Abstract

Pharmacy serving to propagate the Lutherian doctrine of justification: ‚Christus as a pharmacist’ is an interconfessional, but confessionally differentiated symbolic motif of Christian folklore art in German-speaking countries. The article investigates the sociocultural conditions and prerequisites for transfering the old metaphor and idea of Christ as a physician to the new vision of Christ as a apothecary who prepares and dispenses his heavenly medicine all by himself. In the early 17th century these requirements were fulfilled, so that the oldest known witness to this motif transfer , a genre picture of 1619, will be the first pictural version of this motif in general. It was created by the protestant Painter Michel Herr of Nuremberg. In the abstract and reduced form of a devotional picture this motif then became widespread in churches and vicarages, in monasteries and their apothecaries as well as in private houses . The oldest yet known examples are works from around 1630. For the first time during the Thirty Year's War, it served in this form for propagating the Lutherian justification doctrine , saying that the belief in Christ is enough to be released from all sins . Around 1650, as a reaction to that, a catholic version of the devotional picture was created, claiming and picturing that in contrast eucharist is the highest and real ‚healing medium’ of Christ to redemption. All pictures of this version avoid quoting Jesaja 55, 1, whereas all protestant pictures quote this verse from the Bible word-for-word