CATHOLIC THEOLOGY
            AND PICTORIAL ART
                    
                  ACT I 
                    
  THE BODY CAST  -  19th-century Rome,
    center of Catholicism, is rocked
    by cultural revolutions as great
       as any in its centuries-old
        history. Among these is the
           Art of Photography:
              the automated
  combination of optical, physical and
      chemical rendition of images
    shakes the theological foundations
       of the Catholic persuasion. 
                    
                  ACT II
                     
  THE AUDIOVISUAL PULPIT -  In a world
      where eight people out of ten
 could merely listen and look without 
  being able to read, long-distance
 communication could not be but visual.
       Imagery was, and had always
  been the Church's principal means of
       preaching to and catechesis
              of the people.
                    
                 ACT III 
                    
   JESUITS AND IMAGERY - The theory of
         audiovisual homiletics 
            had already been
        developed by the Jesuits
     - the "brains" of the Church - 
   in the 7th C. In this Chapter the
    reader will see the title page,
 as well as illustrations, from the 1643
                treatise
       "Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae"
              by the Jesuit
           Athanasius Kicheri.
                    
                  ACT IV 
                    
   THE MONASTIC LANTERN - The educated
      Benedictine monks are not to
       be outdone by the Jesuits:
              in 1685 Friar
        Johannes Zahn authors the
 treatise "Oculis Artificialis," which
        deals with combining the
techniques of "magic lantern" projection
         and images conceived by
              the mind and
            executed by hand.
                    
                  ACT V 
                    
   THE EPHEMERAL AUTOMATIC IMAGE - The
      projection lantern is born as
 a reversal of the Camera Obscura: light
         is within and darkness
                without.
       Magic lanterns are found in
        every church and are used
   during sermons to project, for the
      benefit of the congregation,
        images of the Saintly and
              the Diabolic.  
                    
                 ACT VI 
                    
    PICTORIAL PLAGIARISM - During the
      Renaissance, artists use the
 camera obscura to copy the projections,
        thereby transforming them
  into works of art. These plagiarized
         works, called "Lucidi"
  (transparencies), were born by machine
       as ephemeral, and rendered
            permanent by the 
               human hand. 
                    
                ACT VII 
                    
   THE LASTING AUTOMATIC IMAGE - Visual
        theology is shaken by the
photographic icon because its production
        is automated, simple and
 permanent. Its form escapes the control
        of the Mind and the Hand
   and, for its ease of execution, the
         control of the clergy. 
                    
                ACT VIII 
                    
   THE PROFANE OVERWHELMS THE SACRED -
        for 20,000 years the word
    "image" had been synonymous with
    "sacred," despite their sometimes
 profane, blasphemous, pagan or obscene
      nature. Now, with the advent
   of photography, the inevitably lay
     character of the icon triumphs.
                    
                 ACT IX 
                    
  THE THIRTY-YEAR TRIAL - The Catholic
      Church immediately understood
 the consequences of the lay revolution
        in photography. In 1842,
 three years after its invention, at the
             request of the
            Pontifical Office
    itself, a trial was begun of the
        new art's acceptability,
       a trial which was to last
              thirty years. 
                    
                 ACT X 
                    
   PICTORIAL HOMILETICS IS EXONERATED -
        30 years must pass before
     photography is absolved of the
     accusation of being "diabolic".
 Eventually the Church decides that the
        practice of the art could
be licit as well as illicit - the credit
         or blame for its use is
        attributed solely to the
              individual. 
                    
                 ACT XI 
                    
   THE HYPOSTASIS OF THE PHOTOGRAPH -
        The theologian J. Saxton
   defends the cultural and religious
    merits of photography before the
 ecclesiastical court. Unfortunately he
     dies before the 1874 decision
  to proclame the moral righteousness
       of the hypostasis of the
     photogelatine print, i.e. its
            personification. 
                    
                ACT XII 
                    
 SACRED OPTICAL ART - After the approval
      of the Church in the 19th C,
    attempts were made to produce the
      most popular religious images
       of the time, the "Santini"
     (little saints) in photographs.
          However no one managed
               to endow the
   fundamentally "carnal" photographic
  image with that indispensable mystic
               aura of the
             sacred portrait.
                    
                ACT XIII 
                    
     THE INCORRIGIBLY PROFANE - The
      "inhuman" art of photographic
  imaging attracts, more than anything,
       that least sacred and most
 profaned of subjects, the female nude.
        Having escaped the mental
             control of man,
            imaging overcomes
    superstition and triumphs in the
       "Revolution of Obscenity".
                    
                ACT XIV 
                    
   HISTORIC INFAMY - "Lay" historians
      and "official" photographers,
     more than even the theologians,
       attempt to bury photography
         in that common grave of
          ancient superstition.
       The new icons had grown fat
      on sexuality, and historians,
      worst than denying this fact,
            totally ignore it.
                    
                 ACT XV 
                    
 THE FISSURE - This Chapter illustrates
        the events of the last of
     the superstitious mental images
         and the first excesses
      in the rendition of Pleasure.
              Images of the
       fertile female fissure are
  freed from the sense of guilt or fear
        of hell which had always
          determined its form. 
                    
                ACT XVI 
                    
THE JESUIT LANTERN PROFANED - The erotic
         photos contained herein
         were originally carried
       out on glass or oiled paper.
               Executed in
    the 18th C in the shadows of the
     palaces of Roman patricians and
   prelates, they represent the first
        transparencies profaning 
      the religious lanterns of the
            Jesuit Fathers.