This is Michaelangelo’s portrait of the Biblical prophet Moses, designed for the tomb of the powerful and controlling patron of the great artist, Pope Julius II. Completed in 1545, Michelangelo’s sculpture immediately causes viewers pause: Moses has horns protruding from his head. The bestial qualities of a horned animal long resonated among European Christians as being a sign of Satan. Artwork with horned demons torturing souls in gruesome detail would have been seen routinely by Renaissance Italians. Sadly, anti-Semitism was rife in the sixteenth century, and associations of Jews being in league with the devil had imbued the culture. How much of a nefarious commentary on Jews was Michelangelo making in his artwork, however? It turns out that the most important Biblical translation of the day, Jerome’s Latin edition, had construed the original Hebrew incorrectly: the words for “glorify” and “horned” were interchangeable, so that in the Bible, in Exodus 34:29-30, when Moses returns from Mount Sinai his face was . . . Well, either glorified or horned, depending on how you read. Moses was depicted frequently, although not universally, with horns in art beginning in the eleventh century (you can see the illuminated MS from the 1200’s in the second photo). We should not be too quick to give Jerome, Michelangelo, or other translators favoring a horned Moses a pass, however. Jerome’s writings constently reflect hostility towards Jewish people, and he had the linguistic skills to have opted for the word “glorify” if he had wanted. Perhaps viewers of Michaelangelo’s statue could have interpreted the statue in different ways depending on their own frame of mind. At least one historian has argued that this Moses could be seen not only as devilish, but also having a deliberate likeness with Pope Julius.
Source(s): Images from wiki commons and wikipedia. See “The antisemitic origins of Michelangelo’s horned Moses,” by Stephen Bartman, _Shofar,_ Vol. 27, no 4 (Summer 2009), pp. 95-106.
