particularly regrettable. A gazette of images would be invaluable.
Canon Nicholas Cranfield is the Vicar of All Saints’, Blackheath, in south London.
The Crown of Thorns: Humble gods and humiliated kings
Faith Tibble
T & T Clark £24.99
(978-0-567-71322-3)
Church Times Bookshop £22.49