Medieval Hell
Manuscript Illustration of
Hell, c. 1180 AD
Much of the popular, modern
conception of Hell in both religious and secular circles has its
roots not in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, but in the
literature and art of the European Middle Ages (a period from
approximately 500 AD to 1500 AD). The Bible gives only the
vaguest of hints about the fate after death of the "unsaved."
Dissatisfied with this silence, Roman Catholic religious
leaders, along with artists and writers, embellished these hints
over the centuries until they had created a vast, horrific
Underworld so vividly detailed that it had incredible power over
the minds of most Europeans.
Hellfire sermons
Peasants of the time often had a
very bleak life. As odd as it may sound to modern minds, often
the only "popular entertainment" from week to week was the
Sunday sermon by the parish priest. And the most exciting
version of those sermons were the ones describing in minute
detail the tortures that allegedly awaited the damned in Hell.
It might not be all that unreasonable to draw a parallel between
the fascination that the masses had with these stories and the
craving for horror films in the 21st century!
From History of Hell, Alice
Turner, Harcourt Brace & Co., 1993
...during the Middle Ages
higher theology had far less effect on the concept of Hell
than what can only be called popular enthusiasm.
The vernacular sermon
[one given in the common language of the people] was
developed fairly early as a way of communicating with
parishioners increasingly baffled by the mysteries of the
Latin mass. In a village or small town, that weekly sermon
might be the chief, even the only entertainment for the
populace. "Hellfire" sermons drew crowds for complex reasons
and have continued to do so almost until the present.
...Medieval preachers were
given aids to help them prepare sermons and take
confessions; these included homilies [written versions of
short expositions of scriptural passages], anecdotal exempla,
pulpit manuals, and books of penances [descriptions of acts
that repentant sinners could be required to do to "make
up" for various sinful actions]. The dire consequence
of sin was a favorite subject in all of them, as it was in
the inventive sculptures, reliefs, mosaics, frescoes, and
paintings made for churches and cathedrals.
Since we have no records of
reaction to these sermons and paraphernalia we must infer
their fame from their survival. (p. 90)
Vision Literature
A significant source of content
for such sermons was what has been called by medieval historians
"Vision Literature." Throughout many countries in Europe,
peasants, knights, and others insisted that they had been
stricken by what might best be called "near death experiences."
They fell into a coma, were taken in vision to Hell to see the
tortures there as a warning to themselves and others to "mend
their ways," and then awakened and felt compelled to share the
story of their adventures with others.
... In hundreds of manuscript copies of more than sixty
surviving visions, someone is taken by a supernatural guide
to the infernal regions, then (sometimes) to Purgatory, and
then to Heaven. Though visions were written down by the
literate clergy, they were often experienced by quite
ordinary people, who certainly believed in them. Their
modern equivalents might be reports of UFO abduction. It
should be remembered that this was an age of obsessive
piety, self-imposed fasting and flagellation, no antibiotics
for fevers, and that people were educated to believe in
visions. They wanted visions. Some accounts, on the
other hand, especially late ones, were undoubtedly concocted
by born storytellers for the astonishment of the pious and
credulous. (ibid, p. 91)
Flagellation (self-beating),
extended periods of going without food, and high fevers from
sickness all have the potential to induce hallucinations in the
average person. Add to this "obsessive piety"--which would lead
to extremely strong emotions of guilt even at the smallest
infraction against the teachings of the Church--and it is
certainly a recipe for some individuals to experience strange
dreams that seemed to them as vivid reality.
The most famous of these popular
visions was that said to have been experienced by an Irish
knight in the 12th century.
From the Wikipedia.org article Tundale
The Visio Tnugdali (Latin:
Vision of Tnugdalus) is a 12th-century religious text
reporting the otherworldly vision of the Irish knight
Tnugdalus (later also called "Tundalus", "Tondolus" or in
English translations, "Tundale").
The Latin text was written down shortly after 1149 by
Brother Marcus, an Irish itinerant monk, in the
Schottenkloster, Regensburg. He reports having heard
Tnugdalus' account from the knight himself and to have done
a translation from the Irish language at the Regensburg
abbess' request.
