The Arma Christi [General discussion]

[arca_libraria]

Lions are ambiguous beasts. They can stand for courage and kingship, but also for violence and danger. Lions are killers.

The lion of Judah became a symbol of Israel, and lions are the most common animal in medieval Jewish art.

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So if we've got nails arranged like the Cross, and underneath a lion menacingly showing its claw, perhaps the allusion is to those of the tribe of Judah who (in the medieval mind) were the ones who put Jesus on the cross?

The 'tribe of Judah' doesn't mean 'all of the Jewish people'. Jacob the grandson of Abraham supposedly had 12 sons, and each of those sons founded a tribe that became one of the twelve tribes of Israel. Both Jesus and the Old Testament King David were both descendants from the tribe of Judah. Being 'of the tribe of Judah' was actually a very positive thing and the gospel writers Matthew and Luke devote a considerable amount of space to tracing Jesus' lineage back to David and then Judah. The gospel of Matthew opens with that genealogy and it's where much of the 'tree of Jesse' imagery ultimately derives from.

In terms of the Rev 5:5 verse, Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah, so I don't think it would make sense to see the lion as 'menacing' in that interpretation.

Remember, the gospel writer Mark has the evangelist symbol of a lion, and St Jerome (a hugely important figure in medieval Europe) is nearly always depicted hanging out with a lion, so lions in Christian art are far more likely to refer to Jesus, Mark or Jerome, than to be a reference to Jewish people and/or Israel.