In the previous post I looked at some of the illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, a 15th century French manual describing the end of the world, the last judgement and the punishment of the wicked in hell. It's an amazing document and the illustrations are quite remarkable and beautiful. The illustrations show the activity of the Antichrist, the signs of the Apocalypse and the Last Judgement. After the Last Judgement the illustrations show in graphic detail the terrible punishments and tortures that lie in wait for the damned. In this post I want to show you these illustrations, not just to revel in the twisted imagination of these Renaissance monks as they imagined the unspeakable horrors of damnation (although I do!) but to think about what they tell us about the Renaissance view of sin. A warning before we begin - this is not for the faint hearted or the sqeamish! Being 'sent down'.The damned are 'sent down' to hell through what appears to be a giant mouth-shaped hole in the ground. This imagery isn't surprising as both death and hell (or Sheol/Hades) are pictured as living monsters in the bible and in subsequent Christian imagery. The damned are accompanied by the demons who will torment them for the rest of eternity who seem very pleased at the prospect! The press of bodies and the confusion of orientation symbolises the chaotic nature of life without God. So anyone looking at our house would conclude . . . . Here is a close-up of the hellsmouth and we can see some of the beasts and monsters who will be tormenting the damned. This is clearly by a different illustrator. First, it seems, the damned are cooked in ovens for a while. The forks seem very impressive! The Seven Deadly SinsHaving been cooked the damned are now ready for some appropriate punishment. Those guilty of the seven most terrible sins (at least in the Christian tradition), the so called 'Seven Deadly Sins', are punished in such a way that each punishment reflects in some way the nature of the sin. Here the proud and vainglorious (i.e. those who think too much of themselves) are 'broken' on a terrible wheel. Standing tall and proud requires a strong back bone. No one will be doing much of that after this. Here those guilty of Envy are being punished by immersion in either fire or ice, each no doubt thinking that the other lot have it easier! Here the wrathful (implaccably and violently aggressive) are being punished by experiencing the rage and aggression of the devils. Below the slothful are being eaten by dragons and eagles. The wrathful and the slothful are close to each other for a reason. Sloth was considered to be closely connected to Wrath. Thomas Aquinas, reflecting on Aristotle's distinctions between the different kinds of Wrath, the acute, the bitter and the difficult, wrote that “the bitter have a permanent Wrath on account of the permanence of the gloom they keep closed within them”. St. Bonaventure wrote "Wrath, when it cannot avenge itself, turns sullen, and thus from it is born Sloth”; and Brunetto Latini, Dante's guardian and teacher, wrote that “In Wrath neglectful Sloth is born and abides,” Sloth was Wrath turned in on itself. These are not people who just don't like hard work, these are people who bitterly resent having to do anything because they are angry all the time, an anger turned inwards in sullenness and gloom. Sounds like being a teenager to me! Here are the avaricious being cooked. Interesting to see Popes, Bishops and Kings in there! People of this era were under no illusions about their rulers! O.K., here's the interactive bit. What high profile political or religious figures would you like to see in your cauldron?! Gluttony comes next in the list, a more henious sin than Lust which comes next. This interested me because in our modern church Lust is a much more high profile sin than Gluttony. Very few pastors or priests are thrown out of the church in disgrace for eating too much! But in the medieval era Gluttony was considered a worse sin than Lust because it was thought that for the glutton, food takes the place of God. It was in fact a form of idolatry. The classification of Gluttony as a greater evil than Lust is reflected in a widespread medieval interpretation of Genesis 2.15–17 and 3.6, according to which Adam’s sin was literally an excessive love of food! Since the food was offered to Adam by Eve, gluttony also had sexual implications and was seen (partly) as the root cause of Lust! So Lust and Gluttony were thought to be interconnected - the one (food) led to the other (sex)! Perhaps for that reason medieval spirituality emphasised fasting as a means to purge the soul! Below the gluttons are being punished, but I am not sure I can explain how. It looks as if they are forced to sit around a meal table on which there is nothing palatable to eat. And here are the lustful being cooked together. Just as they burned for one another while they were alive so they will burn with one another in this way in hell. Anything else