The visio tells of the proud and easygoing knight falling
unconscious for three days, during which time an angel
guides his soul through Heaven and Hell, experiencing some
of the torments of the damned. The angel then charges
Tnugdalus to well remember what he has seen and to report it
to his fellow men. On recovering possession of his body,
Tnugdalus converts to a pious life as a result of his
experience.
The Visio Tnugdali with its interest in the topography of
the afterlife is situated in a broad Irish tradition of
phantastical tales about otherworldly voyages, called immram,
as well as in a tradition of Christian afterlife visions,
itself influenced by pre-Christian notions of the afterlife.
Other important texts from this tradition include the Visio
Thurkilli, the Visio Godeschalci and the Purgatorium Sancti
Patricii.
The Latin "Tundalus" was swiftly and widely transmitted
through copies, with 172 manuscripts having been discovered
to date. During the Middle Ages, the text was also a
template for Middle Low German and Middle High German
adaptations such as the rhyme version of "Tundalus" by Alber
of Kloster Windberg (around 1190), or the "Niederrheinischer
Tundalus" fragments (around 1180/90). In the early modern
age, Marcus' original text was also translated into various
vernacular languages and published several times.
From a description of the content
of one of the versions of the Tundale story (Turner, op.cit., p.
99):
Next comes a great bird with an iron beak that eats unchaste
nuns and priests and defecates them into a frozen lake where
both men and women proceed to give birth to serpents. Tundal has
to go through this too, though, thankfully, we don't hear about
it in much detail.
Illustration of Tundal's bird in details of
15th century painting by Heironymous Bosch, Garden of Earthly
Delights
After a difficult climb comes
the Valley of Fires, where fiends seize Tundal with burning
forceps, throw him into a furnace until he is red-hot, then
hammer him on an anvil with twenty or thirty other sinful
souls into one mass, tossing this into the air till the
angel rescues him. [And all this is BEFORE he gets down to
"Hell proper"!]
The minds of all classes of
people, both religious and secular, in the Middle Ages were
filled with these grotesque images of an ever-burning place of
torture threatened for those who failed to live up to the
demands of the religion of the time. In the early 1300s, one of
these people, poet Dante Alighieri of Italy, turned the images
in his own mind into The Inferno (Italian: L'Inferno),
a major section of a vivid poem (The Divine Comedy) that
forever enshrined the medieval view of the Afterlife for the
generations to come. Considered one of the primary pieces of
classic Western literature, it has been translated into numerous
languages. Its imagery has inspired over the past seven
centuries huge numbers of paintings, book illustrations,
statues, poems by other poets, books by other authors, musical
compositions, movies--and countless "Hellfire sermons" by both
Catholic and Protestant ministers.
For more information on the
incredible influence of Dante, see the article
Dante's Hell. One of the primary
purposes of this Is It True What They Say About Hell?
website is to provide documentation which will persuade
readers to seriously consider whether the common
perspective on Hell taught by most Christian groups
comes from the Bible--or from a combination of
non-biblical sources, with Dante's Inferno as the
centerpiece.
Medieval Mystery Plays
Although the entertainment of the
peasantry on a weekly basis was largely confined to the Sunday
sermon, there was at least once a year in many towns and
villages all over Europe an even more exciting diversion, the
Mystery Play.
From the
Wikipedia.org article Mystery Play
These vernacular
[done in the common language] religious performances were, in some of the
larger cities in England such as York, performed and
produced by guilds, with each guild taking responsibility
for a particular piece of scriptural history. From the guild
control they gained the name mystery play or just mysteries, from the Latin
mysterium (meaning
handicraft and relating to the guilds). Mystery plays should
not be confused with Miracle plays, which specifically
re-enacted episodes from the lives of the saints; however,
it is also to be noted that both of these terms are more
commonly used by modern scholars than they were by medieval
people, who used a wide variety of terminology to refer to
their dramatic performances.
The mystery play developed, in some places, into a series of
plays dealing with all the major events in the Christian
calendar, from the Creation to the Day of Judgment. By the
end of the 15th century, the practice of acting these plays
in cycles on festival days (such as Corpus Christi,
performed on the Feast of Corpus Christi) was established in
several parts of Europe.
