Recreating the Last Supper

The second season of the Heresies offered an overview of different heresies.

We started with Donatism, which was named after Donatus Magnus and existed from the 4th-6th Century. Donatists regarded martyrdom as the supreme Christian virtue and regarded those that actively sought martyrdom as saints.

Iconoclasm was the topic of the second episode. It depicted John of Damascus on one side and Emperor Leo III on the other, each of them representing their own opposite beliefs. Emperor Leo III issued his first edict against the veneration of images and their exhibition in public places in 726 and John of Damascus fought back with the defense of holy images in his publications. The end of the first iconoclast period is marked by the Empress Irene of Athens arranging the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, which condemned iconoclasm as heretical.

Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist is the Christian doctrine that Jesus Christ is present in the Eucharist, not merely symbolically or metaphorically, but in a true, real and substantial way. Real Presence is the topic of the third episode. It was very exciting to recreate the Last Supper, down to all the details. We tried to follow all the information that we found about the way they dined, how did the dishes look, what exactly was on the menu. It was a true feast, the actors did not go home hungry, we tell you that!

The fourth episode was about Postmodernism and its different representatives: Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Michel Foucault.

The episode about American heresies concluded the series and it featured scenes about Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement, and Charles Taze Russell, the founder of what is now known as the Bible Student movement and an early Christian Zionist.