to confess?But of course there are many more than seven sins and the hell of Le Livre has something for everyone! Here the usurers (those who lend money for interest - bankers!) are being punished. They are immersed in wells of boiling water up to their deserved level. It was important to deter thieves. They are hung over flames while two delighted devils look at the reader. And murderers and tyrants get their comeuppance too. They experience violence and tyranny themselves. Many rivers to crossIn Classical mythology the underworld was watered by at least four rivers and these are usually intergated into Christian accounts of hell. Here we see four rivers depicted. Below are the Styx and the Phlegeton. According to some versions of Classical mythology the Styx was the river which the dead had to cross in order to enter the afterworld. The person (or being!) who ferried them across was called Charon. Some versions of the myth give the river a different name, the Acheron. Dante's Inferno names both the Styx and the Acheron (so he ends up with five rivers only four of which are actually in hell). In Dante's version of hell it is the Acheron that forms the border between the land of the living and hell and which the damned must cross (in Charon's boat) to get to hell itself. The Styx is the second river Dante and Virgil find in hell. It begins life as a bubbling spring in the fourth level of hell and flows down into the fifth level where it forms a swamp in which the violent are punished. The name Styx in Greek meant 'gloom'. In Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur it seems as if the Styx is a river the damned must swim over while being clubbed on the heads, not by Charon but by devils. The Phlegeton was also a river taken from Classical mythology. The word in Greek means 'fiery'. In Phaedo (112b) Plato describes it as "a stream of fire which coils around the earth and flows into the depths of Tartarus". In Dante's Commedia the Phlegeton in the third river of hell and it originates, like all the rivers of Dante’s Inferno, from tears flowing from a crack in the statue of the Old Man of Crete. Dante's Phlegeton consists of boiling-hot blood, which probably symbolizes the blood of victims of violent death. The stream forms the first ring of the seventh circle, in which the sinners of violence against others are immersed at various depths corresponding to the severity of their crimes against their fellow men. Here in Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur it seems that is indeed a very hot and fiery river. In classical mythology the river Lethe represented forgetfulness. The waters of the river erased memory. In the Republic (10.621), Plato mentions Lethe as the river that the soul must drink during the process of metempsychosis, the passing of the soul at death into another body. In the Aeneid (6.713–715) Virgil refers to Lethe during Anchises’ speech on transmigration: only when the dead have had their memories erased by the Lethe that they may be reincarnated. According the Roman poet Statius the river Lethe borders Elysium, the final resting place of the virtuous in the underworld. This is how Dante conceives of the role of the Lethe and the river forms the physical boundary separating the pilgrim from the earthly paradise at the top of the mount of purgatory. The pilgrim must drink from the waters of the river to forget his sins before he crosses to paradise and begins his ascent to the highest heaven. Here in Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur it is found in hell. The Cocytus, which means 'the river of wailing', is also associated in Classical mythology with the underworld. In some versions the Cocytus, along with the Acheron, forms the boundary of the underworld. In the Commedia Dante situates the Cocytus in the ninth circle of hell, right at the bottom, where its waters are frozen by the beating of Lucifer's great leathery wings. In situating it here he was possibly influence by Isidore of Seville who in his Etymologies (book 14) located the Cocytus near Tartarus, the deepest, darkest part of hell. Here in Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur it seems very hot and fiery, not icy at all! But the monks' conception of Satan is very different to that of Dante and hell isn't arranged in every deepening circles. There is icy punishment but the river don't freeze over. And a terrible time was had by allFinally (as far as this post is concerned) here are some images which were added I think, just to remind the reader that being in hell is a really, really bad way to spend your eternity. The interest (to me) is how the illustrator(s) identified the most painful and terrible forms of human suffering. Too darned hotFire was generally the most popular image of eternal torment Being devouredBut being eaten seems to have been very popular too. Here the damned are eaten by worms. The reference to worms is found in the bible (eg Mark 9.42-48) and becomes one of the main images of hellish torment in medieval art. The idea of having your body constantly gnawed away by little burrowing creatures is truly horrifying. Having spent a day in the mountain here in Sweden being eaten by thousands of mosquitos gave me some idea of how appalling this would be! Here the damned are devoured by wild creatures and snakes. 