From a website on the
"York Mystery Plays" in England:
Each pageant was allocated a wagon (also
called a “pageant”) which was pulled
through the streets of the city along a
traditional route, stopping at
pre-arranged stations in order to
perform. Each episode would have been
played at each stop, so the audience
could stay in one place, and settle in
for a day’s entertainment. Sometimes
special scaffolding was erected for them
to sit on, like an early version of
baseball bleachers!
More on mystery
plays from Turner, op. cit., p. 90:
There is no question,
however, about the popularity of Hell in the medieval
theater. Mystery plays, like sermons and artwork, were first
seen as a way to teach the Bile to parishioners, but they
soon escaped their beginnings. The Hell scenes of these
plays, with their devilish pratfalls, firecrackers, and
crude toilet doggerel, became beloved popular theater--the
only popular theater--and when, after many centuries
they were eventually banned, they mutated into forms that
persist today.
Medieval plays were not
"literary," but an astonishing percentage of the high
literary tradition also focused on Hell--in the late Middle
Ages, all kinds of Hell, some of it thrillingly attractive.
Writers blocked by the frightful picture presented by the
Church from the ancient theme of the underworld quest
inventively managed to displace Hell with eclectic
underworld regions taken from classical and Norse mythology,
folklore, feudal fantasy, and poetry, where Hell could
strangely merge with Fairyland and allegorical knights would
go adventuring.
The Hellmouth
From Turner,
ibid, pp. 114-118
In the big
urban dramas, a union of tradesmen’s guilds shared
responsibility for increasingly elaborate productions. Each
guild produced a separate playlet in its own venue. The
Harrowing of Hell was often assigned to the cooks and bakers
for the practical reason that guild members were used to
working with fire and could supply huge cauldrons and other
devices to be used for “tortures,” plus pots and pans to
bang together for sound effects.
Boisterous
Hell scenes inevitably became comic relief to the more
solemn goings-on. As time passed, the comedy got lower, with
much attention to breaking wind [joking about characters
crudely "passing gas"]. …
Hell was
everyone’s favorite part of the mystery presentations. A
scaffolding achieved by something as simple as a ladder
might stand in for Heaven in an early production, but even
the earliest plays we know about give careful stage
directions for infernal scenes—the twelfth-century Mystère d’Adam specifies chains, clouds of smoke, and
the clatter of cauldrons and kettledrums, while the
Anglo-Norman Seinte Resureccion of the same period
calls for a jail to be built on one side of the stage to
represent Limbo, from which Jesus would rescue the
patriarchs. Later productions added fireworks, gunpowder,
flaming sulfur, cannons, mechanical serpents, and toads.
The most expensive prop in the
entire production was the Hellmouth. Artists had already
taken to portraying “the jaws of Hell” quite literally, and
theatrical designers took this a step further. Carpenters
would make a beast’s head out of wood, papier-mâché, fabric,
glitter, and whatever else they needed, and set it over a
trapdoor. The wide jaws were often hinged and operated with
winches and cables so that they could open and close. Smoke,
flames, bad smells, and plenty of noise would emerge from
within, to the delight of the audience. In one instance, the
actual jawbone of a beached whale was employed in the
framework.
There would
often be fixed locations for the various sets of a dramatic
cycle around a cathedral or town square, and in that case
the Hellmouth might be so large that actual scenes could be
played inside it; one directive specifies that it be nine
and a half feet wide. In less lavish productions, the action
took place beside the trapdoor Hellmouth, or on a lower
scaffolding, curtained off until needed. Sometimes the
entire series of playlets was movable. Here is a description
of a pageant wagon made for a parade in fifteenth-century
Bourges. It was preceded by a group of capering devils
darting in and out of the crowd.
After this diablerie came a
Hell, 14 feet long and eight wide, in the form of a rock on
which was constructed a tower, continually blazing and
shooting out flames in which Lucifer appeared, head and body
only. He wore a bearskin with a sequin hanging from each
hair and a pelt with two masks adorned with various colored
materials; he ceaselessly vomited flames and held in his
hands various serpents or vipers which moved and spat fire.
At the four corners of the rock were four small towers in
which could be seen souls undergoing torments. And from the
front of the rock there came a great serpent whilstling and
spitting fire from throat, nostrils, and eyes. And on every
part of the rock there clambered and climbed all kinds of
serpents and great toads. It was moved and guided by a
certain number of people inside it, who worked the torments
in place as they had been instructed.
