The Heart: Symbolism, Iconography and Art in the Portuguese Seaborne Empire.

The Heart towards Sunrise...

Publicado em 31-03-2022

TEIXEIRA, Victor

Catholic University of Portugal

School of Arts - CITAR, Oporto.

The imagery of hearts: visible and invisible   

International Symposium at the 69th Japanese Society for Aesthetics Annual Conference

6 October 2018, Kansai University, Osaka

Starting from a study of the heart in the culture of Europe and particularly in Portugal, we will naturally focus on the religious tradition since the Middle Ages, especially in its final part. It was in this time, that the Portuguese vessels set out to discover and encompass the world, beginning soon the process of Christianization of the Portuguese seaborne empire. In a first Atlantic phase, it then passed to the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, from Macao to Japan and the Spice Islands. Later Brazil and then Africa, where it would remain until the end of the twentieth century.

In this process of expansion in the world, not only the sword and the currency did their work: language, culture and faith operated and the art created visual forms on this process. This is where we will look for the Heart, from the Portuguese historical, cultural and theological models and their miscegenation and encounters with other cultures. Its radiance, its forms and its inclusion: the invisible heart that becomes visible with art, through the way of religion.

In Portugal, the main devotion it´s the Sacred Heart of Jesus, linked to the devotion of the Five Sacred Wounds (“Chagas”) of Christ. The devotion and first artworks dates from at least 1728 and had as a great impeller the queen D. Maria I, who obtained from the Pope the prescription of the feast of the Heart of Jesus throughout the kingdom and raised in his honor the Basilica of Estrela (Lisbon). It´s important to highlight the parallels with art in Spain as well as in its empire. In the Iberian case, before the devotion, there were already approaches to the heart in the sacred, through art, since the Devotio Moderna and emphasized by the teathrum sacrum of the Baroque era…

The Heart in Portugal

The devotion is the most important factor of iconographic production. But the devotion in Portugal only arises in the eighteenth century. However, before we have ...

There are representations in the meantime conveyed by the Jesuits of the Portuguese Eastern Patronate (Padroado Português do Oriente) and images detached or related to other Christian devotions or decoratively shaped. However, in 1581, a work was published, by Tomé de Jesus - or Thomas of Jesus (Lisbon, 1529 – Sagena, Morocco, April 17, 1582), also known as Tomé de Jesus and Tomé de Andrade, was a reformer and preacher, instrumental in creating the Discalced Augustinians - in which expressions perfectly suited to a devotion or to a valuation of the theme of the Heart, already widely felt in Catholic culture through the Bible, appear 876 times. 

His main work, Os Trabalhos de Jesus¹, is a mystical text consisting of contemplations on the sufferings of Jesus, written during the time he was in captivity in Morocco. The book was published between 1602 and 1609, and was translated into several languages, including Latin, Spanish, English, and German. 

The heart has been considered, since the dawn of humanity and in many diverse cultures and religions, the axis of life, encompassing in itself both body and spiritual questions. Culturally it is not just an organ of the body, it is usually the seat of consciousness and even the location of the soul. But if this is the case, it is because our European heart has gone through a long historical journey, until what we see today. Ole Martin Hoystad (2007) takes a tour of its history, arguing that the cultural representation of the heart, as it is understood in Europe, is a product of the influence exerted by the Arab-Muslim culture over the European during the Middle Ages, which in turn has its roots in Judeo-biblical thought and in Classical Greece. According to this author, Western religion’s faith comes from the Arab-Semitic tradition, as recorded in the Bible, while European art and rationality, in the form of philosophy and science, are largely inspired by Greek culture.

It is not easy to determine what the heart represents, but it is clear that it must be understood as an image and as a symbol. The heart is not just a body organ, often becoming the seat of love, feelings, conscience or even of the soul. On one hand, at the body level, it feels the heart when we experience sadness or lovesickness, and at the other hand, at a linguistic level, we find innumerable metaphorical expressions of the heart. You can have your heart in a fist, something can happen that breaks our heart, we can speak from the heart, conquer an alien heart or open someone's heart. The heart can turn, freeze, split or tear. You can think with your heart or follow what the heart says. It can be said of a person who has a heart of gold, an adventurous heart, a heart of ice, a soft or hard heart, or even that one has no heart.

Sacred heart and sacred blood, contexts…

The function of the heart for Christianity is to serve as the seat of the soul, which it endows with a material nature. It is the key to the mystery of life and death, the most internal and irreducible. But the heart can be both good and bad. 

The heart of Jesus and the heart of Mary, used much later in time, do not appear in the Bible. The symbol of the suffering of Jesus and that of the salvation of the man that mostly develops during the Middle Ages is the blood. Only from the Renaissance will that representation take the heart, culminating in the Baroque era, when heart and blood become similar terms.

From the 12th century, mystical experiences are flooded with blood and begin to have the heart as the protagonist. In the testimonies of the saints, and more commonly of the women saints, exchanges of hearts with Jesus are narrated; appearances of stigmas imitating the wounds of the crucifixion, such as those experienced by San Francisco of Assis in 1224, arrows that reach the heart, filling it with love and pain at the same time, as Saint Catherine of Siena in the XV century, almost mimetizing Francis, or Santa Teresa de Jesus tells in the XVI century, tears of blood, open wounds, scars, etc.

Hence, for Christianity, the body was a vile prison of the soul and did not deserve further study. The representations of medieval hearts, however,333 are almost non-existent and present a degree of reference with the real organ quite low.

The dogma of the transubstantiation of blood dogma, officialised in 1215 (IV Lateran Council, Pope Innocent III) which was reconfirmed at the Council of Trent, makes clear the fact that blood was an important element in the Catholic practice of the Middle Ages, so it increasingly becomes the protagonist in artistic representations.

According to the tradition of the Catholic Church, the Middle Ages were a time of great reverence for the Holy Blood, the blood that Christ shed during the Passion or Viacrucis, which was motivated and subsequently increased by the Crusades and the cult of relics. In this context, several saints appeared who carried out mystical experiences with the heart of Jesus, such as Saint Gertrudis, Saint Catherine of Genoa, Saint Matilde, Saint Lutgarda (1182-1246) or Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380). The last two come to experience an exchange of hearts with Jesus, thus beginning to expand the cult to the Sacred Heart, which will culminate in the seventeenth century.

Animated by the flames of the divine, the mystical soul is transformed into a fluid current that dissolves all difference. It will appear a symbolism and an iconography in which these saints they give a twist to the instruments of the passion of Christ, moving away from physical torture to focus on the emotional part of Jesus and themselves, turning physical suffering into suffering for love. The origin of the use of the heart as a symbol in Christian iconography is impregnated with love and emerges from feminine minds.

