Ars: časopis Ústavu Dejín Umenia Slovenskej Akadémie Vied (44.2011)

are active and are part of every entity, comprising
its life force. These powers manifest themselves in-
discriminately in both microcosm and macrocosm.
is here immanent. can also refer to
the transformative power of God (see Jesus' lack of
intention), and is so related to the Holy Spirit A In
this regard it needs to be situated within a Judaeo-
Christian worldview — that nevertheless contains
repressed traces of impersonal cosmic forces — in
which sacred power is that of a historical, personal
God, and thus an expression of his will. Power is
not inherent, and access to it is understood as a
sélective thing, even though it is not intentionality
that provides this access. In both cases, however,
interpreted as magico-religious or linked to
the Holy Spirit, is here conceived of as a
category of the potential: it exists as a potential — is
'datent" in the body of a holy person — and can be
activated to bring about a change, a transformation.
The "Rash" or "Ruidity" of with which the
touch is charged brings us to a literal articulation of
what the potential brings about: a transformational
process, mediated by a transferring touch.
We could say that the miracle^ itself gives
expression to the following basal expérience: an
expérience of what had been impossible coming to
be seen as possible - and therefore of the order of
the epiphany, but also, above ail, of potentiality. The
potential is thus a category of transformation in the
following sense: it is a conditional, vibrant modality,
which then unleashes something. In the motif: an
éruption of the drying up of the issue of
blood, to .MÁWF.
Crossovers
An iconological and an anthropological read-
ing meet one another here: where the iconological
reading takes the visual représentation of the motif
as its primordial starting point, the anthropological
reading primordially plumbs its invisible, îmmate-
rial foundations. We hâve thus thrown ltght on the
iconographie visualisation and the affective patterns,
but is there any way of elucidating in more detail the
fornAy/hw between the motif appears and

For this interprétation, see e.g. GENCH 2004 (see in note
40), p. 34; BROMLEY 2005 (see in note 29), pp. 1-20.

the motif emerges? How exactly does the surface
of contact take shape between an investigation of
iconographie expression and an investigation of
its basal layer? How can we now trace résonances
— or perhaps better: "consonances" — between the
ultimate iconographie représentation and its initial
affective patterns? We will hrst look from the anthro-
pological position to the iconographie crystallization,
and then reverse the perspective and examine the
anthropological identifications from the iconological
reading. This will initiate crossovers.
We hâve posited a feeling of potentiality as the
opaque undertone of the motif. With the "hash" or
"huidity" of ôiy/M/yAf we arrived at a literal articula-
tion of what potentiality brings about: it is a force,
an energy, mediated by the power of transference to
be found in touch. The storing of indicates
its mode of potentiality. At the miraculous healing,
there is the potentiality of the intercorporeal ex-
change, mediated by a "mere" touch. This last looses
the healing not only in medical terms, but also as an
embodied transformational process (to In the
tactile epistemology woven through the passage, we
discern a feeling of the potentiality of presence, an
intermingled "knowing" and "feeling", mediated by
the relational embodied expérience. In the passage,
this is in tension with a visual epistemology that
would normally be considered more "reveaüng".
With regard to the locus of the impurity of the
we see a homology between the "issue" of blood
— "fountain", "Row" or "Rux" - and the overRowing
of the "wellspring". The issue of blood is therefore
fraught with connotations of the "Rood", exceed-
ing its boundaries. This is perhaps the outcome of a
connotative feeling of the "Rood" and "Ruidity" as
possessing an excessive potentiality that needs to be
canalized or forced back to a balanced — reproduc-
Rve — potenüal. Uncleanness is transferred by the
contaminating touch.
So how do these affecüve patterns of potential-
ity articulate themselves in the visual crystallization
of the motif; where do they leave visual traces? It
should Rrst of ali be clear that a motif that to this
extent arhculates affective patterns pertaining to the
immaterial and the processual (that is, potentiality
^ Miracles are themselves referred to as
the wondrous.

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