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The Annunciation. The figure above shows a magnified detail of the thumbnail image; the lower image focuses further on the homunculus or the naked baby Jesus jumping out of God’s mouth. This late-medieval motif was fiercely suppressed after the Council of Trent The Catholic Church now saw it as crude; no baby was to be shown because Christ was conceived through the immaterial will and word of God (as stated in the opening of St John’s Gospel: ‘In the beginning was the Word... ’).
Vincent of Kastav, The Annunciation, fragment of a fresco, Church of St Mary na Škrilinama, Beram, Croatia, 1474. 120 x 120 cm.
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The Annunciation. One conception was simultaneously central and exceptional in Western culture: that of Jesus Christ. The Archangel Gabriel was believed to have revealed to the Virgin Mary that she would conceive through the Holy Spirit. The iconographical tradition of ‘the Annunciation’ built upon numerous theological writings, but primarily the Gospel according to Luke. In this fifteenth-century fresco from Western Croatia, the naked baby Jesus, carrying a wooden cross on his shoulder, plunges towards Mary from the mouth of God the Father. The Virgin is shown with a book (‘she was always engaged in prayer and in searching the law’, Pseudo-Matthew, 1: 3). Gabriel is holding a scroll with the words ‘Hail [Mary], full of grace’ (Luke 1:28).
Acquiring a soul
Aristotle’s arguments, that the formation of a new being was gradual and the soul acquired some time after conception, informed medieval ideas.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that the female provided the menstrual blood as the passive material from which the active male semen generated the new form. While observing chick eggs at different stages, he became convinced that the form gradually emerged from unformed matter in a process he named ‘epigenesis’. Epigenesis required a soul. All organisms had a vegetative soul, and animals also a locomotor one, but the rational soul was reserved for humans. Aristotle drew on humoralism, which postulated that physical and mental features are determined by an innate balance of qualities such as heat, coldness, moisture and dryness. The hotter male embryos were ensouled around the fortieth day of pregnancy while the cooler females took twice as long.
For Christians, the soul had a different meaning and purpose. Some theologians placed ensoulment, or the acquisition of a God-given immortal soul, at conception. Yet from the late Middle Ages the Aristotelian view dominated. For practical purposes, quickening tended to be interpreted as coinciding with the entry of the soul. Understanding the early embryo as not-yet-human contributed to widespread tolerance of abortion. This would begin to change only in the Enlightenment
| Aristotelian epigenesis. This series of woodcuts from Rueff’s textbook shows the gradual Aristotelian coagulation of male and female seeds into a child. The egg-shaped mass (1) covered with three membranes (2) gradually develops blood vessels and organs such as the liver and heart (3–5) that assume the form of a human being (6) and finally turn into a child (7). The entire process supposedly took 45 days. By the end, the child would have ‘sense and feeling’, although enough strength for movement would not be acquired before the ninetieth day (twice 45). On the 270th day (three times 90), the infant would ‘hasten and come forth to the birth’ (quotes from the 1637 English edition, ff. 41–2).
Woodcuts from Jacob Rueff, De conceptu et generatione hominis, et ijs quae circa h[a]ec potissimum consyderantur, libri sex, congesti opera Iacobi Rueff chirurgi Tigurini. Insertae quoq[ue] sunt picturae uariae foetus, primum in utero siti, deinde in partu, mox etiam matricis & instrumentorum ad partum promouendum & extrahendum pertinentium, nec non postremo uariorum monstrorum insuper, Latin translation by Wolfgang Haller of the first German translation, Zurich: Christopher Froschauer, 1554, ff. 3v, 4, 7v, 8, 8v, 9v and 10. 20 x 14 cm.
Wellcome Library, London
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Early-modern images of Aristotelian epigenesis, 1554
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Conception and ensoulment. This illumination from a fifteenth-century French manuscript shows a couple in bed. The Holy Trinity—father, son and Holy Ghost—watch from the upper left corner and send them a childlike form. This recalls the iconography of the Annunciation. The scroll quotes Genesis from the Latin Bible: ‘Let us create man in our image and likeness’ (‘Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudem nostram’). The slippers by the bed refer to God’s commandment to Moses to remove his sandals before the holy ground of the burning bush, and so point to the holiness of the sacrament of marriage. The woman’s extended right arm probably signifies Eve’s offering the apple from the Tree of Knowledge, reminding us that we all inherit Original Sin at conception. The burning candle on the mantelpiece indicates the beginning of a new life. Ensoulment and conception are tightly linked here, and so probably took place in the same moment, contrary to Aristotelian and vernacular ideas.
Illumination from Jean Mansel, Vie de Nostre Seigneur Jésus Christ, fifteenth century, fol. 174. 11.1 x 15.8 cm.
Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.
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The moment of ensoulment, 1400s
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