Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) was born in small community called Caravaggio just east of Milan. He first became recognized as a painter of genius in 1602 when he completed a set of three paintings on the life of Saint Matthew for the Contarelli Chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. Caravaggio had a ferocious temper and in 1606 he killed a man in a brawl and was banished from Rome. After a period of exile in Malta, Sicily and Naples, he negotiated a pardon. However, in Naples in 1609 he was violently assaulted by his enemies. He died in Porte Ercole as he tried to return to Rome. The portrait by Ottavio Leoni derives from the time when Caravaggio was in Rome at the height of his powers, though it was likely completed later.

Matteo Contarelli

The story begins with Matthieu Cointerel (1519-1585) a French Cardinal who provided support for the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi, France’s national church in Rome:

Though construction had started in 1518, all building had been halted during the sack of Rome by mutinous German troops in 1527. The church exterior was not completed until 1589, two years after the death of its benefactor Cointreau. The austere Renaissance façade now contains statues (by Pierre de l’Estache, 18^th Century) of the important saints and kings that came from France: Charlemagne and Saint Louis (lower level), Saint Clothilde and Saint Jeanne de Valois (upper level). The interior decoration, much of which was completed in the 18^th Century, is far more extravagant than the exterior, tending to Rococo rather than Renaissance. The ceiling has a large fresco showing the apotheosis of Saint Louis by Charles-Joseph Natoire (18^th Century).  

 

Saint Matthew

As well as supporting the building, Matteo Contarelli (as he was known in Italy) also provided an endowment for one of the side chapels to be dedicated to his namesake Saint Matthew. Matthew is traditionally considered to be the author of the Gospel of Matthew although it is likely that this gospel was written by another person, perhaps a colleague or follower of the Saint (see discussion by Allison, 2004, pp 7-72).

The calling of Matthew (also known a Levi or Alpheus) to be a disciple is mentioned briefly in the three synoptic gospels, though only in the Gospel of Matthew (9: 9-13) is he named Matthew:

And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew, sitting at the receipt of custom: and he saith unto him, Follow me. And he arose, and followed him.

And it came to pass, as Jesus sat at meat in the house, behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down with him and his disciples.

And when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?

But when Jesus heard that, he said unto them, They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick.

But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

Although this is the only mention of the saint in the Bible, many legends grew up over the years about his exploits after the life of Jesus. These stories were compiled in Volume 5 of The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine (1275). According to legend, Saint Matthew spread the gospel to the land of Ethiopia. While there he came upon two sorcerers who were using dragons to torment the people. By making the sign of the cross, Matthew tamed the dragons and defeated the sorcerers. He also raised from the dead the daughter (or son) of King Egippus. In return for this miracle, the king’s daughter Ephigenia became a nun. After Egippus died, his successor Hirtacus lusted after Ephigenia. Matthew refused to release her from her vows of chastity, and the infuriated king arranged for Matthew to be murdered.  

In 1868, Andrea Orcagna (1308-1368) constructed a pilaster for the Church of the Orsanmichele in Florence with scenes from the life of Saint Matthew: on the left are the calling to discipleship, and the taming of the dragons: on the right are the raising of the king’s daughter and the martyrdom of the saint; in the center is the writing of the gospel.  

In 1587, the executors of Contarelli’s will commissioned Giuseppi Cesari, Cavalier d’Arpino (1568-1640), to provide frescos for the walls and ceiling of the chapel. He painted the barrel vault of the chapel with a fresco showing Matthew raising the king’s daughter from her death bed. On the sides of the vault were two paintings showing anonymous prophets in the style of Michelangelo but without his genius:

Matthew and the Angel

Cesari completed the ceiling in 1593. Financial difficulties delayed his payment, and the Cavalier went on to other projects. In 1587, the executor had also commissioned a sculpture depicting the inspiration of Saint Matthew from Jacques Cobaert (1535–1615) for the altar. However, he experienced great difficulty finishing the sculpture (Hess, 1951). The figure of Matthew alone was finished in 1602, but the priests deemed it incomplete and refused to take it. After Cobaert’s death, Pompeo Ferrucci provided the angel to go with Matthew, and the strangely disjointed sculpture now resides in the Church of the Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini:

In 1599, the financing of the Contarelli Chapel was taken over by the Fabbrica (works office) of Saint Peter’s (Graham-Dixon, 2010, p 192). Cesari was offered a contract to complete the chapel, but by then he was too busy. The contract was therefore given to Caravaggio, a protégé of the Cardinal del Monte. He agreed to complete the side panels by 1600. But he would paint using oil on canvas rather than in situ frescos. Caravaggio did not make preparatory drawings, but painted directly onto the canvas using models posed under carefully controlled lighting. He painted rapidly using a severe chiaroscuro style that came to be known as “tenebrism.”

The Calling of Saint Matthew

The first painting Caravaggio completed was The Calling of Saint Matthew (1600):

Caravaggio has transposed the event to his own time and place. On the left two people enter a darkened office. One of them has a faint halo: this is Jesus. In front on him, standing between the viewer and the savior is Saint Peter in a dull yellow cloak. From what may be an open window bright light streams diagonally into the office illuminating the faces of a group of five people at a table. There is some ambiguity about who is who (Dubouclez, 2024): I shall follow the interpretation of Graham-Dixon (2010, pp 194-197). The central person with a distinguished beard and a luxurious red and yellow doublet is Matthew Levi, a prosperous tax collector. Counting the money on the table is a rueful taxpayer. Looking over his shoulder through spectacles is an elderly man who appears to be checking the calculations. At Matthew’s left shoulder is a young page with a feathered cap and a golden doublet. At the corner of the table with his back to the viewer, dressed elegantly in black and white and wearing a sword, is Matthew’s bodyguard (or bravo). There is a space at the table: the viewer can imagine himself or herself sitting there.

The group at the table is reminiscent of an earlier painting of Caravaggio: The Cardsharps (1597). Paying taxes always seems like being cheated. Both paintings display Caravaggio’s mastery of the feathers and fashions of the day.

The difference is the right hand of Jesus. Jesus points to Matthew and says simply, “Follow me.” In the shadows, he holds out his left hand as though beckoning the viewer to join him as well. After his Matthew paintings, Caravaggio seldom returned to the genre subjects of his youth. It was as if he also felt called to a more meaningful life.

If one look carefully at the feet in the shadows on the lower right, we can see that Jesus is turning to leave the office of the tax-collector (Puttfarken, 1998, p 170). He already knows that Matthew will come after him. Matthew appears uncertain about what to do. But if we look at his legs beneath the table, we note that he is already turning toward Jesus:

Matthew, in his wine-dark velvet hat, points to his own chest as if to say “Who, me?,” but underneath the table where they sit his legs have already answered the call long before the message has reached his brain. We can see Matthew’s legs because Caravaggio has omitted one leg of the table. In the real world, it would crash to the ground. In the world Caravaggio has created, we barely notice: we are too absorbed in the dilemma of an ordinary man whose mind lags behind his heart. (Rowland, 2024, pp 3-4)

The following illustration shows on the left the legs of Matthew (and the absent table leg), on the upper right the hands of Jesus and on the lower right the feet of Peter and Jesus:

Jesus’ right hand is copied from Michelangelo:

The shrouded gesture of Christ, the most noteworthy single motif in Caravaggio’s picture, is a studied quotation from Michelangelo’s most famous image, the Creation of Adam on the Sistine ceiling. Christ’s oddly limp right hand, seen as if stopped by the camera, mirrors that of Michelangelo’s inert Adam, who is about to be invested with life by God. Christ is the New Adam, and “as in Adam all men die, so in Christ all will be brought to life” (I Corinthians 15:22). Caravaggio was no Michelangelo, yet we may see here a kind of identification, perhaps the first that Michelangelo Merisi made with his great predecessor and namesake. (Hibberd, 1983, pp 97-99).

The following illustration shows Michelangelo’s 1511 painting with an expanded view of the hands of God and Adam, and Caravaggio’s hand of Jesus, the mirror image of the hand of Adam:

 

The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew

The contract for the painting was very specific:

a long wide space in the form of a temple, with an altar raised up on the top of three, four, or five steps: where St Matthew dressed in vestments to celebrate the mass is killed by the hands of soldiers and it might be more artistic to show the moment of being killed, where he is wounded and already fallen, or falling but not yet dead, while in the temple there are many men, women, young and old people, and children, mostly in different attitudes of prayer, and dressed according to their station and nobility, and benches, carpets, and other furnishings, most of them terrified by the event, others appalled, and still others filled with compassion (quoted in Graham-Dixon, 2010, p 194)

Caravaggio had no previous experience with painting more than three or four people together. He experienced great difficulty with the Martyrdom. Radiographic studies revealed pentimenti with a design completely different from the final painting. It is likely that Caravaggio had begun The Martyrdom before The Calling of Saint Matthew, given up and then returned to it after the latter was completed. 

