[Blog Post] An Allegory of Salvation (Koen Gheuens & Cary Rapaport)

[Koen G]

This reminds me of a passage from Hildegard von Bingen's Scivias:

"Of living souls the heavenly edifice is built of living stones. Like a vast city it embraces the great multitude of nations, and like a wide net an immense multitude of fish." (Sc II,3)

Yes, that's a very good example. In this quote you also see how well these metaphors layer. A heavenly edifice reminds of Heavenly Jerusalem. Souls build it like stones. But she is then talking about the world because it embraces the nations. And then throw in a fishing metaphor for good measure.

This kind of switching between the heavenly and the earthly, naming both in the same breath, a strong sense of both realms coinciding... That is exactly the sort of thought about the Church we believe underlies the Rosettes.