‘Quasi presentialiter’. La croce-crocefisso nel dramma della Passione tra meditazione e rito (IX-XI sec.)

This paper seeks to rereading some of the most famous Western sources (theological, exegetical, meditative, ceremonial and figurative) about the memory of the Passion of Christ, between IX and XI centuries. In that period, Crucifixion was the subject of a memorative representation, which aims to show the body of Christ in two different modes: the first one emerged during the last two decades of Eighth century (in the middle of the debates about the notion of image and the Adoptionist doctrine) and pertained to ‘being able to see’ the mysterium Crucis, intimately linked to memoria passionis. It is a memorative representation, quite a ‘discipline of vision’ that teaches the viewer how seeing the body of Christ on the bare cross and how to remember every singular event of the Passion through that body. The second mode developed from the half of Ninth century, at a time when the debate on divine predestination and on the Eucharistic realism occured. In this period the representation seems to change: from a ‘being able to see the body’ it moves to a ‘being in front of the body’, almost presentialiter. This second kind of representation focuses on a ‘sense of presence’ strong enough to perceive the crucified body on the limit of the historical, real, true body, quite it was a carnal body: in other words, quite it was a ‘living body’. It is an important change that has significant consequences on liturgical practices and, above all, is the base of that new ‘dramatic dimension’ of Good Friday’s rites, which is repeatedly stressed by historians.