By Brad Miner
Once upon a time in Rome there stood a monument called the Milliarium Aureum: the Golden Milestone. Emperor Augustus erected it in the Forum around 20 B.C. It was said that all distances in ancient Rome were measured from (or to) that point. A round remnant of it still remains in the Roman Forum.
It gave rise to the phrase “All roads lead to Rome,” for the very good reason that they did. The twelfth-century poet-theologian Alain de Lille was the first to use the phrase, as Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam: Qui dominum toto quaerere corde volunt (“A thousand roads lead men forever to Rome who wish to seek the Lord with all their heart”). Chaucer (A Treatise on the Astrolabe in 1391) was the first to recast de Lille’s proverb into English as “Right as diverse pathes leden diverse folk the righte way to Rome.”
And, my friends, this was never about geography.
Leap ahead to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (and beyond), and artists found their many roads to the Eternal City along earthly routes to discover ways of expressing the glory of God. Some—painters especially—were merely talented copyists; others were visionaries who found inspiration in the work of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, and other greats of the Renaissance, but also in the greats of the Baroque, and the greatest of them was Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.
I wrote here recently about my favorite work of art, Jules Bastien-Lepage’s Joan of Arc, but that is not the painting I consider the greatest. That dubious honor (dubious because it is simply my opinion and because no serious art historian would ever plant such a flag) belongs to Caravaggio’s The Incredulity of Saint Thomas. I am merely an art lover and have my reasons for esteeming this great work.
The painting was commissioned by Vincenzo Giustiniani (1564-1627), a successful banker, financier of the Vatican, and patron of the arts, who acquired fifteen paintings by Caravaggio.
(An interesting aside: Giustiniani’s first purchase from Caravaggio was Saint Matthew and the Angel, after it had been rejected by the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, intended for the Contarelli Chapel there. Giustiniani bought the painting to protect Caravaggio from financial loss, and the painter made another, more glorious version, The Inspiration of Saint Matthew, which is now the central panel of the Chapel, flanked by The Calling of Saint Matthew and The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew. Years later, Saint Matthew and the Angel ended up in Berlin, where it was destroyed by fire near the end of the Second World War.)
Rome was clearly the place Caravaggio wished to call home. It was the center of the Faith he loved, and it was where the money was. He first arrived in Rome at the age of twenty-one, and he was heading back to Rome when he died at thirty-eight.
Giustiniani must have found this moment from Scripture absolutely fascinating. He did not commission the painting for a church, but for his own villa.
We all know the moment Caravaggio captures because John tells it to us (20:24-29). Christ had appeared to the Apostles, but Thomas was not among them. So, when they told him the Lord had returned, Thomas said: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nail marks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” And then:
Eight days later, his disciples were again inside, and Thomas was with them. The doors were locked, but Jesus came, stood in their midst, and said: “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas: “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him: “My Lord and my God!”
I find it interesting that Caravaggio places Peter in the painting. It makes sense that John is there: he is the one who has given us the story. For me, the extraordinary scene (a test for the “doubting” Thomas of the divinity of Jesus) is frozen at the moment when Thomas believes—so much so that his proclamation of faith surpasses Peter’s earlier one. The Rock upon which Christ would build and did build his Church had said: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Thomas says: “My Lord and my God!” Peter, we know, was somewhat slow to learn, which is why Caravaggio places him (along with John) in Thomas’s shadow.
So the painting is “about” this extraordinary moment, but it is also “about” corporeality. Caravaggio wants us to see real people doing real things. Grace, revelation, and doubt are not represented as symbolic, much less as idealized realities, but as physical experiences happening to real people. Thomas does not so much approach the wound as he is guided toward it by Christ. And this physicality is made all the more striking by the technique Caravaggio mastered: tenebrism. The action of the four figures unfolds in darkness illuminated by Christ himself.
It is also interesting to me, having written about the martyrdom of the Apostles, that Peter, John, and Thomas were the last to die: Peter in Rome, Thomas in India, and John, of natural causes, in Greece. (I leave out Paul, who was not among the Twelve.) Thus, intentionally or not, Caravaggio has gathered together those who were the last to fall in total commitment to the service of the Lord.
There is also another fascinating past-present thing at play. The defining “incredulity” could, at the moment Caravaggio depicts, just as easily have been “credulity,” especially given Thomas’s proclamation. But there is also the end of our Lord’s statement, rendered in most translations I have seen this way: “blessed are those who have not seen and have believed.” Jesus uses what is called the “aorist”—in Greek, a form that here does not mark time but describes a timeless act. It is less a statement about a moment than an eternal blessing.
And, my friends, He was speaking of you and me, and blessing us.
About the Author
Brad Miner, husband and father, is senior editor of The Catholic Thing and Senior Fellow of the Faith & Reason Institute. He was Literary Editor of National Review and had a long career in the book publishing industry. His most recent book is Sons of St. Patrick, written with George J. Marlin. His bestseller The Compleat Gentleman is now available in a third revised edition and also as an Audible audiobook (read by Bob Souer). Mr. Miner has served as a board member of Aid to the Church In Need USA and also on the board of the Selective Service System in Westchester County, NY.