Louis Charbonneau-Lasay published in the magazine Regnabit, between 1924 and 1925 a series of articles on the Christian iconography of the heart, and that have been collected in the book Studies on Christian symbols. Iconography and symbolism of the heart of Jesus². In them he defends that the first plastic representation of the cult to the Sacred Heart known in France dates from 1308 and is in the Chinon Tower of homage. He attributes his authorship to the Knights of the Order of the Temple, or Templars, since a group was there locked up just before the final dissolution of the Order. According to this author, during his captivity in that tower, some anonymous Templar with artistic skills would scratch on the stone of the walls some figures, among which is, very deeply carved, a heart emitting rays, and that is, for him, the Heart of Jesus, since he appears accompanied by a male figure with halo that is venerating him. Charbonneau-Lasay ensure that this is the first representation of the Sacred Heart that is known, iconographically advancing almost a century to his liturgical cult. The heart becomes progressively a source of redemption and a sensitive receiver of the sufferings of Jesus, Who died for humanity, reaching a leading role every time in Christian iconography.

During the 11th and 12th centuries there are only representations of Jesus triumph, either in the mystical mandorla or on the cross, but until the 13th century the suffering man does not appear. It is then that the pain rises and the instruments and elements of his martyrdom are glorified (nails, spear, crown of thorns, sores, blood, etc.), in a progressive process of pathos that culminates in the Baroque era.

In the 11th century, Peter Damien (1007 1072), a Benedictine cardinal and reformator of the Catholic Church, wrote the first mention of the Five Wounds of Christ, which were converted into a devotional expression that refers to the five wounds that Jesus received, during his crucifixion. At the height of this devotional expression we should add the stigmas suffered by St. Francis of Assis in the year 1224, whose mystical experience helps highlighting the suffering of Jesus through his own. 

Although until the late 14th century the church does not encourage the cult of the Five Wounds, these quickly became the symbol of the Redemption because they explicitly remembered the sacrifice of Jesus, so their representations became very common between the 15th and 17th centuries.

²In Études symboliques chrétiennes (2 volumes), Gutenberg reprints-Bailly, Paris (1981-1986).

Although the technique is modified with the passage of time, from the first miniatures to the engravings of the 17th century, the same heraldic structure is always maintained. The severed hands and feet of Christ, pierced by the nails, sometimes even bleeding, appear in the four corners, framing the central heart, in which the wound appears on the side, also bleeding. 

The fifth sore deserves special attention, since it will end up acquiring all the protagonism, isolating itself from the rest and becoming the Sacred Heart of Jesus, as will be seen later.

Jacques Gélis points out, in volume I of Historia del Cuerpo³, that this fifth sore

"... it is full of ambiguity; its edges, its lips that let glimpse the interior of the body, evoked a menstrual sex or a mouth oozing blood. A mouth that all the mystics in their embraces to the crucifix aspire to kiss, to realize a transfusion, a close communion with the Saviour. Is it not Jesus Christ himself who, in some representations, seems to incite the believer to this desire? Do we not see in some images Christ showing his wound, pointing it with his index finger? "

The strength of these images is so great that although the Catholic Church at first did not see them very appropriate. They had no choice but to admit them, recognizing that devotion was made more effective through blood and pain. This iconographic motif has lasted to present day, since there are numerous brotherhoods and fraternities of the Five Wounds. However, the ambiguity that Gélis speaks of will derive precisely from its double transformation, not only in the Sacred Heart, but also in the mouth from which the sacred blood of Christ emanates.

But it would be necessary to speak of the heart of Jesus independently. Charbonneau-Lassay points out that the first reference to the Sacred Heart was mentioned by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a Cistercian monk, who already in the 12th century qualifies the Heart of Jesus as a source of life and holiness. In the 14th century Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) experienced several mystical visions in which she gave her heart to Jesus as a symbol of her union with him, also receiving the invisible stigmas of the Passion, which she feels and suffers even if they are not seen, and she comes to exchange her heart with that of Christ. Her life and doctrine will be an example to follow for Dominican women, and will inspire varied artistic representations especially from the 15th century, becoming some of the first pictorial appearances of the Sacred Heart. It should be important also refer the symbolism of the heart on Saint Teresa of Jesus (1515-1582), who experienced a vision in which an angel pierced her heart with an igneous arrow. Although her "loving" vision of the relationship with Jesus was very important in the texts, at the artistic level there is no representation of the saint with her heart seen explicitly. Even in Bernini's sculpture, he touches his chest with his hand, but through his clothes, in a merely external vision.

Although there are texts and testimonies referring to the devotion of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the symbol of the heart was not popularized in the Catholic Church until the 17th century, when St. Margarita Mary of Alacoque (1647-1690), experienced a vision of Jesus Christ, who would appear for over two years (1673-75), in which He appeared with an open heart, crowned with thorns, with an open wound from which blood flowed and from whose interior light emerged. This emblem has become famous as the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and is related to love and religious fervour, as well as to the passion of Christ. It becomes an image of suffering and compassion, but also of salvation and reconciliation.

It usually appears surrounded by crosses, rays or crowns of thorns, as Santa Margarita de Alacoque relates in her testimonies.

³In CORBIN, Alain (ed.) (2005). Historia del Cuerpo. Volúmenes I, II, y III. Ed. Taurus. Madrid, cf. Vol. I, p. 36.

The saint began was born 19 years after William Harvey (1578-1657) published (De Motu Cordis, or On the Motion of the Heart and Blood), in Frankfurt in 1628, his discovery about the circulation of blood, and although the nun was unlikely to know his theory, she probably knew the life of Saint Teresa of Jesus and Saint Catherine of Siena.

In this case, apart from the exchange of hearts, Jesus gives her precise instructions of how devotion should be towards his heart, indicating the date of the annual feast, the masses that were to be pronounced, etc. This devotion to the Sacred Heart was slowly imposed in the Catholic cult, despite certain attacks and the reluctance of Rome. The Church pretended to keep away from its plastic representations because they did not want it to be confused with the powerful image of the mundane heart that was spreading through secular literature. However, the symbolic power of the heart was so great that it ended up imposing itself in both the religious and the lay sectors.

The Sacred Heart was adopted in France and Poland in 1765, and became official in 1856, under the pontificate of Pius IX. In 1928 Pius XI elevated him to the rank of the greatest solemnities and France consecrated herself to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. They began the pilgrimages to the place of the apparitions and the National Assembly decides to raise in Paris a basilica dedicated to this that was consecrated in 1919.

This devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus is propagated by the Counter Reformation during the 17th and 18th centuries, and during the 19th century it also extends to devotion to the Sacred Heart of Mary.

Symbolism…

The symbolic value of the heart and the great importance that is granted to it in the Catholic Church links with the symbolism of that element in older cultures, in which it was considered the dwelling place of the life center, as the seat of the vital impulse. It can be compared to the Sun, which illuminates and heats life (Egyptian culture). Light has always been considered a symbol of intelligence and knowledge, whereas heat has been more associated with the representation of love.

These two aspects of reasoning and feeling have a very clear symbolism in the Sacred Heart, which sometimes appears radiating, sometimes in flames and other times even in both forms simultaneously. The first version has to do with divine light and intelligence, while the second is related to the immense love of Christ for Humanity. The representations of the radiating heart are probably older than those of the flaming heart, and that the abandonment of the first in favour of the second is significant because it suggests a forgetfulness of the first meaning, thus diminishing its great iconic power, and over the centuries it will still suffer, step by step, a loss of meaning, even forgetting to summarize love in sentimental headquarters.

The Baroque it´s more triumphant, more emotional and apotheotic than rational, not so cerebral in devotional terms. It´s more burning and ardent, more suffering. In the artistic field, cardiac representations are gaining in realism, coupled not only to the growing realism experienced by the history of art since the Renaissance, but also to the increase of anatomical knowledge that develops in parallel in Europe, as well as to the appearance of printing, which allows a great dissemination of this knowledge. In 1543 appears the first edition of De humani corporis fabrica, by Vesalius, that soon obtained a great success, even getting to be reprinted in 1555. The great diffusion that had this treaty of anatomy, full of illustrations, among the artists means the representations of the heart are gaining in realism, and the aorta or pulmonary artery can be perfectly distinguished as protuberances in the upper center.

It is curious to see how the Catholic spirituality of the early 19th century presents an unprecedented violence in the body of Christ. His sufferings are described in detail, and the cult of the instruments of his Passion, and above all the Sacred Heart, reached a tremendous peak at that time. The heart appears eviscerated in the first place, but without jeopardizing the vitality of Jesus, who appears in the background with an attitude of calm, sometimes even pointing his index finger with his own heart. These images of the Sacred Heart are usually not made by artists of the first order, but the great abundance of representations attests to the great power of this symbol among the masses, who commissioned objects, pictures, carvings, paintings, etc., as devotional elements.

An example of this is the scapulars, whose presence extends for more than three centuries, and which were carried in the chest to keep Jesus in mind. Its use comes from the 17th century ad is attributed to Santa Margarita Maria de Alacoque. In this case it is more about flat hearts, more in keeping with the embroidery technique with which they were made, but without losing the cross, the flames, the crown of thorns or other details that make it clear that it was not just any heart, but of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. These representations of the religious heart continue not only in scapulars, but also in all kinds of objects such as crosses, reliquaries, prayer books, jewelry, chalices, candelabra, etc.

Portugal, Viana do Castelo: The heart in traditional portuguese jewelry

The presence of such shape in the Portuguese traditional jewelry, and in a large number of utilitarian objects, shows the need of the symbolism of the heart in the human relationships, mainly in those which include love. As an adornment the heart pendant was produced in different techniques and showed several dimensions, from diminutive to large sizes, and its significance changed in between the representation of divine love and human passion. It suffered a modification in the hierarchic position which generally had in the jewelry used by the farmer women and, through the centuries, it displayed feelings, technical skills and wealth, turning out to be one of the most wanted and most displayed pieces, and therefore, one of the most emblematic jewels in the ensemble of the portuguese traditional jewelry. 

Hearts of large dimensions, reaching unprecedented proportions, were adornments of wide use in the Minho and Douro Litoral, during the 19th and 20th centuries, as the iconography reveals to us, extending, however, throughout the country. Beyond these luxuriant adornments, the same piece, but of more moderate dimensions, adorned the breast of the women. In spite of the symbology that is inherent to it, and of which we will speak below, this pendent did not suffer, in any period, an obligation of use, nor an association to any situations of the life of the women. Thus, its exhibit or display depended only on the fashion of the time and the taste of the wearer, being used in festive situations, whether religious or profane, on market days or occasions in which the use of more luxurious props was demanded, being often the piece of more apparatus that the woman exhibited, especially when executed in filigree. However, its use has declined, and there is no specific reason for this. This event, however, came to be attributed not to a definite motive, but to the idea that its disuse was perhaps due to female modesty which preferred not to bear the symbol of its weakness.

During the 20th century it became associated with the use of the regional costume, as well as the other adornments of this panoply, exhibiting mainly in ethnographic parades, folk festivals and pilgrimages in which the women presented themselves dressed, but dividing their apparatus and importance with other pieces such as reliquaries and grammars. But at the end of this century, there was a revival in its use in the processions of parties in the area of Viana do Castelo and, today, is one of the most appreciated pieces. It is also one of the most reproduced in gold-silver and alloys of other minor metals, when filigree, including daily use, completely disconnected from folk or ethnographic contexts, and women of various ages and ages. different social, economic and cultural strata, evidencing the vitality of its use.

In Portuguese popular jewellery the heart-shaped pendant has possessed several symbologies throughout the decades. In the 19th century it had religious subordination, connoting itself with divine love, with the Catholic faith, reinforced by devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and in a representation of the rays that surrounded the heart of the invocations referred to, flaming. When thus exposed it is also interpreted as the principle of life, the life force that differentiates the body from the corpse. Popularly, in the Minho, the flaming hearts are called the c´roado  [crowned] heart, for they take the tongue of fire for a crown. These pieces sometimes assume the designation of double hearts, by confusing the stylization of the sacred flames with a second heart. In Travassos, the religious connotation of the sacred flames is deferred in favor of a romantic interpretation and, therefore, these are called "flames of love," linking this adornment only to human affection. In this sense, the heart of Portuguese jewellery contains a complicated blend of jewellery, which is materially a symbol of love and a fixed charm of the same sentiment. The heart also represents the most talkative symbol, the one that predominates in the opulent cut of the golden signs, and the word heart can become anthropologically a synonym of lover, reinforcing the connection of this symbol to romantic love. The initial ambivalence of meaning was lost, revealing the hearts of popular gold, for much of the 20h century, only as symbols of romantic love.

These manifestations, such this of Portugal, more linked to the so-called minor arts, are not so realistic, due to the fact that it derives from the decorative techniques with which they were made, but, like the scapulars previously commented, however abstracted they are, they do not lose their sacred attributes.

