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.
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Some of the most remarkable, wonderful and unsettling images of hell and damnation from the middle ages are found in a 15th century manual describing the apocalypse (the end of the world) produced by Carthusian monks in France known as Le Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur (The Book of the Vineyard of our Lord). Now held by the Bodleian LIbrary in Oxford its illustrations and are available to view here. This seems to have been the second volume of a larger, two part work, completed some time before 1463 in France. Its author and illustrators are unknown. It's thought to be Carthusian because one illustration depicts two Carthusian monks. These images depict the Antichrist and his war on the Church, the signs of the coming of the end of the world, the Last Judgement and then, in full gory detail, the sufferings of the damned. (I should point out the book also pictures the saints in paradise but these are really boring by comparison!) The whole point of this blog is to argue that our ideas of heaven and hell owe far more to the imaginations of writers and artists in the middle ages and Renaissance than to the bible and here we get a really good feel for the kinds of ideas that were shaping the thinking of Christians bout the afterlife at this time. They are fun, shocking, amusing and very, very interesting.
The Hours of Catherine of Cleves: Imagining hell and purgatory in Catherine's prayer book6/16/2015 Hell as a place of torment and punishment is fundamentally an horrific concept. And yet for centuries the idea has fascinated generations of believers and non-believers alike. In different ways, through literature, art and film, people have tried to depict what a place such as hell might look like and to imagine the fearsome creatures who might administer punishment in such a place. Just us we, in a more secular age, are still fascinated by monsters, aliens and mass murderers, so in the medieval era people were fascinated by the monsters from the 'other side' - the demons and terrible creatures who, they believed, populated hell. And surely the most brilliant visual depictions of the terrifying and fascinating creatures of hell were created by the unknown artist responsible for the illustrations in the Book of Hours of Catherine Cleves. In his illustration of hell's castle he (presumably a he . . . but who knows?) created a bestiary of weird and wonderful demons and devils of wit, invention and imagination unrivalled in medieval art. In his illustrations of hell and purgatory, he not only horrifies but manages to delight and amuse the viewer too. Those who first read the book would have been duly horrified and frightened by the depictions of the tortures in hell and the agony of purgatory but I am sure that like us they would also have closed the book with a knowing smile on their faces too. Whoever he (or she) was, the illustrator was having great fun! "But the point of the Hours of the dead was to pray for those who languished, not in hell (it was too late for them), but in purgatory. The belief in purgatory (which I will come to - I promise) had by this time become the main focal point of the church's teaching on the afterlife. Most people who died were thought to have gone to purgatory. Few were considered good enough to go straight to heaven, and similarly not many were considered bad enough to be consigned to the castle of hell for eternity without any chance of remission! So the great majority went to purgatory where through the torments and suffering they experienced there were purged of their sin until they were ready to be led to heaven. The more the living prayed for those in purgatory the shorter the time they stayed (potentially thousands of years)."
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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.
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