In his original effort, Caravaggio took pains to depict the altar and the temple, and outlined three assassins. The focus of the picture was a helmeted assassin with his back to the viewer. Saint Matthew is shown falling under the blows of his executioners. Caravaggio realized that this design was not working. Saint Matthew’s death was not at the center; everything was far too crowded; the central assassin was faceless.

He decided to start over. He opened up the center of the painting to show the dying Saint Matthew who has fallen to the ground. Members of the congregation turn away from the horror of his murder. Some are without clothes – probably about to be baptized. The artist himself is portrayed in the background watching the martyrdom with a combination of terror and pity. An angel reaches out to the saint to give him a palm branch, symbol of salvation and eternal life. There is now only one assassin and he faces the viewer. He is almost naked. He exudes rage.

The following illustration shows the pentimenti of the earlier versions of the painting (Camiz, 1990; Olson, 2002; Vodret-Adamo, 2011, p 73). There were several aborted attempts to portray the architecture of the temple. Caravaggio soon realized that he was not interested in architecture: most of his later paintings use a background of either dark shadows or bare walls.

The figure on the right of the altar boy recoiling from the murder of the saint derives from Titian’s 1529 painting of The Assassination of Saint Peter of Verona, which Caravaggio has likely seen in the form of a 1560 etching by Martino Rota:

The imposing body of the assassin is reminiscent of Michelangelo’s Adam in The Creation of Adam (1511) in the Sistine Chapel (Clayton website).

The head of Caravaggio and the head of the assassin look down in parallel on the dying saint, one in the shadows with pity and one in the light with anger:

The Inspiration of Saint Matthew

In 1602, after Contarelli’s executors had refused Cobaert’s incomplete sculpture of Saint Matthew and the Angel, they asked Caravaggio to produce a painted version for the altar (Graham-Dixon, 2010, pp 234-237). Caravaggio’s first version of The Inspiration of Saint Matthew portrayed the saint as an old man who appears not to comprehend what is going on as a youthful angel guides his hand. The writing on the tablet shows the Hebrew version of the opening two verses of Matthew’s gospel (Lavin, 1974).

The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.

Abraham begat …

Lavin (p 64) notes that this represents the transition between Old and New Testaments:

The lineage of salvation has been announced, the founding father has been named and his seed is being sown. The light of a new age has dawned.

The Hebrew gospel is an intriguing idea. Saint Matthew was certainly Jewish and, if he was the author of the gospel that bears his name, he would probably have written it in Hebrew. However, as far as we know, the original version was in Greek, perhaps compiled by a follower of Matthew rather than by Matthew himself.

The following shows a black-and-white photograph of the painting, which was destroyed by fire in Berlin in 1945, together with an enlargement of the saint’s writing and the Hebrew text (from Lavin, 1974).

Jesus chose his disciples from ordinary people and Caravaggio wanted to show Matthew as a “simple man stunned by the directness of his revelation” (Graham Dixon, 2010, p 236):

Perhaps the most touching aspect of the painting is the intimacy of the relationship between the stooped saint and the tender young angel, whose wings enfold the whole scene in a hushed embrace. The angel is God’s messenger but also the embodiment of Christian love – a love so generous that it encompasses even those as ragged and gnarled as the cross-legged, doltish St Matthew.  

The most striking aspect of Caravaggio’s Matthew is his humility. Thomas (1985) quotes from a description of Matthew by Lazius (1555): 

Even though he was most learned, yet he was not at all exalted, but in accord with the meaning of his name, truly strove to present himself as humble and lowly. He would always remark that, “to whatever degree you are great, so much more be you humble in all things.” And this to the wise man: “disgrace follows the proud, but exaltation follows the humble” . . . as a pauper himself he followed Christ the pauper.

The name Matthew in Hebrew means “gift of God” (Matityahu). The gospel was not created by him but given from God. 

However, the priests were dismayed by the portrayal of Matthew as a holy fool rather than an inspired saint, and refused the painting. One of Caravaggio’s patrons was happy to take the rejected canvas. He was also able to convince the priests as San Luigi dei Francesi to allow Caravaggio to create another version. In the second version, the saint was far more distinguished, albeit still barefoot:

Matthew the shockingly illiterate peasant has suddenly been turned into Matthew the dignified, grey-haired sage. This scholar-saint kneels at his desk, quill pen at the ready. He is draped in red robes and has been equipped with an expression of dignified attentiveness. Rather than guiding his uncertain hand, the angel now counts off the verses as he dictates them. The pages of the book are no longer visible, but since the angel has got to the index finger of his left hand — number two, in the gestural rhetoric of the time, since Italians counted the number one with their thumbs —it seems that he has once more got to the start of the second verse, and Abraham’s begetting of Christ’s lineage. (Graham-Dixon, 2010, p 237).

Lavin (1974) compares Caravaggio’s two versions:

In the first version the divine word was conveyed mechanically through a laborious and earthbound process of physical instruction to a humble proletarian whose chief virtue lay in his knowledge of his own ignorance. In the second version it is conveyed miraculously to a stunned intellectual through a heaven-sent process of strictly rational analysis and exposition. Again, the key to the irony lies in the divine mystery itself, which brings truth to him who is wise, be he ignorant or learned.

 

The background is almost completely dark. The figures spiral around each other: divine forces binding the saint to the angel. The saint’s robe is pulled down by gravity; the angel’s robe billows upward toward heaven.

The table at which Matthew is writing is askew, and the bench upon which he kneels threatens to tumble out of the picture frame. This feeling of imminent upset fits with the revolutionary message of the gospel.

Lavin (1974) points out how Caravaggio was indebted to Tintoretto’s The Virgin Appearing to Saint Jerome (1583) which Caravaggio has probably seen in a 1588 etching by Agostino Carracci. And Caravaggio’s painting in its turn inspired Guido Reni’s 1635 depiction of Saint Jerome. The illustration shows the earlier etching on the left and later painting on the right:

 

However, no one – before or after – could ever rival Caravaggio’s airborne angels. Young and sensuous. they float lightly in the clouds as erotic representatives of the divine. The following illustration compares the angels in the Inspiration and the in the Martyrdom.  

Farewell

Caravaggio’s paintings for the Contarelli Chapel made him famous. They also represented a turning point in his choice of subject matter. From then on, he concentrated on religious themes. It was almost as though, like Matthew, he had been called to greater things. To see the chapel and the paintings is a deeply moving experience. But hard to describe, just as the chapel is notoriously difficult to photograph. We say farewell with a photograph by Robert Wash.

And the ending to a poem about The Calling of Saint Matthew by Karen Fish (2021, p 29)

Only a few ways to describe what actually happened—Matthew
touches his chest, indicating a confusion
with this unlikely enlistment.
His companions slouch, dumbfounded amid
the flush and feathers and swords.
There is the humble disbelief
all who are chosen share—that moment
when the world seems just a pile of hammers,
hatchets, buckets of coins—one
thinks plainly how unlikely,
absolved from all that is ordinary.

References

Allison, D. C. (2004). Matthew: a shorter commentary. T & T Clark International.

Camiz, F. T. (1990). Death and Rebirth in Caravaggio’s “Martyrdom of St. Matthew.” Artibus et Historiae, 11(22), 89–105.

Dubouclez, O. (2024). Le jeu de l’indécision. « Littéralisme » et ambivalence dans La Vocation de saint Matthieu du Caravage. Dix-septième siècle, 302(1), 5–28.

Fish, K. (2021). No chronology. University of Chicago Press.

Graham-Dixon, A. (2010). Caravaggio: a life sacred and profane. Allen Lane.

Hess, J. (1951). The chronology of the Contarelli Chapel. Burlington Magazine, 93(579), 186–201.

Hibbard, H. (1983). Caravaggio. Harper & Row.

Lavin, I. (1974). Divine inspiration in Caravaggio’s two St. Matthews. Art Bulletin, 56(1), 59–81.

Puttfarken, T. (1998). Caravaggio’s “Story of St Matthew”: a challenge to the conventions of painting. Art History, 21(2), 163–181.

Rowland, I. D. (2024). The lies of the artists: essays on Italian art, 1450-1750. MIT Press.

Thomas, T. (1985). Expressive aspects of Caravaggio’s first Inspiration of Saint Matthew. Art Bulletin, 67(4), 636–652.