Despite the reluctance that the Church showed at first for the cardiac representations, this iconography ended up imposing itself deeply, demonstrating the symbolic force that this element has, which continues to diffuse Jesus Christ Himself to become a metonymy of his and above all, in a metaphor of his love for humanity.

That great symbolic force is demonstrated in the Seal or Rose of Martin Luther, emblem designed by himself in the year 1530. Luther himself wrote a detailed text describing and interpreting this seal, which for him was a compendium of his theology and faith. Although Protestantism does not promote the veneration of images, this Heart of Jesus turned into a symbol that will become well known in Protestant countries.

On the other hand, of the Catholic Reformation, at the final meetings of the Council of Trent, ended in 1563, a decree was drafted on the images, which indicated the characteristics that they should follow and the functions they had to fulfill, distinguishing two types of images: dogmatic and devotional. The images (art) they should arouse: latria (veneration, worship, religious feelings); illustration or wisdom; and beauty, be ornamentals.

If Jesus (and also the Virgin Mary, who floods the counter-reformist theme) succeeds in substituting his own iconographically speaking God, it seems that the heart manages to substitute even Jesus, demonstrating that Western Catholics prefer more concrete and humanized elements instead of their devotional representations, contrary to what happens in other religions, where the images created for that purpose are abstract. In the anti-reformist (in the protestant form) West, Catholic imagery is gaining in expression as the centuries pass, showing more and more realism emotions of pain or suffering, reaching its maximum expression in Baroque times. In that exhibition of pathos the heart will be an essential element, but so will the blood. Both elements become iconic resources of great meaning and communicative power within Catholic art.

Heart: Charitas and Emblemata

During the Renaissance a new attitude arises in the human being in front of the world, fruit of the development of art, philosophy and science. A knowledge based on the human being and his experiences appears, moving away from magical beliefs or related to the stars. A new medical conception of the heart is proposed, derived from the anatomical advances produced by the dissections that have been seen in previous chapters. This organ becomes something material, corporal, so that the soul and the understanding return to be located in the brain, a vision to which Descartes contributed enormously in the 17th century, who with his thought tried to combine Christian theories with the new science, thus generating a dualism that is still present in many aspects today⁴.

The strong symbology of the heart in art and among the popular classes is taking hold, becoming the seat of emotions, especially of love, as well as the pain and suffering produced by that love. Various factors contribute to this conception of the heart as an emotional metaphor.

On one hand, the Christian tradition that has just been analysed will turn it into a metonym of Jesus Christ and a metaphor for his love for humanity. At the same time, it will be a symbol appropriated by mystics to represent their deep love for Christ. But both loves will be loaded with pain. Thus, the symbolic duality of the heart is defined: love and pain, and even death and life (eternal life, in this case) are present in the Christian heart. In the secular sphere, this organ will also become the seat of emotions, making it difficult to know which sphere influences the other.

In the mid-14th century, halfway between the religious and the lay, the image of the symbol of a charitable heart appears as an attribute of an allegory (Giotto di Bondone in the Scrovegni Chapel, 1302-1305, in Padua, Italy: one of the virtues is Caritas (The Charity) or Divine Love, offering a heart turned to the Almighty). Heart as a attribute of the Charity is generalized since then: Tadeo Gaddi, in a fresco in Santa Croce in Florence, for example. 

In the Catholic religion, the Theological Virtues are those gifts that God infuses humanity with, in order that each person direct their actions towards God himself. As it deals with abstract concepts, iconography has resorted to the use of allegories to make them visible. Although at the beginning of the Renaissance there are several examples of Charity with a heart in hand, there is another representation of this virtue as a mother surrounded by three children, breastfeeding one of them, which became more popular later, especially as a result of the treaty of Iconology published by Cesare Ripa in 1593.

After the 14th century, the heart adopts a more pointed form for its lower part, moving away from realism with respect to the organ and becoming more and more an abstracted image of it. 

Although these images are contemporary to the time of the first dissections, carried out by Mondino de Luzzi (1316) or Guido de Vigevano (1345), but it seems that the incipient realism of the illustrations that accompany the anatomical manuscripts do not cause much impact on painters or sculptors. Only a century later does the printing press appear, so it seems unlikely that they knew these illustrations first-hand, but unrealistic representations of the organ, closer to the symbol than to the viscera itself. In a secular nature, only appears for the first time in Le Roman de la Poire (1250), within a romantic context of courtly love.

⁴About this and many other topics, see the interesting and remarkable doctoral thesis of Fernández González, Sonia (2016): Corazón y sangre. Su representación histórico artística y su simbología en el arte contemporáneo [Heart and blood. Their historical and artistic representation and symbology in the Contemporary Art], Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Facultad de Bellas Artes.

Therefore, these charitable hearts, although of a religious nature, are closer to the symbol of love as a human characteristic than to the love of Jesus Christ. It´s not a religious love, but the love that every human being possesses as an own characteristic.

Religious heart it´s more charitable in the Renaissance but with much more humanistic and anthropocentric connotations, between 15th and 18th centuries, as the the so-called emblems shown (also called companies, hieroglyphs or currencies), which had great artistic impact. These were enigmatic images accompanied by a title that helped decipher a hidden moral, religious or political sense that was collected below in a small text, verse or prose. The classic emblem is composed of three elements: a figure, usually made by xylographic or intaglio engraving; a title, which is usually a sentence or sharpness, somewhat cryptic, almost always in Latin, which gives a clue to complete the meaning of the image; and an explanatory text, which interrelates the meaning of the image and that of the title, and which was initially written in Latin but ends up being written in vernacular languages.

In 1531 the first book with emblems was published, titled “Emblematum Liber”, by Andrea Alciato (1492-1550), which was very successful and soon imitated by other authors, reaching more than 150 editions during the 16th and 17th centuries. Known as emblemata, its purpose was to complicate the simple and obscure the obvious, generating some booklets with didactic but also playful characters, which became an integral part of European culture for two centuries. Among the books of emblems published in which this iconographic element appears, the following can be cited: Schola Cordis, by Van Haeften (contains fifty-five engravings with hearts, illustrated by Boethius à Bolswert). Cor Jesu Amanti Sacrum (1635), with engravings by Antoon Wierix. The flammulae Amoris S.P. Agustini (1629) by Michel Hoyer (contains fine emblems with the heart of St. Augustine).

From then on, publications with a varied theme follow one another, but in this case the cordial theme is of interest, taking two directions: one religious and the other secular. In the first case, it inherits the Christian symbolism of the Sacred Heart, but in the emblems, it ceases to belong to Jesus and becomes an anonymous Catholic heart and serves as an example to indoctrinate the faithful. Normally he appears surrounded by angels, and has more to do with Christian love and piety than with the sacrifice of Jesus or his heart, linking with the theme carried out in the fourteenth century by the works that presented the heart as an attribute of the allegory of the Charity, and that they have seen previously. It then becomes the religious organ par excellence, a metaphor of the pious personality, in a box that houses faith.

