Art gallery
Epilepsy in the Bible (II)
One of the most important Renaissance painters, Raffaelo Santi (generally Raphael, 1483 - 1520), integrated the Transfiguration and the healing episode into one great masterpiece. Of the Transfiguration-themed paintings, his, in which an epileptic person is portrayed, is the most famous, most important, and probably also the one that makes the most impression. The painting, which is 405 x 278 cm in size and was the last to be painted by Raphael (1519/20), shows the Transfiguration of Christ (on Mount Tabor) in the upper half. The lower half portrays a desperate father (on the right side of the picture, dressed in green) bringing his moonstruck (epileptic) son to the disciples of Christ and begging them to help the child, who during his seizures, "often falls into the fire or into the water". "But" as it is then told by Mark, "they did not have the power to do it." It is only when Christ comes there later that he heals the boy by driving out a demon (see the article "Epilepsy in the Bible [1] of this series).
Equating "moonstruck" with epileptic was not unusual in the time of Christ and the Evangelists; "morbus lunaticus" (moon illness) was a very common term for epilepsy in the Roman medicine that was dominant at the time.
The painting shows the sick boy as being scantily dressed; the muscles of his tonic, stretched out arms stand out clearly, his eyes show a squint, and his tongue and lips have turned blue. In the moment captured by the painter, the epileptic is not in a position to stand independently, but is supported and held from behind by his father. Even if the position of the arms (the right one is pointing steeply upwards, the left downwards) seems to be somewhat unusual from an epileptological viewpoint, one is nevertheless tempted to diagnose a tonic (asymmetrical) seizure. However, on examination of the picture, the symptoms of the seizure are in actual fact of less interest. The question that imposes itself concerns what may have moved Raphael to combine, into one painting, these two scenes that, in terms of content, seem to have nothing to do with each other.
The evidence that both events are described by the Evangelist in very close temporal succession probably does not hold one for long - one still looks for deeper correlations. These could be obtained from a renewed examination of the painting: of the 19 people portrayed in the lower half of the picture, the epileptic boy is the only one who was turned his face upwards towards Christ in his Transfiguration. From the colour of the clothes (Christ and the boy), via the directional clues in the outstretched arms of various individuals and the placement of the figures in the scene, to the already cited manner in which the boy is turning his head, everything points to a relationship between the transfigured Christ in the upper part and the epileptic boy in the lower part of the picture. Wherein, however, does this relationship lie? Here the texts of the Gospels may possibly once more be of help. In all three authors, the two scenes (the Transfiguration and the healing of the "moonstruck" boy) are framed by the first and second proclamations of the suffering of Christ, which, in Matthew for example, are formulated thus (New International Version): "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and on the third day he will be raised to life."
It is quite comprehensible that Raphael saw in the grand mal epileptic seizure with associated falling down, unconsciousness and final "resitutio ad integrum" a seeming figurative parallel with death and with the resurrection of Christ.
If this consideration applies, then the Transfiguration of Christ as herald of this resurrection and the epileptic fit of the "moonstruck" boy can be symbolically related to each other - the (grand mal) epileptic seizure, with its episodic, self-limiting course, becomes a metaphor for the Resurrection of the Crucified One.
Transfiguration: detailed view