Vodret Adamo, R., Cardinali, M., De Ruggieri, M. B., & Leone, G. (2011). Caravaggio: la Cappella Contarelli: Roma, Palazzo Venezia, 10 marzo-15 ottobre. Munus.

de Voragine, J. (1275, translated by W. Caxton, 1483) The Golden Legend or Lives of the Saints.

The Silk Roads were overland routes connecting China to the Mediterranean Sea, which allowed the trading of silk, paper, gold, jewels, horses, and other goods. These began during the 2^nd Century BCE at the time of the Roman Empire in the West and the Han Dynasty in the East. The Silk Roads remained active until the 15^th Century CE, when they were largely replaced by maritime trading routes. At present they are mainly used for archeological research and tourism. The illustration shows a modern camel caravan in the desert near Dunhuang. As well as trade goods, the Silk Roads facilitated the movement of religious ideas. Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Manichaeism, Christianity, and Islam followed the Silk Roads into China. Mithraism, Manichaeism and Islam spread into Europe.   

Central Asia

A map of the present political boundaries in central Asia will allow us to get our bearings:

The following map shows the topography of the region and traces one of the many possible Silk Roads from Chang’an (Xi’an) in China to Tyre on the Mediterranean.

The following diagram, modified from Wood (2002), shows the changes in altitude (in meters above sea level) over the journey. It also notes the main mountains that are traversed, the deserts that are crossed and the main rivers on the way.  

The Silk Roads spanned some 8000 km and were active for about 1700 years. They are described in multiple recent books (Frankopan, 2016; Hansen, 2017; Millward, 2013, Torr, 2018, Whitfield, 2024; Wood 2002). A striking TV series from Japan can be downloaded from archive.org. The following two maps by Simeon Netchev show the Silk Roads at two different points in time: the first map when trade began between the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty in the 1^st Century BCE, and the second map when the Silk Roads were at their height during the late 8^th Century CE with the Tang Dynasty in China and the Abbasid Caliphate in the West. The first map also shows the maritime routes connecting China, India and Europe, and the monsoon winds that facilitate them. These sea connections are sometimes considered the “Golden Road” (Dalrymple, 2025, pp 4-5).

The Mongol Empires (1206-1368) supported trade along the Silk Roads. However, in the 14^th Century CE the Mongol Empires fragmented, and the expansion of the Ottoman Empire (1299-1922) blocked overland connections between the Silk Roads and Europe. Trade between China and Europe continued using the maritime routes. Vasco da Gama made his first voyage from Portugal to India around the Cape of Good Hope in 1497. The overland Silk Roads soon became used only for local trade, and desert sands reclaimed many of the ancient trading posts (Beckwith, 2009, pp 232-262; Torr, 2018, pp 105-126).    

Many different empires established themselves for periods of time in central Asia (Beckwith, 2009). The following diagram, modified from Waugh (2009), shows some of the most important. Though having its capital in the east, the Mongol Empire (1206-1368 CE) extended all the way to Europe. 

 

The Library at Dunhuang

Since it will play a role in much of what will be said about the movement of religions along the Silk Roads, we shall briefly mention the Mogao Caves at Dunhuang (墩, dūn, tumulus/mound + 煌,huáng, shining/brilliant). Dunhuang, located on an oasis containing Crescent Lake and is surrounded by sand dunes, was an important stop on the Silk Road from the time of its beginning in the 2^nd Century BCE (Hansen, 2017, pp 288-335). Nearby is the Jade Gate – an opening in the Great Wall of China that allows entrance to the Hexi Corridor connecting the cities of Chang’an and Luoyang to the deserts of Xinjiang in Western China.

Buddhist monks first arrived in Dunhuang in the early centuries of the common era. In the 4^th Century CE, they began carving caves into of the sandstone cliffs 25 km southeast of the city. These Mogao Caves – “Caves of a Thousand Buddhas” – are a system of about 500 separate temples decorated with wall paintings and sculptures and connected by intricate stairs and platforms. By the 9^th Century, the monk Hong Bian had made the Three Realms Monastery near the caves into an important center of learning. When he died, his statue was placed in Cave 17. On the wall behind him were painted two banyan trees with a water bottle and a cloth bag hanging on the branches. Under one tree an acolyte holds a fan; under the other, a disciple holds the monk’s staff.

In 1002 CE the Karakhanids spread into the Taklamakan Desert and destroyed the Buddhist City of Khotan (Sinor, 1990). Though they had once followed both Buddhism and Christianity, the Karakhanids had converted to Islam in 934 CE and considered all other faiths as infidels. Fearful that Dunhuang might also be destroyed, the monks put all their treasured manuscripts and paintings in Cave 17 with the statue of Hong Bian, and sealed the cave off from the outside world (Rong, 1999). 

In 1900, while sweeping sand from the temple floor of Cave 17, a Daoist monk, a custodian for the caves, realized that the rear wall was false and discovered that the sealed-off chamber contained piles of ancient manuscripts. In sum there were about 50,000 manuscripts and other objects in the cave, which became known as the “Library Cave.” In 1907 the newly discovered treasure trove was examined by the explorer Aurel Stein, who purchased many of the manuscripts for the British Museum (Morgan & Walters, 2012). Paul Pelliot visited in 1908 and bought a set of manuscripts for the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

The following illustration shows on the left the entrance to the Mogao Caves. Most of the building is from the 20^th Century. On the upper right is the statue of Hong Bian in the Library Cave. On the lower right is an impression of what the cave must have looked like in 1900.

Most of the manuscripts found at Mogao concerned Buddhism and were written in Chinese. However, some of the manuscripts related to other religions such as Manichaeism, Christianity, Judaism and Daoism. Many ancient languages other than Chinese were also represented: Sanskrit, Tibetan, Sogdian, Hebrew, and Old Uyghur.

Judaism

One of the manuscripts from the Library Cave is a Hebrew prayer for forgiveness (selihah). At one time it was folded up, perhaps so that it could be carried easily in a small container as an amulet to ward off evil. The text does not directly quote scripture but is very biblical in its wording. The following illustration shows the complete manuscript on the upper left. The photograph has been lightened to facilitate reading. On the upper right is an enlargement of the first 4 lines together with a transcription (Koller, 2024). The English translation of these 4 lines is below together with a quotation form the book of Numbers showing a similar style.

The manuscript is dated to around 800 CE. This and a few other Hebrew manuscripts from other stations on the Silk Road suggest that Jewish merchants were involved in the trade between China and the West. There may therefore have been Jews in China during the Tang dynasty or even earlier. A group of Jews in Kaifeng in central China petitioned the emperor to build a synagogue in 1163 CE (Berg, 2024). Their ancestors may have originally travelled to China over the Silk Roads. Their descendants still live today in China.

 

Zoroastrians

The religion of Zoroastrianism was established toward the end of the second Millenium BCE, and became the state religion of the main Persian Empires: the Achaemenid (559-331 BCE), Parthian (559 BCE – 331 BCE) and Sasanian (224–651 CE). Zoroastrian priests were generally called magi.

(i) Biblical Magi

The Gospel of Matthew relates how three magi (translated as “wise men”) came from the East to visit the newborn Jesus in Bethlehem.

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judaea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem,

Saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him. (Matthew 2: 1-2)

These wise men may have been Zoroastrian priests from Persia. If so, they would have travelled along the Silk Roads. The illustration below shows a mosaic representation of the magi from the Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuove in Ravenna (565 CE). The magi are shown in typical Persian clothing: flowing capes and Phrygian caps.

(ii) Mithraism

Mithraism was a Roman Mystery Cult focused on the God Mithras, one of the many Gods (yazata) worshipped in Zoroastrianism. The cult involved secret meetings in underground temples called Mithraea, archeological evidence for which has been found throughout the Roman Empire:

Mithraism was active from about 50 CE to about 300 CE. In the 4^th Century CE Christianity was mandated as the sole state religion in the Roman Empire (Edict of Thessalonica, 380 CE). Thereafter Mithraism essentially vanished.

The Mithraeum was set up for a communal feast for the initiates, who were almost always men and mainly soldiers. One essential part of the temple was a fresco or sculpture of Mithras slaying a bull – the “tauroctony.” No one really understands what this sacrifice means. It might have something to do with redemption and salvation, much like the crucifix in a Christian church.

