Christus vulnus

This article aims at proposing a different reading of the figure of the wounded Christ and of Christ's wounds. Christ's wounds, one of the most widespread Christian iconographies, has been regarded as a true glyph of Christ's nature (signaculum Christi). Surely, the "Christus vulnus" symbols deal with violence (the violence of Empire), but such a reading would be a drastic reduction of an extremely complex "mundus imaginalis", which founds a deep political level of thought. According to patristic authors, Christ is the wound who heals the wound of the world (vulnus mundi), though the wounded heart of Christ remains always a hole, a slit (with the full erotic and maternal messages implied in this word) at the centre of the world, at the centre of human politics.