Clivedurdle

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=007...3E2.0.CO%3B2-K

Jeffrey Gibson

Thanks for this.

Please note that JSTOR is an archiving site. It does not relate the grafitto to the development of the medieval fool. The author (D. J. Gifford) of an article (ICONOGRAPHICAL NOTES TOWARDS A DEFINITION OF THE MEDIEVAL FOOL) which was published in Vol. 37 (1974) of the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes archived on JSTOR does.

Jeffrey

MarkA

ph2ter

a graffito found in Rome in 1856, representing a man bearing the head of an ass, and nailed to a cross, before whom another man kneels in the attitude of adoration. Beneath the cross there is a caption written in crude Greek: ΑΛΕΞΑΜΕΝΟΣ ΣΕΒΕΤΕ ΘΕΟΝ - "Alexamenos worships [his] God".

I have seen this before somewhere but I cannot recall where. Could you please give a reference to the collection it is in and what date was ascribed to it?

As to the other ass head references, again a reference to the collections would be very helpful.

Roger Pearse

The Alaxamenos graffito was found in the slave barracks on the Palatine, and is apparently in the Palatine museum, on the top floor. I didn't see it when I was there (and I did look), but then I didn't certainly know it was there.

ph2ter

When I started this thread I wasn't aware of L.L. Welborn's "Paul, the Fool of Christ, A study of 1 Corinthians 1-4 in the Comic-Philosophic Tradition (or via: amazon.co.uk)." This book was already referenced here on this board, but now I found a link to it and read some excerpts from it by the help of google books. Some ideas expressed in that study interfere in some way with the theme of this thread.

Paul, the Fool of Christ" by L.L. Welborn

Here I give some interesting statements from and about L.L. Welborn's study:
The author argues that Paul's acceptance of the role of a 'fool', and his evaluation of the message of the cross as 'foolishness', are in antiquity understood against the background of the theatre and the fool's role in the mime. The author's investigation demonstrates that the term 'folly' (moria) was understood as a designation of the attitude and behavior of a particular social type: the lower class buffoon. Because the concept of the laughable in the Greco-Roman world was grounded in contemplation of the ugly and defective, those who possesed these characteristics were deemed to be 'foolish'. As a source of amusement, these lower class types were widely represented on the stage in the vulgar and realistic comedy known as the 'mime'. Through its use in this context, 'moros' became the common generic name for a mimic fool. The author suggests that Paul's acknowledgement of his resemblance to a lower class type includes an awareness of the comical associations which this figure evoked, and that his identification with this social type involves a conscious appropriation of the coresponding theatrical role. Evidence of that appears, first of all, in his word choice in 1 Cor. 1-4.
The actors who played the part of the fool in farce and mime were often persons with abnormally ugly bodies, chosen, evidently, on account of their weaknesses and defects. The possibility that Paul's physical appearance bore some resemblance to a mimic fool cannot be excluded. The Acts of Paul and Thecla portrays him as a man of small stature, with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked, full of friendliness. This description match a particular type, the bald headed buffoon of the mime. Also cannot be excluded that Paul's occupation as a handworker placed him among the urban ploretariat whose lives were caricatured in the mime. It is possible that Paul's occupation was related to the theater. The term 'tentmaker' should be rather understood as a 'maker of stage properties'.

Paul establishes the striking, rhetorical contrast between the wealthy, sophisticated Corinthinas and the poor, moronic apostles in an instance of the theatrical metaphor at the structural level. Paul insists that God has inverted the values of wisdom and foolishness. Paul done that in the context of a specific intellectual tradition which some have named 'the grotesque perspective'. Paul is able to speak a critical truth to those in authority from the perspective of the poor, the uneducated and the dishonored.
It is possible that Paul has in mind the action of a particular play when he describes the apostles 'as people condemned to death' - namely, a mime in which the buffoons were crucified, like in the most popular mime of Paul's days Laureolus of a certain Catullus. The 'humor' of the Laureolus mime is a complex instance of the 'gallows joke' popular in antiquity, particularly among the lower classes. Associations created by the mime evidently mediated Paul's provocative description of the message of the cross as foolishness. The crucifixion in the mimes was enacted with a considerable degree of stage realism.
Given the constancy of the connection of humor with crucufixion in antiquity, there is good reason to regard the buffoonery of the soldiers in the gospels as a plausible action. More attention should be given to the suggestion, made almost a century ago, that the mockery of Jesus is based upon a theatrical mime, which would have been familiar to both the soldiers and the populace.
A well known graffito from the Palatine Hill in Rome depicts a crucified figure with the head of an ass. The ass-man was a theme featured in mimes. Thus the Palatine grafitto is a final example of the paradoxical connection between humor and the cross. The central mystery of the Christian faith is parodied as a scene from the mime, in which the crucified god of the Christians is mocked as a grotesque, much-slapped ass.

A papyrus fragment, now in Warsaw, contains a piece of dialogue between a person which plays a role of the fool in some mime in which the fool is described as 'cursed'.

Haman of the Jewish festival of Purim is also ridiculed as an hunged and cursed ass.

I the light of the above study, maybe Paul in Galatians 3.1("O stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?") really refers to some kind of theatrical demonstration?

andrewcriddle

The word translated as publicly portrayed PROEGRAPhH from PROGRAPhW is difficult to translate here. It may just mean announced but it might refer to displaying a written document of some sort Liddell-Scott gives set forth as a public notice. http://perseus.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/c...try%3D%2386922

IIUC it is difficult to understand it as referring to a theatrical (or other visual non-written) demonstration.

Andrew Criddle

Ben C Smith

My website has a page containing some of what you are looking for. Refer also to the associated photos.

Ben.

Clivedurdle

Paul as a proto Shakespeare or Monty Python?