Envisioning Christ on the Cross: Ireland and the Early Medieval West

The Sixth Ecumenical Council, held in Constantinople in 681 (and preceded by the council in Hatfield in 679), proclaimed that the divine and human wills were united in Christ who, being incorruptible, never conflicted with the divine will, his incorruptibility stemming from his conception from the Virgin by the Holy Spirit. In a series of excellent, nuanced contributions the development of Crucifixion iconography is examined in the first section (Felicity Hartley McGowan on the Greco-Roman background to early Christian iconographies; Jennifer O'Reilly on the exegetical interpretation of Insular manuscript iconography; Carol Neuman de Vegvar on numerological symbolism and the wounds of Christ; César García de Castro Valdés on the function and iconography of the cross in Asturia; Hawtree on the conflation of Insular and Carolingian thought in Eriugena's Carmina, Louis van Tongeren, Beatrice Kitzinger, and Cellia Chazelle on aspects of the liturgical framing and reception of teaching on the significance of the cross).