He was not an eyewitness to the earthly Jesus, and yet he became one of the most influential figures of early Christianity: Paul of Tarsus shaped theology, art and Western culture right up to the present day. Hardly any other figure in antiquity has left such a deep mark – in letters, paintings and buildings alike. Anyone who wants to understand how Christianity became a world religion cannot ignore him.
The history of Christianity knows many apostles, but only one whose conversion itself became an image. Saul from Tarsus, a trained Pharisee and initially a fierce persecutor of the new followers of Jesus, experienced his own conversion around the mid-30s AD. On the road to Damascus in the mid-1930s, Saul experienced an event that changed his life: an apparition of Christ, a radical inner conversion. Saul became Paul – the persecutor of the apostles became the apostle to the Gentiles.
What followed was missionary work of a scope that can hardly be overestimated. Between around 47 and 60 AD, he traveled through large parts of the eastern Mediterranean, founded churches in Galatia, Corinth and Philippi and wrote the letters that are now among the oldest documents in the New Testament. His theological thinking – on grace, law, justification and the universal message of the Gospel – had a lasting impact on Western Christianity, from Augustine to Luther and right up to the present day.
Between sword and scripture
In Christian iconography, Paul is one of the most clearly recognizable figures. His most important attributes are the sword – as a reference to his beheading in Rome – and the book or scroll as a symbol of his letters and his role as a theological thinker. These characteristics became established early on and remained surprisingly stable over the centuries. This can be seen particularly impressively in Raphael’s cartoon Paul Preaching in Athens (1515, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London), one of the most important works of the High Renaissance. The composition shows the apostle in a majestic speech gesture in front of the Areopagus assembly – eloquent, powerful, worldly. Michelangelo, in turn, painted the Conversion of Paul in the Cappella Paolina in the Vatican (1542-1550) as a dramatic mass of figures, in the center of which lies the fallen Saul, captured by the light of the apparition.
The conversion as a type of image
Hardly any other episode in the Bible has inspired painting as much as the moment on the road to Damascus. With his Conversion of Saul (1600/01, Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome), Caravaggio created a work that broke with all conventions: the apostle lies backwards on the ground, his arms stretched out wide, the horse dominating the foreground – no heavenly glory, but raw physical force. The divine does not appear as a spectacle, but as an invisible force that throws man down. This image has had a lasting effect on the depiction of religious experience in Western art.
Peter Paul Rubens chose a completely different tone, taking up the theme several times and making full use of Baroque movement in his Conversion of St. Paul (c. 1616, Alte Pinakothek, Munich): horses, riders, angels and streams of light combine to form a dynamic overall structure. Both works demonstrate how a single theological moment can become a mirror of entire art epochs.
Theology as a cultural force
The intellectual legacy of the apostle can hardly be overestimated. His letters – especially Romans and Corinthians – created a theological language that still pervades the West today. Concepts such as “grace”, “faith” and “freedom” were formulated in a formative way through his formulations and remained influential far beyond denominational boundaries. Martin Luther based his Reformation theology largely on Paul’s doctrine of justification, and thinkers such as Sören Kierkegaard, Karl Barth and Hannah Arendt also engaged with Paul.
In architecture, his importance is manifested in the great basilicas dedicated to him – above all San Paolo fuori le Mura in Rome, one of the four main papal basilicas, which was built at his presumed burial place. Although its current building dates from the 19th century following the fire of 1823, it still retains the early Christian idea of the pilgrimage site in terms of its proportions and spatial layout.
The fascination emanating from this historical figure is unbroken – because Paul was a contemporary witness, theorist and passionate believer. In his letters, a man speaks who not only believes, but thinks; not only proclaims, but argues. It is no coincidence that his words have endured for two millennia and continue to occupy theologians, philosophers and artists to this day. It is the legacy of a man who did not take the world as he found it.
