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The Begats

ordopraedicatorum:
Santo Domingo in Oaxaca
This ceiling is the earliest of the surviving decoration in the church; the designs and figures are painted and gilded stucco. This genealogical tree is based on the idea of the Tree of Jesse, a common motif in European Gothic churches. From the “reclining figure of Don Felix de Guzmán, the patriarch of the family, it traces the earthly lineage of the founder of the Dominican order. Members of his noble family, real and imaginary, emerge like blossoms from buds set among tendrils and bunches of grapes”
Stunning. I hope to see this ceiling in person one day.
I’ve been researching European ancestor veneration, which was widespread before medieval Christianity supplanted it. At first, Jill Raitt argues in “Spiritual Relations, Bodily Realities,” the church constructed genealogies to supplement the “tree of Jesse” and to tie Jesus’ lines, through St. Anne (mother of Mary), to local families and religious leaders.
Over time, having wedged this foot in the door, Catholicism substituted the saints for Christians’ actual, physical ancestors. And then Protestants rejected the saints, painting them as pagan, a form of idolatry that detracted from Christ, who, as the Son of God, was “the only mediator” with God the Father.
Eventually, Raitt argues, “the genetic families of Christians yielded to their spiritual families,” and the church became the new kin group, so that interest in ancestors of the body became a kind of sign of lack of allegiance to God.
01/31/15