Penitent Saints

The emphasis of these images of Peter are in the context of the drama of the life of Christ. They are pedagogical in nature, instead of devotional. Devotional images of Saint Peter as penitent took shape and became popular primarily after the Council of Trent in the 16th century. This appropriation and promulgation of devotional art dedicated to penance has a lot to do with the historical realities of this time.

El Greco was born in Crete, an island in the Mediterranean south of Greece. Although a property of Venice at the time of his birth, the art being generated was more faithful to the Byzantine art and “had little in common with the secular and ‘realistic’ art of Renaissance Italy.”[5] In his mid-twenties, Domenicos Theotocopoulus, moves to Venice and works with Titian. Titian, like other Renaissance artists of his time, began to focus on religious art for the Catholic church. The influx of religious and devotional art became a form of propaganda for the Roman Catholic church to instill in their laity the reforms of the Council of Trent.

These reforms, according to Hans Kung, “was most clearly visible in its decrees on the sacrament… the sacraments were defined, under threat of excommunication, as seven, the medieval number.”[6] Kung emphasizes the disharmony of the church, especially with the Protestants, and the consequent “acts of violence, battles of faith, and wars of religion.”[7] The realities of this tension had real effects on the lives of many devout people looking for meaning in a shifting world. Robert E. McNally claims, “self-defense and self-assertion fill the ecclesiastical atmosphere of the Tridentine age. The old had indeed passed away, but not totally; and the new, which had been discovered in the hard crucible of trial and error, held great promise of an incredible future.”[8] He claims that Catholic response was more of a spiritual, inward journey rather than a organizational, or institutional reform. This spiritual renewal “depended, therefore, on prayer, penance, [and] the spiritual and corporal works of mercy.”[9]

The rise of new monastic orders coincided with this era of spiritual renewal—particularly the Carmelites from St. John of the Cross and St. Theresa of Avila and the Society of Jesus, founded by Ignatius of Loyola. These orders symbolize the move towards mysticism and intellectualism, respectively. Arising especially in Spain, this is the atmosphere and historical context of El Greco as he settles in Toledo in the year 1577. Toledo, the seat of the Spanish Inquisition, was devoutly Catholic as was the rest of Spain. The demand for images to impress upon the laity the importance of the sacraments were in high demand.

The Protestants were challenging everything, it seemed, that the Catholic devout held as precious. Particularly, according to Daniel Unger, “The position of the saints had been undermined and persuasion was needed to restore and even maintain the legitimacy of their role as mediators between the celestial and the terrestrial worlds.”[10] The demand for devotional images of saints emphasizing the sacrament of penance became a widespread phenomena.

Unger explains that “the concept of penance (poenitentiae) is of such centrality to Catholicism that it… is one of two sacraments that the believer is required to observe at least once a year, the other being the Eucharist (Eucharistiam).”[11]

This political maneuvering, according Unger, had to do with increasing the power of the priest over the penitent and “was exploited as a vital instrument to bolster religious control over those areas that were still under Catholic hegemony [like Spain]… This is why not only the most known penitent saints were repeatedly depicted by artists of the period after the Council of Trent, but even saints such as St. Francis who is not primarily associated with penance suddenly became role models for penance.”[12] Notice in the image the wilderness in the background and the skull in the foreground. The skull is often used as an attribute of penitent saints and is “a symbol of the transitory nature of life on earth.”[13] 

Another example of the cult of penitent saints, although she has always been depicted as a penitent saint, is the subject of the Magdalene. Although the Church has repudiated the link of Mary Magdalene to the repentant prostitute of the New Testament, the “widespread currency in the Middle Ages, however, made Mary Magdalene patron saint of penitent sinners and of repentant prostitutes.”[14] During the time after the Council of Trent, her image gained even more in popularity as devotional art. El Greco produced many renditions of her in the late 16th and early 17th century.