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This chapter explores Lutheran sermons on the text of the Annunciation. Mary is portrayed as an example of the faithful believer, representing the Lutheran virtue of Christian faith over the “worldly” virtue of human reason. She is seen not so much as the model believer, but as a fruitful model for believers, whose real importance lay in her role in bringing Christ into the world.

This chapter concludes a procession around the baptistery at the southwest corner, arguing that the female figure drawing water from a well is not the Samaritan Woman, an infamously sinful convert, but more likely the Virgin Mary, the famously holy mother of Jesus. Through detailed analysis of textual sources and an original, extensive survey of artistic depictions of the Annunciation in late ancient and Byzantine art, this chapter proposes that the earliest depiction of Mary outside of the Roman catacombs likely resides now at the Dura-Europos Collection. Sources from Syria and its environs corroborate the ritualization of spiritual pregnancy and new birth in Christian initiation. Like Mary, these initiates have a divine encounter at a water source and receive the illumination and incarnation of the Holy Spirit. Yet just as in chapter 4, polysemic interpretations may be appropriate in the end. Ancient authors blended their analyses of various virgins, brides, and water-well seekers from biblical narratives, such that the threads of purity, marriage, birth, and death were not often easy to separate.

The ability to identify a scene such as the Annunciation or the story of invention of the relics of the local saint is believed to require prior knowledge acquired through oral or written communication. One wonders how the “showing and telling” on the part of teachers and cathedral guides might have been practiced in the Middle Ages. Responses to the rhetorical strategies employed by the preacher to engage his audience's attention might well have been matched in the responses of ordinary folk to the sculpture. They might have seen themselves in the images of rural life and local people carved in the quatrefoils and tympanum of the left portal; they might have chuckled at the amusing carnal images crouching in the consoles of the solemn column figures. Memory operates differently in relation to patterns of thought enunciated through the spoken word and those enunciated through images.

The chapter discusses the theological possibilities present in the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. These possibilities are then interwoven with the work of Luce Irigaray, Jean-Luc Marion, and Jacques Derrida. With this theoretical framework in place, this chapter explores an interpretation of the Annunciation as an event of Gelassenheit which springs from a mutual gift of love. This suggests that the text of the Annunciation is infused with possibility. Filled with grace, Mary is invited by the divine into possibility; responding in grace, she in turn invites the divine into possibility. Grace, springing from the desire of the divine as well as the responsive desire of Mary, draws both Mary and the divine into the very possibility that it creates—the possibility for an intermingling of the self and the divine in a mystical union of love. Transgressing the limits of language, this possibility slips into an apophatic moment of Gelassenheit, a mutual “letting-be” or releasement of both Mary and the divine, which then overflows into the song of the Magnificat.

This chapter discusses three installations by Lawrence Malstaf, which rework religious motifs, or literally set them in motion to reinterpret the idea of the incarnation and the oppositions between body and soul, flesh and spirit, which are still implicitly present in contemporary notions of mediality. Madonnapresents an iconographic inversion of the motif of Annunciation, and situates itself in the broad network of cultural meanings associated with air and breath. The work has broader resonances with iconic images belonging to different periods. It can be seen as a survival from the past which, in the sense of Aby Warburg, displaces and inverts the meaning of the borrowed motif to transform it into a critical commentary. Next to that the co-presence of the technical and the iconic, the imprint and the iconic resonances in the installation Shrink, and the transformation of the motif of Jesus writing in the sand in Sandbible.

This chapter offers a transformational understanding of the Trinity, and particularly considers the incarnation as involving the advent of the Holy Spirit more fully into space and time. The question of the divine and human causality which underlies the incarnation is considered together with the nature of their relation in Mary’s conception of Jesus. This leads to an examination of the relation between Old and New Covenant. The Holy Spirit is understood to perfect the human freedom of Mary. It is argued that Jesus’ life progresses through three modes of embodiment: mortal, Easter and exalted. It is argued that the ontology of the Holy Spirit is manifest in the third or ‘heavenly’ form, according to the consubstantiality of the Spirit with Son and Father. In his exalted state, the Son is universally present in his particularity.

Chapter one describes “The Quandary Over Plant Sex” in its historical context. The sexual role of pollen wasn’t discovered until the late 17^th century, suggesting a deep cultural bias. Beliefs concerning sex in humans, from Galen and Aristotle onward, were influenced by gender ideology. The lower social status of women suggested a one-sex model, whereby female character and physiology were construed as deficient versions of the male. Plants, because of their association with women, came to be regarded as female. Flowers are often emblematic of women in literature, but flowers seem to produce fruits without carnality, by parthenogenesis. In paintings of the Annunciation, the lily appears almost as regularly as the angel Gabriel as a symbol of Mary’s purity. The association of flowers with female purity hindered the discovery of sex in plants. Although most people are aware of pollen, widespread confusion about its role in sexual reproduction still lingers.

Surveys the known serpentine fountains of Medieval Constantinople, and relates tales of fantastic fountains from Byzantium and further afield, including at the court of Mongke Khan. Studies the placement of a serpent fountain in scenes depicting the Annunciation to St. Anne and also that of Mary, who is portrayed as the Second Eve. Returns to the theme of temptation, now specifically by three-headed tempters. Returns to the combat myth, now to consider Christian serpent-tramplers and dragon-slayers. Concludes with a discussion of paintings in Cappadocian rock churches that show spiritual warriors and military saints confronting serpents with one, two, or three heads.

The lesson begins with information on Heinrich Ignaz Franz von Biber and the background to the Rosary sonatas. The author’s meditational approach is explained: musicians, like actors, must convince the audience by their simulation of faith. The engraving at the head of the sonata is fully discussed and there are thoughts on instrumentation and structure. The full biblical texts for the two Rosary sonatas discussed in the book are reproduced in Appendix IV. In the two lessons on Biber, the biblical and musical texts are constantly interwoven to suggest programmatic content, as if the narrative is recounted by the notes themselves, the rhetoric of the Gospel and Biber’s music fully aligned. Much in this approach is speculation, but the author believes that the clearer the performer’s vision, the more intense and meaningful will be the result. As usual, the “Observations” section is packed with suggestions and information based on many years of performing these unique works.

Cantatas 182 and 12 are the first and second cantatas composed by Bach in Weimar after his elevation to the position of concert master in 1714. Both cantatas deal with Luther’s theology of the cross. Cantata 182 for Palm Sunday (which overlapped with the Annunciation in 1714) deals with Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem for the Passion; Cantata 12 for Jubilate features the famous original version of the Crucifixus of the Mass in B minor. The two cantatas, while very different in character, reveal the same basic underlying theology. Their tonal plans relate to Cantata 21.