Both in its secular and religious versions, the heart appears very abstracted, almost as a geometric shape although with a certain volume, generated by the chiaroscuro that the xylographic or calcographic lines give it. In the middle of the seventeenth century, the era of greatest splendor of these emblems, both anatomical publications and anatomical theaters had already reached great diffusion, so it is easy to guess that those responsible for the realization of these emblems had certain medical or anatomical knowledge that nevertheless obviated at the time of making their engravings, importing the symbolic power of the organ rather than its resemblance to reality. 

The great diffusion that they had these emblems will lead, on one hand, to the prayer books that appear during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, although progressively they will diminish their illustrations in favor of the texts. 

Besides the development of the heart as an iconographic element from the Catholic perspective, emerges another type, the lay heart, without religious connotations and more related to love.  We don´t know its origins or sources, but we know its impact in the literature and arts since Middle Ages. It´s parallel with the Courteous Heart, in the Middle Ages Western art and culture, based on the predominance of religious values until then, are evolving. A new bourgeois and mercantile mentality is born, fruit of the development of the cities and the urban life, as well as of the universities, generating a secularization of knowledge. In this context, arises the gentlemanly and courteous love, where everything revolved around the heart. Due to the social changes that occurred in those centuries, the vision of the woman is modified, and a new social order appears: the cavalry. The heart emerges as a symbol of the new ideal of feelings, where he who betrays love betrays everything, a metaphor for love, separating from the corporeal heart. Due to opposition from the Church, which despised the heart as a worldly symbol of carnal sins and therefore removed it from its artistic manifestations (the only ones), since then the plastic arts had to fulfill lessons of morality before the believers. However, the Church had to end up tolerating it as an inevitable evil. 

The first representation of which there is evidence in which the heart is used in a metaphorical context as a romantic symbol, dates from the middle of the thirteenth century. It belongs to an illustration of the French romance Le roman de la Poire, by Tibaud. The title of the work takes its name from the scene in which a maiden offers a pear to her beloved, as an analogy of Eva's apple. We have to remember a woman in the history of the representations of the courteois heart: Christine de Pizan (1363-1431), the first European woman who dedicated herself to the literature professionally, she was dedicated also to illustrate her allegorical stories, shaping the heart and lovers, mainly a medieval feminine image that persists in time and that leads to the most banalized vision of the heart, as will be seen later.

In China, the cultural meaning of xin

In the West, questions of the distinguishability of mind and matter and of rationality and emotion or sentiment are central issues within the philosophy of mind. Neither of these topics is of much interest, however, to the mainstream of Chinese thought it is. On one hand, the notion of qi, the vital energizing field that constitutes all natural processes, renders discussions of the relevance of any psychophysical dualism moot. On the other hand, xin, normally translated as ‘heart-and-mind’, preludes the assumption of distinctions between thinking and feeling, or idea and affect. Xin is often translated simply as ‘heart’, but since it is the seat of thinking and judgment, the notion of mind must be included in its characterization if the term is to be properly understood. Indeed, what we often think of as ‘will’ or ‘intention’ is likewise included in the notion of xin.

_{Woodcut illustration from Shenti sancai tuhui (“Colored Illustrations of the Body”), by the Ming dynasty (1368 - 1644) author Wang Siyi. The image shows the form and position of the heart. It is situated beside the 5th vertebra, below the lung, above the diaphragm. It is the ruler of the zang viscer.} 

In Chinese culture, xin is more of an invisible concept, a symbol of the higher self, rather than just an internal organ. The Chinese Heart adjustment is an odd term to Western ears; perhaps because in English the first definition of heart relates to its function as a physical organ. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, one of the first definitions of ‘heart’ is “a hollow muscular organ of vertebrate animals that by its rhythmic contraction acts as a force pump, maintaining the circulation of the blood.” In modern Chinese, the anatomical heart is called: 心臟 (xin zang) ‘heart organ’. Though the word ‘xin’ is often used as an abbreviation of xin zang, its meaning is broader than just ‘heart organ’. Thus, when Chinese say Heart adjustment (tiao xin), it does not mean physically adjusting the ‘heart organ’. Before we discuss the concept of xin and the physical heart, it is necessary to first look at an important, yet, invisible factor that can affect the anatomical heart directly: emotion. Xin, the Chinese concept of ‘Heart’, is cultural-specific and central to Chinese life. This concept is strongly influenced by Daoist, Confucian and Buddhist philosophies, as well as the principles of traditional Chinese medicine.

Understanding the meaning of the Chinese cultural keyword xin also benefits other domains of studies which involve this concept (Chinese arts, Chinese philosophy and traditional Chinese medicine). Therefore, the concept of xin in Chinese medicine represents the fundamental Chinese understanding of health: body and xin are two parts of a person; they cannot be treated separately, and human health is also influenced by one’s way of life (Maciocia, 2005).

In Chinese philosophy, xin can refer to one's "disposition" or "feelings" (Chinese: 心; pinyin: xīn), or to one's confidence or trust in something or someone (Chinese: 信; pinyin: xìn). Literally, xin (心) refers to the physical heart, though it is sometimes translated as "mind" as the ancient Chinese believed the heart was the center of human cognition. For this reason, it is also sometimes translated as "heart-mind". It has a connotation of intention, yet it can be used to refer to long-term goals. Xunzi, an important early Confucian thinker, considered xin (心) to be cultivated during one's life, in contrast to innate qualities of xing (Chinese: 性; pinyin: xìng), or human nature.

The Jesuits in China and the role of (he)art

There were a host of Jesuit theorists during the seventeenth century who engaged in argument over the so-called images spirituelles, that is, symbolic images that speak to the mind. These include: Daniello Bartoli (1608–1685), Théophile Raynaud (1587–1663), Claude- François Menestrier (1631–1705) and Jacob Masen (1606–1681), to name just a few. In particular, Jacob Masen in his treatise entitled Speculum imaginum veritatis occultæ, exhibens symbola, emblemata, hieroglyphica, ænigmata, etc. (Köln, 1650)— directly derived from Paul‘s First Epistle to the Corinthians—construed his theory of image on a particular meaning of locus, which he perceived as equivalent to inventio. 

The spiritual images discussed by Jesuit theorists should be seen in relationship with the Ignatian concept of the ratio componendi loci, a form of meditation through which mental images are recreated by the believer as a means of spiritual fulfillment. 

