Has anyone else been struck by the iconography going on around Greta Thunberg?

Her image, often presented as a facial close-up, in the style of an icon, commands attention.  The photo in the Observer, (July 21st 2019),  is a stunning reproduction of a saintly icon. A pure face devoid of worldly appetites or desires, untouched by make-up but beautified by inner strength and dedication to a cause, hands clasped prayerfully under the chin, a braid of hair escaping over the shoulder. The very image of a medieval Holy Maid.

I’m not speaking about the real young person here, but rather the figure being represented in the media, the projection into the public mind of a persona, which puts me in mind of the iconography of a medieval saint.

With her braided hair, angelic face and commanding utterance she has come to us, or been sent to us, with an admonition, a warning, an urgent message of salvation to all those who can be prevailed on to listen. The primary demand that she makes on her listeners is not to turn away from the ‘truth’.

That ‘truth’ is clearly stated and as urgent as a fiat from the almighty. In order to save the planet we must act in specific ways. Re-think the way you live, she tells us, turn away from excess, renounce overproduction, spurn gluttony and greed, forsake the selfish indulgences of your ‘growth economies.’

Such a mass turning from a wrongful path is often urged by medieval saints. They preached a religious message or exemplified holy lives. Greta’s message has an inherently religious aspect and she exemplifies a renunciation of many of the ‘sins’ of modern life – air travel, meat-eating, consumerism.

Today the concern is the salvation of the planet. But it isn’t too far off the mark to say that this, essentially, is a religious problem. Or rather a problem of irreligion. We first took on an irreligious attitude to the presiding powers of the earth, the creatures, rivers, oceans, mountains, forests, when we saw in them endless possibilities for exploitation.

For centuries pre-scientific societies, it is often noted, lived in a wholly sustainable relationship with natural things, animals, winds, rivers, tides, earthquakes, tempests, often seeing them as gods or the embodiment of forces that must be respected. In certain geographical areas where these phenomena were very marked, that respect was often heightened to awe – the stupendous unstoppable power of nature was so awesome that another category was needed to define it – the sacred. And so the world, nature, natural process, natural phenomena, commanded respect, adoration, worship. They became spirits, gods, genii loci. Gods were embodied earth-forces: Neptune the sea, Poseidon the earthquake, Zeus the thunderbolt and so on, in virtually every pantheon worldwide.

Then along came the Enlightenment, the scientific method, materialism, etc. which proclaimed mankind to be ‘the masters and possessors of nature’ as Descartes put it.

Since then we have dug, mined, hunted, dredged, burned, fished, felled and logged, our way across the planet.We have emptied lakes, killed off whole species, poisoned the oceans with plastics and exhausted the soil with over-production. Forests are burned, rivers dammed and dried. All over the world our ever-demanding processes have destroyed the balance and equilibrium that sustained the harmony of the natural world. Not to mention the worst offence – pushing the resources of the earth to the limit by over-reproduction of ourselves. In brief, we have rendered nature unstable – seas rising and warming,  ditto temperatures, deserts spreading, coasts disappearing, glaciers melting, and so on and on and on.

Step forth the Holy Maid of Stockholm with her bright braids, angelic face and dire warnings. A voice in the wilderness of public affairs, bringing the message, not in the vague verbiage of today’s public discourse but with the wholesome directness and sincerity of the truly inspired.

I am not mocking. I am just pointing out that there are similarities in the placing of certain elements of depiction between our modern media representation and the medieval portraiture, both visual and written. The reported lives of medieval saints were constructs too, carefully composed by hagiographers and chroniclers.

In the iconography, medieval saints usually appear alone. Family members are not important. Only acolytes, followers and supporters count. The saint’s message had to be pure communication uninterrupted by the buzz of family life.

Greta appears in the newspapers, TV and wider media without her parents – they are surely in the background in real life – but in the life of the ‘presentation’ she is alone, the vessel carrying the message. She sits at the UN Climate Summit alone, a little figure dwarfed by grandiose office-holders, she speaks alone, she appears most often alone as the embodiment of  the ‘gospel’ she is bringing.

To convey their message, medieval saints travelled, often long distances, often on foot or by boat. Travel as pilgrimage was sometimes an end in itself. Greta travels constantly, even though social media are the chief means of getting her message across and building a support base. Travel figures in the fables of the saints, where many are depicted either walking, staff in hand, or sailing in boats to foreign shores, for the saint was a phenomenon not limited by nationality, language or personal identity. In medieval times, the message was, often as not, housed within the international experience of Catholicism and anchored in the universal truth of revelation. It knew no national boundaries. In the same way, Greta is an international figure. She is not presented as Swedish, nor does she bring a Swedish or nationalist message. She is unconfined by identity issues, she speaks a global language with almost magical clarity and her audience is the whole world.

Inevitably, there is criticism. Even here the similarity is striking. In the struggle to get their message across, medieval saints had to combat detractors who made sometimes cruel ad hominen comments. Holy speakers or saintly figures were often denigrated, accused of being hysterics, ‘touched’ ‘mad’ or ‘possessed’ by diabolic agents. In the terms of the day, these were sharp denunciations for being ‘different’.

So with Greta. The terms of our day draw upon the clinical and diagnostic language of current psycho-social disorders. Asperger’s syndrome and autism are among the explanations offered for Greta’s ‘strangeness’. Then as now, it is widely assumed that something is ‘wrong’, because we do not know how else to account for this exceptional and slightly batty behaviour.

However, in drawing attention to these similarities,  I am not suggesting that anything more than the usual media manipulations are going on here, no-one is consciously setting out to reproduce the ancient iconography, certainly not Greta. Yet her self-confessed experience is a piquant instance of what I am saying. At the age of eight, she became aware of climate change. Three years later she stopped talking and eating. This, too, belongs to the structure of the saint’s story. Many saints claimed a moment of elucidation in their youth, a blinding flash or sudden awareness, followed by physical disorder, mental disturbance or illness.

These similarities are surely very striking. Perhaps that is because the basic shape of the story remains the same at whatever point in time it is told. As in medieval times, a message which challenges the baser elements of our nature: greed, rapacity, wastefulness, aggressive acquisition, is being brought by an individual who has renounced these things. Our modern ‘sins’ are offences not against the strictures of God but against the whole of suffering nature. A bold, distinguished, dedicated person is required to bring such a message. When that person also brings youth, focus, courage and outspokenness to the task, you might just as well reach for the medieval word and have done.

The Holy Maid of Stockholm is among us.  Perhaps we should listen.