Faith Tibble is a graduate of Temple and Haifa Universities. A former Latin instructor in Philadelphia, she moved to Israel to study archaeology before gaining her PhD in Medieval Art History. Her forthcoming book, ‘The Crown of Thorns: Humble Gods and Humiliated Kings’, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2025.

Dr Faith Tibble will provide an engaging lecture which will explode our assumptions about the Crown of Thorns. Her talk will show the audience that the first instance of the Crown of Thorns in Christian art is not what we expect. We find a serene Jesus, gently crowned by a Roman soldier with a leafy wreath. Where are the thorns, the blood, and the suffering that we have come to expect? Unexpectedly, the primary reason lies in the Crown’s military attributes. Particularly the expectations of Jesus as a Messiah to be a general, as well as the Roman understanding of triumph.

She will end by looking at the 12th and 13th centuries, when the Crown of Thorns becomes something more easily recognizable to a modern audience. She will discuss how the medieval kings’ desperation to prove they were Christ-like made the court artists compare them directly to Jesus’ humiliating crowning. A strange choice from our perspective, but to the medieval audience, it was a necessary juxtaposition.