This early disposition towards the employment of mental as well as discrete images explains to a great extent the importance of the Jesuit contribution in the field of emblematic literature during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and, then, to the heart.

Consider the following image, taken from an intriguing book entitled Cor Iesu amanti sacrum due to the hand of the engraver Antonius Wiericx. 

It shows Jesus in the act of sweeping dirt - symbolized by snakes, lizards and the like - out of the human heart. 

We also have to consider the Imago primi sæculi Societatis Iesu, composed and printed at Antwerp in 1640 to celebrate the first centenary of the constitution of the Society⁵. 

In addition to being known to most of the educated elite in seventeenth century Europe, emblem books were widely used in Jesuit colleges and by all, particularly artists, who were trained for overseas pastoral work. It may therefore come as no surprise that Giuseppe Castiglione (1688-1766) adjusted so promptly to Chinese painting modes. In the late 17th century, a number of European Jesuit painters served in the Qing court of the Kangxi Emperor who was interested in employing European Jesuits trained in various fields, including painting. In the early 18th century, the Jesuits in China made a request for a painter to be sent to the imperial court in Beijing. Castiglione was identified as a promising candidate and he accepted the post. In 1710 on the way to Lisbon he passed through Coimbra where he stayed for several years to decorate the chapel of St. Francis Borgia in the Church of the novitiate, today the New Cathedral of Coimbra. He painted several panels in the chapel and a Circumcision of Jesus for the main altar of the same church. In August 1715, Castiglione arrived in the Portuguese colony of Macau, China, and reached Beijing later in the year.

The science of images had its primary application in public functions. Spiritual images⁶ appeal to the spiritual eye, the oculi mentis - the mind‘s eye - and are therefore proper to the spiritual optics about which the English Jesuit Henry Hawkins (1572–1646) wrote extensively. According to Jesuit theorists, an image is useful especially when it is understood as an eikon. For example, the human being as an image of God and Christ as the primeval divine image. Certainly there are also images that appeal to our bodily sense of sight and, given their explicit content, are immediately intelligible. For this reason, they possess a profound moral and educational meaning. 

⁵ For this topic and other contentes, it´s very importante to compulse Eugenio Menegon (2007), Jesuit Emblematica in China, Monumenta Serica, 55:1, 389-437, DOI: 10.1179/mon.2007.55.1.009. 

⁶ The same recommendation to: Elisabetta Corsi, La fábrica de las ilusiones: Los jesuitas y la difusión de la perspectiva lineal en China, 1698-1766, Centro de Estudios de Asia y África, El Colegio de México, 2004; the imprescindible Handbook of Christianity in China, edited by Nicolas Standaert, in “Handbook of Oriental studies”. Section four, China, 0169-9520; v. 15); Learning From The Other: Giulio Aleni, Kouduo Richao, And Late Ming Dialogic Hybridization,
Volume One, Dissertation Presented To The Faculty Of The Graduate School University Of Southern California In Partial Fulfillment Of The Requirements For The Degree Doctor Of Philosophy
East Asian Languages And Cultures, 2006.

It must be remembered that even Saint Ignatius referred to the applicatio sensum when in the Spiritual Exercises he makes our bodily senses follow the imagination as a necessary means for obtaining the “composition of place” in order to achieve a rich spiritual experience. In line with a tradition that dates back to the Medieval Biblia pauperum (Bible of the poor), containing engravings that presented the relevant episodes of the Bible - the complete version being interdicted - in an easy and accessible way, the Society of Jesus, since its early constitution, set out to put into practice the Counter-reformation (or Catholic Reformation) reassessment of the Biblia pauperum by producing a good number of lavishly illustrated books. Perhaps the most famous of these is Evangelicæ historiæ imagines by Jerome Nadal (1507–1580, Antwerp, 1593), a 153 large-size copper engravings narrating in detail the Gospel passages of the liturgical year, with adnotationes et meditations, resulting in a combination of pictures and words aimed at guiding the student through the biblical action and allowing them to actively participate in it.

A Chinese version of the book - Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang jingjie, (Illustrated Life of the Lord of Heaven) - was prepared by Giulio Aleni, S.J. (1582–1649) during his residence in Fuzhou from 1635 to 1637, following an earlier abridged version prepared by the Portuguese Jesuit Father Gaspar Ferreira, S. J. (1571–1649), the Song Nianzhu guicheng (A Method of Praying the Rosary).

Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang jingjie (Illustrated Life of our Lord Jesus Christ)
Giulio Aleni, SJ (1582-1649), 1637

Song nian zhu gui cheng 誦念珠規程 (A Method of Praying the Rosary)

Ferreira, Gaspar, SJ (1571-1649), with Rocha, João da, SJ (1565-1623)

[China : s.n., between 1619 and 1623]

The Jesuits were men of their time: they were deeply imbued with Renaissance culture. They did not just absorb, but actively participated in the production of humanistic and scientific knowledge. They not only excelled in rhetoric and philosophy, but also in mathematical sciences such as optics, geometry and linear perspective.

We tried in these lines to make an approach, in a synthetic way, about the main concepts in the art in the Companion of Jesus and especially its importance in the efforts pf evangelization. With emphasis and focus in the East, particularly in China, where they will make proper accommodation. In this process, art visually feeds theology and is one of the most relevant approaches in the Jesuit method. The heart will also assume, from the iconological point of view, an important dimension in the corpus of images supported by texts: the heart as text and as image. From the Portuguese missions, the Jesuits will radiate the theme and the devotion, based, of course, on the basis of the rhetoric and treatises of images previously elaborated in Europe.

The role of images in the spreading of Christianity in China, although often mentioned by scholars, has been overshadowed by discussions of artistic influence onto the Chinese tradition, focussing on the introduction of European pictorial techniques such as chiaroscuro and linear perspective. Undeniably, the Jesuit missionaries used European oil paintings and engravings to impress their literati audiences and the imperial court, and European pictorial conventions exerted a limited influence in China.

However, religious images also played an important role in the propagation of the Christian faith. Missionaries directly imported European religious paintings, prints, and books with illustrations, to use them during their tours of preaching as visual materials, to distribute them to converts for worship, or to place them in churches. They also commissioned local artists with the production of paintings and woodblock prints, inspired by European models. These practices were rather universal in the Chinese mission, and flourished especially in core economic areas, like Jiangnan and Fujian. 