'You're as cold as ice'We usually think of hell as hot and fiery but in some depictions of hell freezing is an option too. Hell can be icily cold too. In Dante's Inferno, sinners guilty of treachery are frozen in the waters of the Cocytus in the ninth circle of hell, The waters are frozen by the cold wind generated by the beating of Lucifer's wings. The bottom circle of hell is a profoundly cold and silent place. This shouldn't surprise us when we realise that God was usually thought of as pure light. People knew that the sun, the source of their light, was also the source of warmth and would readily have undeerstood the image of somewhere far away from God being dark and cold. The bottom of hell is as far away from God as you can get! Here we see the damned frozen. Eat up!And finally (for now) some poor souls being fed molten metal (or very hot tomato soup . . . not sure which - it's hard to see) These are amazing (and horrifying) images, intended to frighten people into believing in God and staying true to their religious vocations. It may also have provided some satisfaction to the readers to think of political and religious figures featuring in some of these hellish landscapes, being eaten, boiled, frozen and poked mercilessly. Surely we have all had such dreams! But the book isn't finished. There are yet more images of fiendish characters and goings on in store for the reader! We will look at those in the next post in the series. when it's ready the link will appear below or in the sidebar. You may also be interested in . . .
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April 2016
GalleryThis blog is as much about images as it is about text. Below is a slideshow of the pictures and images used in this blog. Click on any of the pictures to go to the post where that image is featured.
PostsLocating Paradise #1 In a Garden, Far, Far Away
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #5 'Stuck in the Middle With You'
The Resurrection According to Rahner
Today You Will Be With Me in Paradise
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #4 'And Who by Fire'
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #3: Held in the Balance
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #2: Once, Twice, Three Times a Sinner
The Testament of Abraham and the Threefold Judgement of God #1: The Broad and Narrow Gates
Daily Dante 7: Many Rivers to Cross
Daily Dante 6: 'You Gotta Serve Somebody'
In Hell Everyone Can Hear You Scream. The Vision of Tundale #3
Teeth, Spikes and Cleavers: At the Sharp end of Hell. The Vision of Tundale #2
'No Pain No Gain': The Vision of Tundale #1
'Hellzapoppin':
Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #2 'It's The End of the World as We Know It (and we feel fine)'. Illustrations from Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur, #1
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #2 Blinded by the Light
Visions of Heaven. Botticini's Assumption of the Virgin #1: Glorious and Immortal
Daily Dante 5: What the gates said.
Daily Dante 4: When I find myself in times of trouble
Daily Dante 3: I'll take you there
Daily Dante 2: Fierce creatures
Daily Dante 1: If you go down to the woods today
In Seventh Heaven or 'What Enoch Did Next'
A World of Fire and Ice: Heaven according to Enoch
The Power and the Glory: Visions of God as king in the Hebrew bible
The Beautiful Bestiary of Catherine Cleves: Monsters and Demons in detail.
Heaven is for Real: Heaven as a physical space up above the sky
Resurrecting the Dead or Reviving the Flowers? The loss of resurrection faith in Judaism.
The Defeat of Death #1: The promise of resurrection in the Isaiah Apocalypse.
The Defeat of Death #2: Death as a hostile power and promise of God's victory in Isaiah
Scary Monsters and Super Creeps: The 'Last Judgement' according to Stefan Lochner
Hell in the Hospital: The 'Last Judgement' of Rogier van der Weyden in the Beaune altarpiece.
'Hell' in the New Testament #2: The gates of Hades shall not prevail
The Hours of Catherine Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book
'On Earth as in Heaven': The kingdom of God as a revelation of heaven
'Hell' in the New Testament #1: Gehenna
Lost in Translation #1: How the King James version got it so wrong about hell
Heaven is not our home
Domes, Depths and Demons: The cosmology of the Hebrew world
A Bigger God
"See you in Sheol" - Sheol, the common destination of all
Heaven, Hell and Christian Hope
BooksBelow are some of the books which have helped me the most in the research and writing for this blog. Click on any image to find out more about that book at its page on Amazon uk.
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