The iconography was stable across its many different locations. In the center, the God Mithras slays the bull. Above are representations of the sun and the moon, and below the bull is attacked by a crab, a snake and a dog. The following illustration shows a tauroctony from the 2^nd Century CE unearthed from the Villa Borghese in Rome:   

The cult was originally believed to have been imported into the Roman Empire by soldiers who had fought in the Parthian wars, a series of conflicts occurring from 54 BCE to 217 CE, and who had thereby been exposed to the Gods of Zoroastrianism. However, there are relatively few Mithraea in the Eastern reaches of the Empire. And there is no evidence that the worship of Mithra in Persia involved any of the apparent rituals that occurred in the Roman Mithraea. Some have therefore suggested that the cult was a Roman invention (e.g. Stoll, 2022). Indeed, some of the earliest Mithraea are concentrated near the city of Rome (Chalupa, 2016), Nevertheless, the cult was devoted to one of the Zoroastrian gods, and most of the early descriptions of the cult acknowledged its Persian origins (Boyce et al, 1991, pp 468-490).

One possibility is that Roman Mithraism allowed its cult members to embrace an “otherness” and make themselves distinct from their fellows:

the imagery of Mithras dressed in the Persian garment and soft shoes with Phrygian cap on top of his curly hair alluded to the Greek topoi of Persians who were Rome’s ‘exotic other’ and ‘fiercest foe’. Such an iconography enabled the Roman Mithraists to depict their god as a foreign deity and to identify themselves as those Roman elites who had the knowledge of worshiping the foreign god. The Oriental imagery of Mithras created a boundary for Mithraic brotherhood and distinguished the cultic community from other forms of religiosity and religious groups in the wider cultural and religious boundaries of Rome. Whatever its origin, the Roman mystery cult of Mithras strongly relied on Roman attitudes and romantic visions of Persia and the Parthians in particular. (Mahzjoo, 2024).

 

(iii) Sogdians

At the time when trading was at its height, the main middlemen on the Silk Roads were Sogdian merchants (Pin Lyu, 2024). Sogdia was the name for the area of land between the Amu Darya (or Oxus) and the Sri Darya Rivers. Its capital was Samarkand. The following map shows the location of Sogdia in Central Asia. The black lines show several of the Silk Roads:

The Sogdians were descendants of the ancient Scythians. At the time of the Achaemenid Empire, when they were known as Saka, they paid tribute to the Persian Emperor in the form of camels and horses.

During the time of the Sasanian Empire, Sogdia was at the eastern limits of the empire and practiced Zoroastrianism (Grenet, 2015). When the empire was invaded by the Muslims, these frontier regions were able to maintain their religious practices for several centuries.

During the Abbasid Caliphate the Sogdians traded extensively with the Chinese and established large merchant colonies in cities of northern China.

The following illustration shows on the left two bas-relief representations of Saka bringing camels and horses to the Emperor at Persepolis (6^th-5^th Century BCE). On the right is a Tang dynasty porcelain statuette showing a group of Sogdian musicians on a camel. This was found in Xi’an and dates to 723 CE. 

Zoroastrian funerary practices mandated that the corpse should not be allowed to pollute either the air or the land. Neither cremation nor burial was possible. Zoroastrians typically laid the corpse out on a stone bed and allowed vultures to strip the flesh from the bones. In China, Zoroastrians compromised by constructing closed tombs within which the deceased was laid out on a funerary couch and allowed to decay above ground. If the deceased was a rich merchant, this funerary bed could be quite ornate. The following illustration shows on the left a carving from a 6^th Century Zoroastrian funerary couch in Northern China, now in the Miho Museum in Japan. The upper half of the carving shows a Zoroastrian priest caring for the sacred fire during the funeral service for the deceased. He is recognized by the face mask that prevents him from contaminating the fire with his mortal breath. The mourners are behind the priest. A camel is recognized to the right of the sacred fire, and several pack horses are seen below. The upper right of the illustration shows how the complete funerary couch was set up.

The lower right shows a small ceramic statuette of a Zoroastrian priest with a face mask. Although he is sometimes considered a camel driver, he is more likely a priest tending to the sacred fire. The face mask is just too typical. The statuette was found in northern China and dates to the 8^th Century CE.

 

Buddhism

Gautama Buddha lived in the northeastern region of India in the 6^th or 5^th Century BCE. After his death his followers taught the new dharma throughout the Indian subcontinent. The Mauryan Empire (320 BCE–185 BCE) expanded to incorporate Greco-Persian lands in what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan. Ashoka (304–232 BCE), the third Mauryan Emperor, promoted Buddhist thought throughout his domain. 

(i) Gandhara

Few representations of the Buddha occur form the first centuries of the new religion. Since the teaching proclaimed that the everyday world was transient and misleading, artistic representations may have been considered unworthy. This changed when the faithful encountered artists of the Greco-Persian world in a region of northwest India called Gandhara. Realistic sculptures of the Buddha and his disciples proliferated. The following illustrations shows sculpture of the Buddha made in the Gandhara from the 1^st, 2^nd and 5^th Centuries CE:

 

(ii) Colossal Buddhas

As their religion spread along the Silk Roads, Buddhist monks began to carve statues of the Buddha out of the sandstone cliffs along the route. Some of these assumed colossal sizes (Wong, 2019). The earliest large Buddhas, up to 15 m tall, were carved at the Yungang Grottoes near Datong in Northern China beginning in 465 CE. Colossal seated Buddhas, 33 and 23 m tall, were carved in the Mogao caves near Dunhuang in the 7^th and 8^th Centuries CE.

And around 600 CE, in Bamiyan, located in present-day Afghanistan, 130 km northwest of Kabul, two huge standing Buddhas were carved, one 38 m and the other 55 m tall. Since details such as the folds in the robe and the facial features could not be carved in the sandstone, these were added to the rough-hewn statues using stucco. The arms were constructed using stucco on wooden armatures. Over the years much of the stucco work eroded away leaving the large ungainly limestone forms.

The people in the area when the statues were carved were Hephthalites. These people followed several different religions (Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and Manichaeism) and tolerated the work of the Buddhist monks.

In 2001 the Taliban enforced a Muslim edict forbidding artistic representations of human beings. The two Bamiyan Buddhas were destroyed.

The following illustration shows at the top a panorama of the Buddhas in the Bamiyan Valley before their destruction. The lower left of the illustration shows a close-up of the larger of the two Buddhas. The lower right compares before and after its destruction.

 

(iii) Avalokistesvara

Avalokistesvara was the bodhisattva of compassion. His name in Sanskrit means “he who looks down,” i.e. he who considers the concerns of the faithful. As Avalokitesvara travelled along the Silk Roads to China he slowly changed gender from male to female (Stein, 1986; Suebsantiwongse, 2025; Yu, 2001). In China she became known as Guānshìyīn, (觀世音, look/observe+people/world +sound/voice: “the one who perceives the cries of the world”) or Guanyin. As the deity moved to Japan, she became known as Kannon, and veered back toward masculinity.

Avalokistsevara characteristically holds a lotus flower and sometimes prayer bead. Sometimes he or she has multiple heads which make her vision and hearing more acute. Occasionally the deity has multiple arms the better to aid those in need. As Guanyin, she often carries a vase of pure water to relieve suffering.

The following illustration shows the transformation of Avalokistesvara. In order from left to right and then form up to down:

1. Stone, Avalokistesvara, Gandhara, 3^rd Century CE
2. Bronze, Avalokistesvara, Gandhara, 4^th Century CE
3. Stone, Avalokistesvara, Northern China, 6^th Century CE
4. Wood, Avalokistesvara with multiple heads, Northern China 11^th Century CE
5. Wood, Avalokistesvara “seated at royal ease,” China, 11^th Century CE
6. Bronze, Avalokistesvara, Nepal, 14^th Century CE
7. Gilded Wood, Kannon, Japan 11^th Century CE
8. Porcelain, Guanyin, China 17^th Century CE
9. Jade, Guanyin, China, 19^th Century CE
10. Titanium callosal statue (78 m) Nanshan Guanyin, Hainan Island, 21^st Century CE

 

(iv) The Diamond Sutra

As Buddhism travelled along the Silk Roads to China, the sacred texts began to be translated from Sanskrit to Chinese. One of the most important translators was Kumarajiva (344–413 CE) who was born in Kuqa on the northern edge of the Taklamakan desert. His father was a Buddhist monk from Kashmir. Around 400 CE Kumarajiva travelled to Chang’an where he wrote most of his translations of the Buddhist literature.

