ABSTRACT
“The Sacred Brain of Jesus”—why should that phrase strike us as shocking or even disturbing when the art of Western Christianity is replete with images of the exposed heart of Christ? Though medical scholars have acknowledged the brain as the center of mental activity (including our emotions and desires) since the late seventeenth century, the brain's representation has remained curiously taboo in Christian iconography. One might find it difficult to visualize an image of Christ's exposed brain and yet his bleeding and disembodied heart is the subject of countless representations in Western art. Explanations of this more traditional iconography focus on the physical heart of Jesus as symbol or metaphor for the incarnation of the divine on earth. Far from being a metaphor for the soul, Christ's heart operates as the reification of his human, fleshly, and mortal body. Ancient and medieval medical authorities alike had long recognized the central importance of both the heart and brain, but the question was one of predominance. Hierarchical systems required an ascending scale of importance in which one organ was seen to “rule”—and so the debate over the brain and heart.