Fujian

The late-Ming⁷ Jesuit Annual Letters (port., Cartas Ânuas) from Fujian, for example, mention that many Christians owned images of the Saviour (i. e., of an enthroned Christ), of the Virgin Mary, and of saints. The Letters also reports that during Holy Week images of the Sorrowful Christ and of the Passion were shown in churches. In Lianjiang, a local one-day trip from Fuzhou, sources mention that converts “all have good images, since there are Christians who paint them and illuminate them”⁸. Probably this expression should refer two different processes, that is painting ex novo from a model (mostly engravings), and the colouring of existing prints, a practice common both in Europe and China at the time⁹.

"My teacher, I have heard that you have a picture of the Last Judgment. May I please [have it reproduced] in painting?" asked Li Jiubiao to his master, the Lithuanian Jesuit Andrius Rudomina (1596-1631, or 32?)¹⁰ in Fuzhou, in 1631? This question seems to demonstrate that Christians commissioned paintings from prints (most of them with a Flemish provenience)¹¹, and confirm the circulation of Christian images in China, specially engravings, which were shown and occasionally copied by Chinese artists since the times of Matteo Ricci (1552-1610; in China between 1582 until his death), who´s arrived at the Portuguese settlement of Macau in 1582, where he began his missionary work in China. 

The subjects of the prints and paintings used by missionaries were mainly religious, although occasionally profane subjects (perspectives, buildings, and mythology) were also included. 

For exemple, in a letter (1658), the Flemish Jesuit missionary in China Rougemont suggested that a new printing of the Evangelicae Historiae Imagines, by Jeronimo Nadal SJ, could be sponsored by the Jesuit procurators of Portuguese India, for the benefit of the Asian missions, and possibly be engraved by the famous workshop of the Galle family in Antwerp. But we are not certain of the production of these engravings.

⁷ The Ming dynasty was the ruling dynasty of China – then known as the Great Ming Empire – for 276 years (1368–1644) following the collapse of the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty; the late-Ming corresponds to the period between the middle of the 16th century and the fall of the dynasty in 1644.

⁸ GOUVEIA, António de (ed. Horácio Araújo). Cartas Ânuas da China, Macau-Lisboa: Instituto Português do Oriente-Biblioteca Nacional, 1998, p. 158. On images in Fujian, see Gouveia, 1998, pp. 101-102 and 99.

⁹ GOLVERS, Noel. François de Rougemont, S.J., Missionary in Ch´ang-shu (Chiang-nan). A Study of his Account Book (1674-1676) and the Elogium. Leuven: Ferdinand Verbiest Foundation – Leuven University Press, 1999.

¹⁰ About Rudamina, see PFISTER, Louis. Notices Biographiques et Bibliographiques sur les Jesuites de l´ancienne mission de Chine. Shang´haI: Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique, 1932-1934.

¹¹ About Chinese Christian Art - and Christinaty in ChIna – see entries by Erik Zürcher and Michèle Pirazzoli-Serstevens in Handbook of Christianity in China, pp. 809-839. See Handbook of Christianity in China, Volume One: 635-1800. Ed. by Nicolas Stadaert. Leiden: Brill, 2001.

Traces of these images circulating in the China mission can also be found in written sources, Chinese and Western. Among such Chinese sources is an extraordinary book, the Kouduo richao (or Diary of Oral Admonitions, ca. 1640)¹², compiled by Fujianese Christian literati in the 1630s to record the activities of the Italian Jesuit Giulio Aleni (1582-1649) and some of his companions in Fujian. The text occasionally mentions that missionaries showed religious pictures to Christians. In particular, it offers a detailed description of two series of images that the Jesuit Andrius (or under the Polish name Andrzej) Rudomina (also spelled Rudamina, or Lu Ande, 1596-1632, or 31?), one of the confreres of Aleni in Fujian, showed to literati in 1631. Rudamina stayed in Lisbon since 1624 until the next year, when was headed Goa and later Macau.
¹² See Kouduo richao. Li Jiubiao's Diary of Oral Admonitions. A Late Ming Christian Journal. Translated, with Introduction and notes by Erik Zürcher, in Monumenta Serica Monograph series 56/1-2, Sankt Augustin- Nettetal, Steyler Verlag, 2007, p. 16b. 

Today little is left of this visual production of religious subjects, mainly preserved in a handful of Chinese Christian texts containing religious images. The best examples are the late Ming series of religious images in Giulio Aleni' s Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang jingjie (Illustrated Life of our Lord Jesus Christ; others translate as Illustrated Explanation of the Lord of Heaven's Incarnation, Fujian, 1637) and Adam Schall's Jincheng shuxiang (Illustrated Text Presented to His Majesty, Beijing, 1640).

And what kind of prints were in circulation in China? This is what Christian Herdtrich SJ (1625-1684) reveals to us in a letter dated 1670 to his confrere Philipp Miller (1613-1676), from Vienna, when he talks about the the prints he wished sent to the China mission:

What I am looking for above all and in large numbers are: emblems (emblemata), such as those of which numerous specimens are hanging in the corridors of our colleges; new and old alike, all these pictures are pleasing here in a wondrous way, and they are esteemed to the extent that they are very helpful to procure the favour of friends: pictures of all kinds, not only drawn with a pencil, but also those etched in bronze plates, which we Germans call "Kupferstich”¹³. 

So, the religious copperplate engravings sought after by missionaries and circulating in China included both traditional compositions from the Gospel and images of saints, as well as "wondrous" emblemata in the Jesuit tradition. 

The analysis of the prints mentioned in the Kouduo richao they are, therefore, with importance to help us knowing more about the prints in circulation in China. The corpus of images that scholars have positively identified as being transmitted to China, it´s increased with Kouduo richao, beyond to tell us how these images were shown and explained to Chinese converts, giving us a idea about evangelization methods through visual aids rarely afforded by sources, and a glimpse of Jesuit spirituality in China, and of Chinese reactions to it.

But what was the context of visuality within which the missionary operated? Religious images had at least three important functions in the China mission: they were important catechetical tools, they sustained devotional practices, and finally possessed intrinsic powers to do miracles, thaumaturgy so, protecting the Christians. 

These series were usually accompanied by short subscriptions or legends intimately linked to the images, sometimes through lettering or numbering of the figures. Increasingly over the seventeenth century, however, extensive prose, expanding on the images' meaning (adnotationes or declarations), surrounded, linked and at times overwhelmed the images. These narrative series (narrative both in a visual and discursive sense) could be used for meditation in the tradition of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, or for didactic - catechetical purposes, especially among the youth and the common people. The representation of human or divine characters and symbols was starkly moralistic: good and evil were clearly depicted as antagonistic, and the outcome (salvation or damnation) made explicit in gory detail. The Jesuits were rather overt about the moral scope of art, and they disclosed this even in their Chinese writings on painting.
¹³ Golvers (1999), p. 468.