Most were
not so magnificent as this, but old bills and documents make
it clear that towns competed fiercely on the elaboration of
the Hell front. A late German example included “many ghastly
and brightly colored devils. And it cost a great deal of
money and work.”
From
Encyclopedia of Hell,
Miriam Van Scott, Thomas Dunne
Books, 1998, Hellmouth entry, p. 160
Lavish
productions included smoke, stench, and shrieks that spewed
forth from the hellmouth to heighten the excitement.
Eventually, scenes involving the gaping grimace became the
most popular part of the dramatic presentations, an early
form of special effects.
Hellish Art
In addition to learning about the
gruesome details of Hell from the weekly sermon by the parish
priest, and from the periodic lavish productions of local
mystery plays, the average European of the Middle Ages no doubt
particularly "pictured" Hell mentally in a certain way as a
result of being surrounded by artwork in the local church and
other public buildings that even more vividly portrayed the
Afterlife.
As you view some of the
artwork from that period below, don't forget ... there were
no X or R ratings for medieval art! It was out for all to
see ... the kiddies were expected to be terrified and
given nightmares by the vivid imagery, so that from an early
age they would want to toe the line of the religion they
were "born into."
Medieval artists, in paintings,
frescoes, carvings, wall reliefs, manuscript illustrations and
more spared no effort in being as graphic as possible in their
depictions of the tortures of Hell.
1415 manuscript
illustration for the Vision of Tundal
Demon torturing a soul
in a cauldron, detail from the exterior of the Cathedral
of Notre Dame in Paris, finished c. 1250 AD
Illustration
from a German manuscript, 1175, torture of Jews in Hell
Detail of a
painting by Marcovaldo, c. 1250 AD
Detail of a
medieval chapel wall painting in La Brigue, France
In addition to the fact that this
artwork was astonishingly gruesome and sadistic, it often
introduced to the fearful a notion that seems particularly
strange to modern thought. Some church leaders had long insisted
that not only would vast numbers of people suffer eternal
torture in an ever-burning Hell--but the saints in Heaven would
be able to witness this from their celestial vantage point! Not
only would they witness it, but they would take pleasure
in that witnessing.
Hellish Quotes:
"That the saints may enjoy
their beatitude more thoroughly, and give more abundant
thanks to God for it, a perfect sight of punishment of the
damned is granted them." Summa iii Suppl. Qu 93, i., St.
Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225-1274 AD)
"Therefore the elect shall go
forth…to see the torments of the impious, seeing which they
will not be grieved, but will be satiated with joy at the
sight of the unutterable calamity of the impious." Sent. Iv
50, ad fin, Peter Lombard, the Master of Sentences (c.
1100-1160 AD)
“At that greatest of all
spectacles, that last and eternal judgment how shall I
admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so
many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of
darkness; so many magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames
than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sages
philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their deluded
pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of
their own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly
from anguish then ever before from applause." Tertullian (c.
155-230 AD)
And thus many paintings from the
medieval period depict a scene in which the saints in Heaven at
the top of the painting (sometimes standing and milling about as
if watching a parade, sometimes sitting formally in row
upon row of what appear to be thrones) gaze serenely down upon
the hideous representations at the bottom of the painting of the
tortures of the damned.
Giotto, Last
Judgment, 1305
Given the art samples above, is
it unreasonable to conclude that the minds that could concoct
this horrendous level of inventive sadism had to be unbelievably
jaded? If a teenager sketched drawings like this during a class
in school today, he might very well be referred for psychiatric
evaluation! And yet these artists, those who commissioned them
to create this artwork, and those who viewed it at the time,
were evidently fully convinced that the great God of mercy and
love had these exact plans in mind for most of His human
creation! Although Christian artists seldom depict such scenes
today, the influence that these earlier works have had on vast
numbers of religious thinkers, leaders, and teachers clear up to
the 21st century is immeasurable. Consider these excerpts from a
modern commentary from a
Reformed
Presbyterian website. This is only one of many, many sources
of this exact same point of view:
The
doctrine of eternal punishment is probably the most
unpopular, hated and feared teaching in the entire Bible.
