Images as sites of subversion: the Passion of Christ in the orthodox ecclesiastical art of Transylvania (eighteenth-nineteenth centuries)

The thesis captures the intricacies of the interplay of religion,ethnicity, politics, and social class in the scriptural imagery depicted onthe walls of Transylvanian wooden churches in the eighteenth andnineteenth centuries. It places emphasis on the episodes of the Passion,in which Ottoman Turks and Hungarians stand in for Christ’spersecutors. It engages with alterity as constructed by ideology andsocial power relations. If dominant groups enjoyed superior access topower, Orthodox Romanians (who differed in ethnicity, class, language,and religion) had to face political exclusion and economic exploitation.Alterity is primarily understood as the perceived otherness of theRomanian rural society against foreign menace and politically dominantgroups.We examine the Passion scenes as sites of subversion, whereOrthodox Romanians, which constituted the ‘marginal majority’, couldallude to social iniquities, challenge the social, political, and religiousmight of dominant powers, as well as kindle hostility against them. Inorder to illustrate the way in which these renditions are related tostructures of power and subversion, we investigate the connectionbetween changes in iconography that contributed to their permeation ofthe religious realm and the process of identity formation of theRomanian nation in Transylvania. We argue that the painters framedthe message conveyed by the paintings in such a way that it wouldresonate with and reinforce a mindset that the receivers, the Romanianpeasantry, already possessed.The executioners’ allegorical representations are not the productof a mere correlation between Turks and Hungarians and ‘enemies ofthe faith’ or heretics, but an extension of the mentalities of theTransylvanian Orthodox communities of that time. The sharpening ofethnic and religious distinctions was intentional in shaping identity. Itentailed a hierarchical ordering that privileged the marginal anddiscredited the influential.