It's amazing how there really is 'nothing new under the sun', as the saying goes. If I said that in this post I was going to write about people being impregnated by horrific creatures whose offspring then burst violently out of their bodies or about hybrid dragon monsters, living creatures made from metal, you would probably think I was talking about something from the realm of science fiction, about face-hugging aliens or Transformers. But I am not. About a thousand years ago these were the horrors dreamed up (literally perhaps) by the author of the remarkable Vision of Tundale which recounts the three day journey of the Irish knight Tundale to hell and then heaven. The journey is arranged by God to cure Tundale of his sinful ways and put him back on the right track and his guide for the journey is his guardian angel. The 'alien offspring' and the hybrid monster are the next steps in the 'program'. It just goes to show - the best 'horrors' reflect our deepest fears, and these have been with us from the very beginning.
0 Comments
Sometimes looking just isn't enough, you just have to jump in to get the full benefit. Exercise is like that. You can watch sport all day long but you won't lose a kilo in weight or improve your fitness level one iota unless you actually take part. Travel is like that too. You can watch any number of travel programs on TV but it doesn't mean you have actually been to those places. You have never experienced the sights, sounds and scents that make those places so distinctive and memorable. That's what Tundale discovered about one thousand years ago. He discovered that just looking isn't enough. Tundale was a young Irish knight who had an 'out of body' experience and went to hell with his guardian angel in order to see what lay in store for him unless he reformed his life. But Tundale soon found that to get the full benefit of the journey he had to experience the torments of hell for himself. Standing and watching other people suffer wouldn't help him at all. He had to know what it was like to be burned, frozen, beaten, chopped to pieces, famished and devoured. He had to stop being a spectator and take the plunge! Thank goodness he did. Whatever it did for his soul, it helps to make this wonderful account of his hellish journey so horrifyingly entertaining!
Some years ago the youth justice system in the UK tried to shock young offenders into reforming their lives by giving them an experience of what life in prison was really like. They were taken to visit adult prisons and allowed to meet and spend time with the inmates and to see the regimes there. The hope was that by seeing how unpleasant prison life was and how intimidating some of the inmates were, they might be so scared they would think again about committing crimes or causing trouble. Recently I heard on the radio that research has shown that these visits have proved to be largely ineffectual and the program is to be wound down. But whether it was successful or not it certainly wasn't a new idea when it was introduced. About 1000 years ago a young Irish knight who had seriously 'gone of the rails' wrote an account of just such a visit. Just as in the modern schemes he was shown the punishment that awaited him if he didn't reform, in the hope that he would be so terrified he would be shaken out of his wicked ways and change his life. But it wasn't a prison he was taken to, it was hell itself. He was shown and experienced the tortures of the damned and felt (and smelt) their pain! Unlike the more recent schemes this 'scheme' worked and he came back to this world a reformed character. Here and in subsequent posts I want to try to describe this vision of the tortures of hell and trace some of the influences it had in later versions of hell and paradise, in literature and in art.
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!
|
Archives
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.
Categories
All
|