The original Diamond Sutra was likely composed shortly after the time of Gautama Buddha’s life in the 5^th Century BCE. However, it was not formally written down in Sanskrit until the 2^nd or 3^rd Century CE. The sutra narrates a dialogue between the Buddha and his elderly disciple Subhūti about the nature of reality and how to attain the wisdom that would release one from suffering. The world is transient and illusory; one must release oneself from any attachments; one must seek emptiness. The following is from Red Pine’s introduction to his translation of the sutra (2001):

following his Enlightenment, the Buddha had taught people to free themselves from suffering by realizing the impermanence and interdependence of everything upon which their suffering depended, including and especially themselves. The Buddha called this the realization of shunyata (emptiness), the view that because nothing exists independently of other things, it has no nature of its own, and every-thing is therefore empty, and this emptiness is the true nature of reality. Later, when the Buddha began teaching people to view emptiness itself as empty and to put the emptiness of emptiness to work in the liberation of all beings, few disciples grasped this new teaching, which he called the perfection of wisdom, the wisdom beyond wisdom.

One of the most important discoveries in the Mogao Caves near Dunhuang was a woodblock-printed copy of Kumarajiva’s translation of the Diamond Sutra. The pages were printed by Wang Jie in 868 CE, probably in Sichuan, and then pasted together to form a scroll about 5 m long. The colophon gives the date and notes that the sutra was being made freely available to all who wished to read. This is the oldest printed book of which we have a copy.  

The frontispiece of the scroll shows a woodblock drawing of the Buddha surrounded by bodhisattvas, and supernatural guardians. In the lower left is the disciple Subhūti. The following illustration shows this print together with details of the Buddha and his disciple redrawn by Zhao Ming An.

The following illustration shows the first page of text in the scroll along with a character-by-character translation of the title and the first few words of the sutra:

And the following illustration shows the last page of the scroll which includes the famous verse that the Buddha uses to describe the transience of the world. On the left, a character-by-character translation is followed by the English version of Red Pine, based on both the Sanskrit and the Chinese versions of the sutra (2001):

 

Christianity

During the first 4 centuries of Christianity, the nature of Jesus as both God and Man was extensively discussed. One position was that Jesus was of two distinct natures – dyophysite; another was that his two aspects were conjoined as one – miaphysite; and yet another was that his Jesus became fully divine – monophysite. Though these old distinctions are almost impossible to understand in modern times, in the 5^th Century CE they were matters of life and death. The Church of the East (also known as the Assyrian Church) distinguished itself as miaphysite, and became separate from the dyophysite Byzantine and Roman Churches in 451CE. These latter churches condemned as heretical the monophysite teachings of Nestorius, a theologian in the 5^th Century. The Church of the East is often known as the “Nestorian Church,” although its views on the nature of Jesus actually differed from those of Nestorius (Brock, 1996). Although the Church of the East remained separate from the Western Churches for many centuries, it has now established communal relations with the Roman Catholic Church.

 

(i) The Dunhuang Glora

Among the manuscripts found in the Mogao caves was a Chinese Christian Hymn loosely based on the Gloria in Excelsis Deo (Glory to God in the highest), also known as the Greater Doxology (words of praise), especially the version used in the Church of the East. The manuscript was probably written about 800 CE and provides clear evidence that missionaries of the Church of the East had travelled on the Silk Roads to China and were actively proselytizing there centuries before the Jesuits first arrived in the 15^th Century CE (Moule, 1930, Teng Li, 2024).

The hymn has 11 verses each containing 4 lines of length 7 syllables, in keeping with Chinese poetic practice. The following illustration shows the beginning of the hymn together with a character-by-character translation of the title and the first line.   

 

The following is a translation of the first three verses of the hymn (Moule, 1930, p 53; Henson, 2017, p 329)

If the highest heavens with deep reverence adore,
If the great earth earnestly ponders on general peace and harmony,
If man’s first true nature receives confidence and rest,
It is due to Alohê the merciful Father of the universe.

All the congregation of the good worship with complete sincerity;
All enlightened natures praise and sing;
All who have souls trust and look up to the utmost;
Receiving holy merciful light to save from the devil.

Hard to find, impossible to reach, upright, true, eternal,
Merciful Father, shining Son, holy Spirit, King,
Among all rulers you are Master Ruler,
Among all the world-honoured you are spiritual Monarch

“Alohê” is a Chinese transcription of the Syriac name for God.

 

(ii) The Jingjiao Stele

In 781 CE a monument dedicated to the Christian faith (景教,jingjiao, luminous religion) was erected in Chang’an (Keevak,2008; McGrath, 2021). The limestone stele is almost 3 m high. At the top is a cross and a nine-character title. The following illustration shows the stele in situ (before it was moved to a museum), an enlargement of the title, and a character-by-character translation.

The stele summarizes the beliefs of the Christian Church in an inscription of about 1900 characters. This mentions that the Christian church was first established in China in 635 CE through the efforts of the monk Alopen. At the bottom of the stele is a much shorter inscription in Syriac.

After the end of the Tang dynasty 907 CE, Christianity almost disappeared (Teng Li, 2024). The Jingjiao Stele was buried, either for protection by the monks or as an act of desecration by those who reviled the foreign religion. It was unearthed during the 17^th Century.

Nevertheless, the Church of the East continued to send missionaries along the Silk Roads and several centuries later, Christian Churches were built throughout the Mongol Empire. The Mongol Empire (1206–1368) and the Yuan Dynasty in China (1271–1368) were tolerant of the different religions. The foreign religions of Buddhism, Christianity, and Manichaeism contributed as much to society as the homegrown Daoism and Confucianism.

Manichaeism

Mani (216-274 CE) was a Persian prophet who conceived the world as divided between the light and the dark. He taught that the human soul was imprisoned by birth into the material world, and that the suffering that this entailed would only cease at death, which released the soul from the body. If one died free from sin, one’s soul would return to the realm of light. The dualistic religion that he founded – Manichaeism – flourished in the centuries after his death, spreading all the way to Spain in the west and China in the East.

(i) Spread to Europe

In Europe, Manichaeism declined after Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. However, some isolated groups, such as the Bogomils in Bulgaria and the Cathars in Southeast France, continued to follow Mani’s teachings:

(ii) Spread to China

Manichaeism spread along the Silk Roads into China during the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE). During the Uyghur Kahnate (744–840 CE) in what is now Northern China and Mongolia, Manichaeism was acknowledged as the state religion (Mackerras, 1990).

During the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368 CE), a large silk painting (158 by 60 centimetres) was made to illustrate the Manichaean cosmology. This showed the realm of light at the top. In the center was a representation of the judgment that occurs at death: the decision whether the soul is released into the realm of light or sent back to the hell on earth. The following illustration shows the painting with some explanatory analysis (Gulaczi, 2015, pp 247-258), and enlargements showing a portrait of Mani (from the left side of the New Aeon level) and details of the tangled judgement process: 

In Cao’an a small town on the west coast of China, a small temple built in 1339 CE was dedicated to Mani, the “Buddha of Light” (Lieu, 1998, pp 188-193).  Over the years the temple became used for Buddhist practices. The following illustration shows the bas-relief portrait of Mani over the altar and the inscribed stone in the grounds of the temple.

The inscription reads

Purity (清净, qīngjìng), Light (光明, guāngmíng),

Power (大力, dàlì), Wisdom (智慧, zhìhuì)

Supreme (無上, wúshàng), Ultimate Truth (至真, zhìzhēn)

Mani (摩尼, móní), the Buddha of Light (光佛 guāngfú)

The first four are the attributes of the Manichaean Heavenly Father. Mani considered himself as a prophet in the line of Zoroaster, Buddha and Christ. As such he could be conceived as one of the manifestations of the divine – the Buddha of Light.

 

Islam

After its founding in Arabia in 622 CE, Islam quickly spread to adjacent regions. By the time of the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258 CE), the community of the faithful (Ummah) extended all the way from Spain to the borders of China:

 

(i) Abbasid Caliphate

The Abbasid Caliphate with its capital in Baghdad oversaw a period of great prosperity and learning, that later became known as the Islamic Golden Age. At a time when Europe was going through the Dark Ages, Baghdad was a place where scholars studied and preserved the literature of the past and contributed to our knowledge such new ideas as algebra and trigonometry. Islamic physicians distinguished different diseases, and Islamic physicists mapped the heavens. Abassid architecture developed gorgeous arches and domes, stucco decoration with arabesque patterns, and walls covered with multicolored tiling.

The Abbasids made great use of the newly discovered paper (Schatzmiller, 2018). The technology of papermaking originated in China around the 1^st Century CE and was brought to the Middle East through the Silk Roads. The first paper mill in Baghdad was built in 795 CE. Paper made it easy to provide inexpensive books for scholars to study. Knowledge became no longer limited to the elites.    

The following illustration shows on the left a painting of a scholars in a library during the Abbasid Caliphate taken from a 13^th Century manuscript. This may represent the House of Wisdom, also known as the Grand Library of Baghdad, which was founded in the 8^th Century CE. On the right is a photograph of a honeycomb archway (muquarnas) from the Abbasid Palace in Baghdad built in the 12^th Century CE.