"Devout Heart": Cor Jesu amanti sacrum

The first series mentioned in the Kouduo richao belongs to the emblematic genre of "mirror images," representing the internal moral development of the individual under the influence of Christ. In the spring of 1631, the Chinese literatus and convert Li Jiubiao, who had spent part of the winter of 1630- 1631 in Fuzhou, the capital of the southern province of Fujian, to take the civil examinations, was ready to leave the city for his native county of Fuqing. Together with his younger brother Li Jiugong, Jiubiao had been baptized by Giulio Aleni with the Christian name of Stephanus (Dewang) in late 1628. Li visited Rudomina to bid him farewell, and was shown "eighteen pictures of the heart," that is the famous series Cor Jesu amanti sacrum (“The Heart Consecrated to the Loving Jesus”). The original edition of this series was engraved in Antwerp by Anton II Wierix (d. 1604) "towards the end of the sixteenth or early seventeenth century," as the most recent catalogue of the Wierix family's opus suggests. Starting in the 1620s and down to the nineteenth century other engravers, many of them anonymous, produced a profusion of copies of these small eighteen engravings (the dimensions of the engraved image and text are an approximation of 92 x 57 rom). The Cor Jesu images were printed either as loose sheets (in Flemish santje, i.e., devotional images to be used for distribution and as devout bookmarks, or santinhos, in Portuguese), or inside books.

We refer and quote here the remarkable work of Mario Praz¹⁴, that was succinctly described the series in his wonderful work on seventeenth-century emblematic imagery:

“In Cor Iesu amanti sacrum the engraver ... actually made the heart the stage for the exploits of the Infant Jesus."

“[1] picture of a Jesuit and a Franciscan helped by three lay brothers and a nun, who support the flaming heart crowned by the monogram of the Society of Jesus;
[2] the heart urged at the same time by Jesus, the World (represented by the lady with the high ruff [...]) and the Devil.
[3] Jesus pierces with arrows the whole outer surface of the heart, and Profane Love,
[4] Jesus knocks at the door of the heart. [... ]
[5] Jesus is now inside the heart, bearing a lantern: the mild light drives away the toads, the snakes, all the slimy creatures, from the cave of the heart. [... ]
[6 and 7] Jesus takes up a broom and brushes away from the heart a cascade of filth.
[8] Then he washes it with the dripping blood of his feet and hands,
[9] fills it with little fluttering flames,
[10] scatters flowers, and
[11] falls peacefully asleep inside it, while outside the winds rage and the lightning flashes.
[12] Jesus places the instruments of the Passion in the heart.
[13] Then he seats himself in a chair in the middle of the heart, holding an open book
[14] He intones a hymn and
[15] plays on the harp;
[16] then from musician turns into painter and paints in the heart the Last Judgment. [... ]
[17] Seated on a throne, he reigns in the heart,
[18] which at last, surrounded with palms, is crowned with an eternal wreath.”

The symbol of the heart in the Cor Jesu series is combined with that of the Infant Jesus: it is him who inhabits the devout heart and transforms it. As Praz observes, the iconography and symbolism associated with the Infant Jesus is a direct transformation of the pagan ideal and image of Eros/Cupid. This idealized image of profane love already diffused in sixteenth-century emblems was increasingly overtaken by the new religious imagery, stimulated by a growing devotion to the Infant Jesus popularized in France during the first half of the seventeenth century.
¹⁴ Praz, Mario. Studies in Seventeenth-Century Imagery, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1975, second edition.

Religious authors, and especially the Jesuits, seized on the heart as a symbolic representation of the soul, the seat of the struggle between good and evil, and combined it with that of the Infant Jesus, alias Eros or Cupido. We don´t have details about the creation of the Cor Jesu series, such as the identity of the priest who conceived its symbolism and composed the Latin verses. However, scholars have suggested a Jesuit commission, given the fact that the Wierix family worked for the Order in numerous occasions. This seems to be also confirmed by iconographic elements, such as the appearance on the first plate of the IHS monogram adopted as its emblem by the Society of Jesus. Finally, the early success of the series among Jesuit authors as accompaniment to devotional treatises, is a further indication of its probable Jesuit origin.

Most importantly, the fortune of the Cor Jesu series was due to the popular appeal that it held among preachers and spiritual directors as a symbolic depiction of the progress of the soul through the Three Ways, a spiritual path emphasised by the Jesuits and which informed the entire spiritual architecture of the series. In Mario Praz's words (p. 154):

These plates ... represent ... the progress of mystical life. The first engravings depict the purgative stage (temptations, pricks of conscience, inspirations, self-scrutiny, confession, grace imparted by the Sacraments, purification of the heart), others the progress of the illuminative stage, and finally, in a last group, the fruits of the unitive stage.

In the China mission, the Jesuits imported their pattern or model of spiritual formation introducing the ideas of sin and self-examination, so important in their spiritual development. The Jesuit spiritual style, so connected with moral betterment (e.g., through the Spiritual Exercises), fit well with the Confucian discourse of self-cultivation. The meditational practices encouraged by the Exercises and the visual aids (art) to assist meditation, both mentally constructed and concretely produced as artistic images, were all closely connected to the ideas of salvation/damnation, to the themes of the passing of time and of memento mori (death, passio), and, ultimately, to the promotion of the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist. Reflection and usage as effective didactic-catechetical tools in missionary work.

Conclusions

The heart plays an important role as a theme in Western art and through the Jesuits epidermically entered China in the process of inclusion and accommodation. in an epidermal way with regard to the difficulties of penetrating Christianity in China until the eighteenth century, despite Jesuit attempts at missionary inculturation. However, the theme of the heart has become emblematic in Chinese Catholicism, probably the nation where more churches are dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, for example, but this is also due to the efforts of the Foreign Missions of Paris (MEP), in the nineteenth century and a posteriori. But the images disseminated by Rudamina, by Aleni, for example, from the European models and the catechisms, became fundamental as a model of representation of subjects related to devotions. Other orders, such as Franciscans and Dominicans, in their less accommodative strategies, did not fail to value art as a vehicle for diffusion of faith, although without the splendor of the Jesuits. And the heart, since the Middle Ages which was every time more the agglutination of various Christian themes and devotions, that the Counter-Reformation, through the Jesuits, will potentiate and become filter of spirituality and confluence of forms of contemplative adherence. The heart of Jesus and Mary, the passion, the suffering, the pain, the mystical elevation and the asceticism that this symbol values are therefore a fertile subject to explore, in religion as in art, in China and in the Portuguese world in the East.

Such a work is the word! (The obligatory rendition of conscience to the superior)