The thought of people burning in hell for eternity is most
repugnant to the human mind. “It is a doctrine which the
natural heart revolts from and struggles against, and to
which it submits only under stress of authority. The church
believes the doctrine because it must believe it, or
renounce faith in the Bible, and give up all the hopes
founded upon its promises.” [quotation from Charles Hodge,
Systematic Theology, New York, 1871]
Before the last judgment, the
souls of those who died without Christ suffer in hell
without their physical bodies. Their physical bodies are
rotting in the earth. ... Immediately before the final
judgment both soul and body are reunited during the
resurrection of the dead. ...Then both body and soul “shall
be cast out from the favorable presence of God, and the
glorious fellowship with Christ, His saints, and all His
holy angels, into hell, to be punished with unspeakable
torments, both of body and soul, with the devil and his
angels forever.” [quotation from the Westminster Larger
Catechism]
...It
is well known that those who die by burning to death suffer
tremendous pain. Burning to death is a terrifying and
excruciating experience. Throughout history, death by
burning was reserved for only the most wicked of criminals.
Yet the fire in hell is much worse than earthly fire.
Earthly fire consumes the flesh of its victims. When the
nerve endings are consumed, the pain ceases. But for those
in hell, the pain will not cease, because the fire of hell
does not consume. Rather than being consumed by it they are
preserved to burn and suffer and be tormented on and on,
forever and ever.
...
Are you a family person? Is your life
centered around your family? Do you love and adore your
children? If you do not believe in Jesus Christ and obey His
Word, then you will die and go to hell and never see your
loved ones ever again. You will be tormented day and night,
knowing that your children will go to hell because you did
not teach them about Christ; because you refused to take
them to a Bible-believing church. Or you will suffer eternal
pains of conscience because you indoctrinated your children
in a false religion.
Is what is said above about an
ever-burning place of unimaginable torture for human souls the
"Gospel Truth"? Are Christians required to be convinced that all
"must
believe it, or renounce faith in the Bible, and give up all the
hopes founded upon its promises"?
It is
the primary purpose of this website to provide for the
reader adequate biblical documentation, along with sound
commentary and reasoning, to establish that this
conclusion is FALSE.
It
really is possible to believe that the Bible is
divinely inspired, and its promises of the hope of the
Salvation available through Jesus Christ are sure,
without coming to the conclusion that it is God's
intent to consign most of mankind from throughout all
history to sadistic, fiendish, Hellish torture for all
eternity.
This site contains a collection
of articles, on the topic of Hell and the Afterlife, that may
each be used independently for research purposes. But it also is
designed as a systematic, sequential overview of the whole
topic, which can be read like a book.
For those who would like to take
advantage of this perspective of the content, the articles are
arranged in the
Reading Guide as they would appear as chapters in a book, along
with a few reference chapters at the end such as would appear in
a book Appendix.
Use the
links below to go to the next article, previous article, or
first article
in the Reading Guide sequence.
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PLEASE
NOTE:
No single short article can comprehensively cover
any aspect of the topic of Hell. If you have
questions or concerns regarding the material in this
article, be sure to first read through the site
FAQ before writing to the
author. It may already specifically address the very
points you are wondering about.
Unless otherwise
noted, all biblical references in this and other articles on the
Is It True What They Say About Hell? website are from the
New International Version (NIV).
All of the articles on this
Is it true what they say about Hell? website were written by Pam Dewey, with
the support and sponsorship of Common Ground Christian
Ministries. For more of Pam's inspirational and educational
writings, visit her Oasis
website.
All website content
© 2007, Pam
Dewey and Common Ground Christian Ministries
All rights reserved. Material may
be copied for personal use of the site visitor. For permission
to copy for any other purposes, please contact the author at
oasis@chartermi.net
All of the articles on this
Is it true what they say about Hell? website were written by Pam Dewey, with
the support and sponsorship of Common Ground Christian
Ministries. For more of Pam's inspirational and educational
writings, visit her Oasis
website.
All website content
© 2007, Pam
Dewey and Common Ground Christian Ministries
All rights reserved. Material may
be copied for personal use of the site visitor. For permission
to copy for any other purposes, please contact the author at
oasis7@gmail.com