(ii) The Great Mosque in Xi’an

Islamic merchants came to China along the Silk Roads. By the 8^th Century the Muslim population of Chang’an (Xi’an) was sufficient to warrant the building of a mosque in the form of a temple. The Great Mosque of Xi’an (西安大清真寺,Xī’ān Dà Qīngzhēnsì) was first constructed in 742 CE, and rebuilt in its present form in 1384. Islam was referred to as 清真教 (Qīngzhēnjiào: pure and true religion), and a mosque is generally referred to as 清真寺 (Qīngzhēnsì: pure and true temple).

The following illustration shows a plan of the mosque together with photographs of the Phoenix Pavillion (鳳亭, fèng tíng), the “Examining the heart tower” (省心楼,shěng xīn lóu) which probably served as a minaret, and the ceiling of the Phoenix Pavilion:

 

Epilogue

For many centuries the Silk Roads were a conduit for goods to travel between East and West. The East produced silk, paper, tea, and porcelain. The West gave gold, silver, glass, cotton, and leather. The regions along the Silk Roads provided horses, camels, rugs, lapis lazuli and jade.

As well the Silk Roads allowed different religions to travel to distant countries. Buddhism came to China. Islam spread to both the East and the West. Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and Christianity also journeyed with the caravans. Travellers on the Silk Roads were missionaries as well as merchants (Foltz, 2010). 

Some feeling for the people of the Silk Roads can be found in the poem The Golden Road to Samarkand by James Elroy Flecker (1814-1915), a British poet who briefly worked in the consular services in the Middle East before dying at a young age of tuberculosis. The conclusion to his play Hassan, published posthumously in 1922, is a conversation among the members of a caravan about to leave Baghdad for Samarkand: 

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow
Across that angry or that glimmering sea.

White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand

…

Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells,
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

The following is a reading of these verses by Roger Helmer

And the musical introduction to the Japanese TV series on The Silk Roads by Kitaro:

 

References

Beckwith, C. I. (2009). Empires of the Silk Road: a history of central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the present. Princeton University Press,

Berg, I. M. (2000). Among the Jewish descendants of Kaifeng. Judaism, 49(1), 103.

Boyce, M., Grenet, F, & Beck, R. (1991). A history of Zoroastrianism. Volume 3. Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman rule. E. J. Brill.

Brock, S. P. (1996). The ‘Nestorian’ Church: A Lamentable Misnomer. Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 78(3), 23–35.

Chalupa, A. (2016). The origins of the Roman cult of Mithras in the light of new evidence and interpretations: the current state of affairs. Religio, 24(1), 65-96.

Dalrymple, W. (2025). The golden road: how ancient India transformed the world. Bloomsbury.

Flecker, J. E. (1922). Hassan: the story of Hassan of Bagdad and how he came to make the golden journey to Samarkand: a play in five acts. William Heinemann.

Foltz, R. C. (2010). Religions of the Silk Road: premodern patterns of globalization. (2^nd Ed). Palgrave Macmillan.

Frankopan, P. (2016). The Silk Roads: a new history of the world. Alfred A. Knopf.

Grenet, F. (2015). Zoroastrianism in central Asia. In Stausberg, M., Vevaina, Y. S.-D., & Tessmann, A. (Eds.) The Wiley-Blackwell companion to Zoroastrianism. (pp 129-146). Wiley.

Gulácsi, Z. (2015). Mani’s pictures: the didactic images of the Manichaeans from Sasanian Mesopotamia to Uygur Central Asia and Tang-Ming China. Brill.

Hansen, V. (2017). The Silk Road: a new history with documents. Oxford University Press.

Keevak, M. (2008). The story of a stele: China’s Nestorian Monument and its reception in the West, 1625-1916. Hong Kong University Press.

Koller, A. (2024). A Hebrew text from the Silk Road: a prayer for forgiveness and success from the Eighth Century.  In Berger, S. Z. et al. (Eds). Wisdom has built her house. A tribute in honor of and in memory of Mrs. Leah Adler. (pp 181-187). Yeshiva University. 

Lieu, S. N. C. (1998). Manichaeism in Central Asia and China. Brill.

Lijuan Li (2021). On the transmission of the Gloria in excelsis Deo: Daqin jingjiao sanwei mengdu zan 大秦景教三威蒙度讃 In Talay, Shabo. (Ed.). Überleben im Schatten: Geschichte und Kultur des syrischen Christentums. (pp 111-113). Harrassowitz Verlag.

Mackerras, C. (1990, online 2008). The Uighurs. In Sinor, D. (Ed.). The Cambridge history of early Inner Asia. (pp 317-342). Cambridge University Press.

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McGrath, A, (2021). China’s buried Christian history. Sapentia.

Millward, J. A. (2013). The silk road: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

Morgan, J., & Walters, C. (2012). Journeys on the Silk Road: a desert explorer, Buddha’s secret library, and the unearthing of the world’s oldest printed book. Lyons Press.

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Red Pine. (2001). The Diamond Sutra: the perfection of wisdom. Counterpoint.

Schatzmiller, M. (2018). The adoption of paper in the Middle East, 700-1300 AD. Journal of the economic and social history of the Orient, 61 1-32.

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Stein, R. A. (1986). Avalokiteśvara/Kouan-yin, un exemple de transformation d’un dieu en déesse. Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, 2(1), 17–80.

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Suebsantiwongse, S. (2025). A network of compassion: the transmission and development of the cult and iconography of Cakravarticintāmaṇi Avalokiteśvara across the Maritime Silk Routes. Religions, 16(2), 178.

Teng Li (2024). Christianity on the Silk Roads. In Henderson, J., L. Morgan, S., & Salonia, M. (Eds). Reimagining the Silk Roads: Interactions and Perceptions Across Eurasia. (pp 174-185). Taylor & Francis

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Zoroaster, a legendary prophet who probably lived toward the end of the 2^nd Millennium BCE, proclaimed a new religion based on a belief in a supreme god Ahura Mazda (Lord of Wisdom) who fights for truth and order (asha) against the forces of deceit and chaos (druj) led by Angra Mainyu (Evil Spirit). Since fire is the symbol of asha, Zoroastrian temples contain an eternal sacred flame, which represents the presence of Ahura Mazda. Zoroastrianism is one of the oldest organized religions of the world and one of the smallest, with only about 120,000 adherents in the world today.

 

History

Sometime between 4000 and 1500 BCE a people speaking a proto-Indo-European language came to Eastern Iran and Northwest India. They may have come from the Steppes or from Anatolia or both (see Heggarty et al, 2023). As well as their language they carried with them a multitude of gods and a sense of cosmic order or justice. These migrants divided into those that travelled into India speaking Indo-Aryan languages such as Sanskrit, and those that came to Iran speaking Iranian languages such as Avestan. A concept of cosmic order common to both groups became known as rta in the Sanskrit Vedas, the earliest of Hindu Scriptures, and as asha in the Avestan Gathas, the earliest Zoroastrian scriptures (Schlerath & Skjærvø, 2018).

Zarathustra was a prophet in Iran who lifted one of the many gods above the others. His name perhaps meant “handler of camels” and his God was Ahura Mazda. The name was transliterated into Greek as Zoroaster, which could be read as “pure star,” but this meaning was coincidental. No one knows anything for certain about the life of Zoroaster, but most scholars estimate that he lived sometime toward the end of the 2^nd Millennium BCE (Boyce, 1989, p 190; Nigosian, 1993, p 15; Hartz, 2004, p 20; Stausberg, 2008, p 20; Malandra, 2015), although he might have lived at anytime between 1500 BCE and the founding of the Achaemenid Empire in 550 BCE by Darius the Great. Zoroastrianism became the official religion of that empire. The Behistun monument near Kermanshah shows Darius trampling his rival Gaumata and welcoming as prisoners the kings that he has conquered.

The extensive cuneiform inscription, written in Old Persian, Akkadian and Elamite, describes his conquests and affirms

King Darius says: This is what I have done, by the grace of Ahuramazda have I always acted. Whosoever shall read this inscription hereafter, let that which I have done be believed. You must not hold it to be lies.

The following map shows the extent of the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BCE):

The following shows an enameled brick panel from the Palace of Darius created in Susa in about 550 BCE and presently in the Louvre Museum. It shows two guardian aladlammu, also known as lamassu: composite creatures with the body of a bull or lion, a human head and wings of an eagle (Ritter, 2010). This motif originates in earlier Mesopotamian empires, particularly the Assyrian. The human head represents intelligence, the bull’s body strength and the eagle’s wings freedom. Above the aladlammu is a winged disc which represents the grace of Ahura Mazda. This motif was also present in the Behistun inscription:

The Achaemenid Empire replaced the preceding empires of the Assyrians, Babylonians and Medians. In 480 BCE Xerxes, the son of Darius invaded Greece. Though the Persians were able to sack Athens, the invasion ultimately failed in the Peloponnese.  

In 334 BCE Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) invaded Persia. Over the next few years, he established his own empire stretching from Alexandria in Egypt to the borderlands of India. Upon his death, his general Seleucus I Nicator ruled over the eastern part of this region as the Seleucid Empire (312-63 BCE). The Romans later took control of the Western part of this empire (Syria), leaving Iran to be ruled by the Parthians (247 BCE – 224 CE). The greatest of the Parthian emperors was Mithradates I, whose name meant “gift of Mithra,” and who reigned from 165–132 BCE. Then, from 224 to 651 CE, Iran became the center of the Sasanian Empire. Throughout this prolonged period of changing empires, Zoroastrianism remained as the official Persian religion (Malandra, 2015). By the time of the Sasanian empire, the Avestan language had evolved into Middle Persian (Pahlavi), the direct ancestor of modern Persian (Farsi): Ahura Mazda was now named Ormazd, and Angra Mainyu had become Ahriman.

The following illustration shows a relief carving at Naqsh-e Rostam from about 235 CE, showing the investiture of Ardashir I (180–242 CE), the founder of the Sasanian Empire, as the Shahanshah (King of Kings) by Ahura Mazda. On the right, the horse of Ahura Mazda tramples Ahriman beneath its hooves. Ahura Mazda is giving the diadem of kingship to Ardashir, whose own horse tramples the body of Artabanus V, the last king of the Parthian Empire. He holds in his left hand a barsom (a bundle of twigs used in Zoroastrian rituals). Ardashir wears an elaborate turban (korymbos). Behind Ardashir is the Zoroastrian high priest, Kartir.   

In 633, one year after the founding of Islam, Muslim forces under Muhammed first invaded the western regions of the Sasanian Empire. The Empire had been weakened by prolonged conflict with the Byzantine Empire, and by fragmentation into different feuding regions. Umar ibn al-Khattab, the second Rashidun caliph continued the conquest and by his death in 644 CE most of Persia was under Muslim rule. Some of the central regions, such as the province of Khorasan, were not fully subjugated until 651 (Litvinsky et al., 1996). Although under Arab rule, Persia was able to maintain much of its culture, particularly during the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258; 1261–1517). Although Arabic became the dominant language in other areas of Muslim rule, the Persian language flourished. Ferdowski’s Shanameh, the great epic of Persian poetry, completed in 1010 CE, retold the history of Persia from ancient times to time of its writing. Nevertheless, Islam completely replaced Zoroastrianism as the state religion (Choksy 2018).

The Muslims tolerated Christians and Jews since they were “People of the Book,” but persecuted Zoroastrians as pagan infidels. Many fire-temples were transformed into mosques and many Zoroastrians converted to Isam. Some faithful Zoroastrians retreated to inland regions of Persia, such as Khorasan. In the 9^th Century, Babak Khorramdin led a brief Zoroastrian rebellion against Arab rule, but this came to naught. Some Zoroastrians decided to leave their newly Islamic land and settle in India (Hinnells & Williams, 2007). Zoroastrians had traded with the Indians of the Gujarat region even before the Muslim conquest. A Zoroastrian migration to India were described in an epic poem Qissa-i Sanjan, written by a Zoroastrian priest in 1599 CE. The poem recounts how the Zoroastrians sailed from the Island of Hormuz and initially settled in Diu before moving on to Sanjun and thence to Mumbai. Although the poem describes one specific migration, groups of Zoroastrians likely moved to India from Persia over several centuries, and over several routes.

A famous story is told about the arrival of the Zoroastrians in Gujarat. The local king Jadi Rana explained that his kingdom was full and showed a cup of milk filled to the brim to illustrate this problem. One of the Zoroastrian priests added sugar to the milk to show how the new immigrants could enrich the land without displacing anyone. Asylum was granted, and Zoroastrians still partake of faloodeh – a dessert of vermicelli, milk, sugar and rosewater – at times of celebration

Over the years, the Zoroastrian immigrants became a flourishing community in northeast India, known as the Parsis or “those from Persia” (Hinnells & Williams, 2007). The Parsis have maintained the rituals of their Zoroastrian forebears. Though they remain small in numbers (about 50,000 in the present day), they have contributed extensively to the economy and culture of India. About 20,000 Zoroastrians remain in modern Iran. Other smaller Zoroastrian communities exist in North America and Europe, set up by Iranian emigrants or by Parsis mercantile connections. The total number of Zoroastrians in the world is about 120,000.

Basic Principles of Zoroastrianism

As in any religion, the founding texts of Zoroastrianism provide sometimes contradictory claims. This problem is exacerbated by the difficulty in interpreting the language in which these texts were written. A text entitled The Advice Book of Zarathustra from the Pahlavi period (probably originating in the late Sasanian dynasty but not written down until much later) begins with the following verses which summarize the main tenets of the Zoroastrian faith (Vevaina, 2015, pp 214-215; Skjaervo, 2011, pp 192-193):

The Teachers of Old, who have the foremost knowledge of the Religion, have said that, at the age of fifteen, one should know the following: “Who am I, and to whom do I belong? Where did I come from, and to where will I go back? … And what are my duties in the world of the living (getig), and what is my reward in the world of thought (menog)? … Do I belong to Ohrmazd, or do I belong to Ahreman, to the gods or to the demons, to the good or the bad? Am I a human or a demon? How many are the paths, and which is my Religion?… … Are the Origins one or two? From whom is goodness and badness?

I belong to Ohrmazd, not to Ahreman, to the gods, not to the demons, to the good, not to the bad. I am a human, not a demon, the creature of Ohrmazd, not of Ahreman … My duties and obligations are to think about Ohrmazd that he is, has always been, and will always be, that he is the immortal ruler, boundless, and pure, while Ahreman is not and shall be destroyed … have to have no doubt that good deeds are good for me and bad deeds bad for me; that my friend is Ohrmazd and my enemy Ahrimen; and that the path of the Tradition is one …The one path is that of good thought, speech, and action; paradise is the light and purity and limitlessness of Ohrmazd the Creator, who has always been and shall always be. Another is the path of evil thought, speech, and action. This is the darkness, boundedness, all evil and destruction, and badness of the wicked one, the Foul Spirit, who once upon a time was not in this creation and who once in the future shall not be in the creation of Ohrmazd, but in the end will be annihilated. …I must have no doubt about this too, that the Origins are two: the Creator and the Destroyer. The Creator is Ohrmazd, from whom all goodness and all light emanates. The Destroyer is the wicked Evil Spirit, who is all badness and full of death, wicked and deceiving. … I have to have no doubt about these things, … that very person is mortal; that the soul (gyān) is expelled and the body destroyed; that the accounting takes place at the third dawn (sidōsh); that the Resurrection and the Final Body will come about.

In summary: One God – Ahura Mazda (Ohrmazd) – created and rules the world according to the principles of asha. He and will ultimately triumph over the forces of druj (deceit, evil) led by Angra Mainyu. Human beings must follow the way of asha by means of good thought, good speech and good action. This will justify their resurrection after death.

 

(i) Asha

The starting point for any interpretation of Zoroastrianism is the concept of asha (or asa, depending on the transliteration). This Avestan word goes back long before Zoroaster to the time when the proto-Indo-European language was being formulated. It is homologous to rta Sanskrit (Schlerath & Skjærvø, 2018). The meaning of asha is very difficult to express in a single word. Irani (1990) proposes that it contains four main ideas:

The first is the most general philosophical concept, Truth. The second is the cosmological implication of the Order underlying the universe. The third and fourth belong to the moral dimension – Right as the most general term of moral correctness, and Justice as the moral principle of the social system.

In these early times before the monotheistic reformations of Zoroaster, one of the many gods, Mithra (or Mitra), was responsible for the maintenance of asha. The name of Mitra combines mi (bind) with tra (causing to) to suggest covenants, oaths, truth-telling and contracts – the bases of social order and harmony. Mithra is portrayed as radiating light like the sun. Boyce (1975, p 27) describes Mithra’s role:

One of the striking features of his activity is that he is concerned with upholding the great Indo-Iranian principle of rta/asa. This term, it is now generally accepted, represents a concept which cannot be precisely rendered by any single word in another tongue. It stands, it seems, for “order” in the widest sense: cosmic order, by which night gives place to day and the seasons change; the order of sacrifice, by which this natural rhythm is strengthened and maintained; social order, by which men can live together in harmony and prosperity; and moral order or “truth”. In both India and Iran to possess rta or asa, to be rtavan or asavan, was to be a just and upright being; and when used of the dead these words implied that the departed was blessed in the hereafter, having attained the Paradise which he deserved.

Ahmadi (2015) proposed that asha in effect refers to the whole of creation, that which has been ordered, and might be expressed by the word “cosmos” which derives from the Greek kosmein (to arrange or to put into proper order). (“Cosmetic” has the same etymology.)

The concept that there is some underlying order in the universe, that everything is unfolding as it should, is common to many different philosophies and religions. The asha/rta of the Indo-European forebears is closely related to Maat in Ancient Egypt, to the Dao in China and to the logos in Greek philosophy. To my mind these concepts essentially indicate that the world is intelligible. There is an order behind things that we can try to understand and to follow, “a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will” (Hamlet, V:2)

Asha is the subject of a Zoroastrian prayer recited during all Zoroastrian observances (Rose, 2011a, p 24)

Ashem vohu
vahishtem asti
ushta asti
ushta ahmai
hyat ashai vahishtai ashem

Asha is the best good
It is happiness [or ‘it is desired’],
according to our desire, there will be
Asha which belongs to the best Asha.”

Another translation (Nigosian 1993, p 103) is

Righteousness [is] good, it is best.
According to [our] wish it is,
according to our wish it shall be.
Righteousness belongs to Asa Vahista.

 

(ii) Monotheism

Zoroaster’s great contribution to human religious thought was to proclaim one God – Ahura Mazda – as the supreme creator and lord of the universe. The Jewish patriarch Abraham who may have lived sometime toward the end of the 2^nd millennium BCE is generally considered the first monotheist. However, recent evidence suggests that although Jewish monotheism had its beginnings around the 1^st Millenium BCE, it was not fully formulated until the period of the Babylonian Exile in the 6^th Century BCE (Gnose, 1997, Chapter 2). Yahweh was initially considered as the God of the Israelites and only later evolved to be the God of the whole universe. Zoroaster probably lived at around the same time as Abraham, though both are legendary rather than historical figures, Zoroaster may have been the first prophet to preach universal monotheism, and Zoroastrianism the first monotheistic religions to survive its founder (Ferrero, 2021). The Egyptian Akhenaten (servant of Aten, 1353-1336 BCE) favored the Sun God Aten above all other gods, but Atenism did not persist beyond his brief lifetime.

Ahura Mazda was recognized before Zoroaster, though he was not as clearly defined as some of the other gods of the Indo-European pantheon, such as Mithra (god of the sun and of covenants) and Apam Napat (god of water and fertility). Zoroaster reportedly had a vision in which he met Ahura Mazda in person, and recognized him as the supreme creator, and source of asha. In the religion that he proclaimed, some of the other gods were somehow subsumed into Ahura Mazda. Hymns are offered in praise of both Ahura Mazda and Mithra. Many other gods remained separate but were still considered worthy of worship (yazata). These were subservient to the will of Ahura Mazda (Hintze, 2014). In all monotheistic religions, the supreme God, even though omnipotent, needs other heavenly beings to facilitate his plans. In the Abrahamic religions, these are called angels.

One of the earliest acts of Ahura Mazda was to create the Amesha Spenta (Immortal Benevolents). These are as much abstract concepts – emanations from the mind of Ahura Mazda – as actual divinities. They share some of the characteristics of the Seven Heavenly Virtues (prudence, justice, temperance, fortitude, faith, hope, and charity) in Christianity and their organization is related to the Five Great Elements (Pancha Mahabhuta, earth water, fire, air, ether) of Hinduism. They are generally considered six in number (Stausberg, 2008, p 29) though some authors describe seven (Rose, 2011a, p 29). The following illustration shows some modern images:

(iii) Dualism

Essential to Zoroastrianism is the concept of dualism (Gnoli, 2017; Vevaina, 2015). In the Gathas (Y 30:3-4), Zoroaster reveals his vision (or dream) about the two opposing forces in the world (Ahmadi, 2013). Our incomplete understanding of the Avestan language limits our interpretation but the following is one translation:

The two primeval Spirits, who are twins, were revealed to me in sleep. Their ways of thinking, speaking, and behaving are two: the good and the evil. And between these two ways the wise men have rightly chosen, and not the foolish ones. And when these two Spirits met, they established at the origin life and non-life, and that at the end the worst existence will be for the followers of Falsehood and for the follower of Truth the Best Thinking. (translation from Gnoli, 2017).

The two spirits are Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu. Ahura Mazda, assisted by the amesha spenta and the yazatas, supports asha (truth, justice, order, righteousness). Angra Mainyu promotes druj (lie, wrongdoing, chaos, evil) with the support of daevas (devils, demons).

Angra Mainyu is a spirit of destruction, incapable of creating anything, and inactive in the absence of creation. Its home is the kingdom of death. Boyce (1975, p 199) describes the spirit:

Angra Mainyu is seen both as actively malignant, a militant foe, and also as a mere shadow, a negation of good; for traditionally existence in the kingdom of the dead was characterised by a lack of substance, by a spectral quality without positive capacities, a nothingness.

Henning (1951, p 46) describes how Zoroaster’s dualism supplements his monotheism, by explaining the existence of evil and suffering in the universe:

Any claim that the world was created by a good and benevolent god must provoke the question why the world, in the outcome, is so very far from good. Zoroaster’s answer, that the world had been created by a good god and an evil spirit, of equal power, who set out to spoil the good work, is a complete answer: it is a logical answer, more satisfying to the thinking mind than the one given by the author of the Book of Job, who withdrew to the claim that it did not behove man to inquire into the ways of Omnipotence.

At the beginning Zoroastrianism proposed an ethical rather than an ontological dualism: good (asha, vohu) versus evil (druj, aka), rather than spirit (menog) versus matter (etig). However, as the religion evolved, the dualism extended into the ontological as well. However, the two dualisms were orthogonal to each other. Both good and evil beings could be either spiritual or material (or both). The following is an explanatory diagram from Rose (2011b, p 27):

What is special about Zoroastrian dualism is the role played by human beings. The dualism of Zoroastrianism does not remove the basic problem of monotheism: how could an omni-benevolent and omnipotent God allow so much evil and suffering in the world. However, it does allow that human beings play a very significant role in the fight against evil. By our choices and our actions we can help the forces of good (Nolan, 2025): 

The battle between Good and Evil has been in process since Time began and will go on till the end of the world: but as the two powers are evenly matched, its outcome is uncertain. The decisive factor will be the collective action of humanity. Enry man or woman is free to choose which side to join: his or her support will add permanent strength to the side chosen, and so, in the long run. the acts of Man will weigh the scales in favour of the one side or the other. Thus Zoroaster, beside his principal two powers, recognizes a third, which, though not of equal rank, holds the balance. (Henning, 1951, pp 45-46).

 

(iv) Souls and their Fravashi

Each human being has a spiritual soul (urvan) which exists before birth and which survives the death and decay of the physical body. The fravashi are spiritual beings which foster, protect and preserve these individual souls (Boyce, 2015). The concept likely began in relation to the spirits that protect warriors during battle, but in Zoroastrianism, it became applicable to all living things. The fravashi are responsible for inserting the soul into the newborn, protecting the individual during his or her life, promoting good thoughts, speech and action, and rescuing the soul after the death of the body.  Stausberg (2008, p 38) suggests that they can be considered “guardian angels.”

Various etymologies have been suggested for the word fravashi (Boyce 2015). The root var can be related to “impregnate,” or to “turn” (which with fra, away, could yield the idea of protection), or to “choose” (especially in the sense of confessing a faith).

The relationship between the fravashi and the urvan is not clear. In some Zoroastrian writings they are conjoined:

The developed doctrine came to be that each fravasi existed from the beginning of time in a spiritual (menog) state; that in due course it was born, clad in a physical body, into this world; and that after death it lived once more in a spiritual state, to be re-united again ultimately with its resurrected physical body. In both the second and third states the fravasi tended to be identified with the urvan, as these concepts merged. The question then was pondered as to which, in the present state of the world, was the most powerful, the unborn fravasi, or that of a living person, or that of a dead one? This again suggests the theorising of priestly schools rather than a point of any popular concern. The Zoroastrian answer was that the fravasis of the great men of the faith, whether already dead or not yet born, were the most powerful, but that otherwise the fjravasis of the living were the strongest – a doctrine which seems to reflect the profound universal instinct that it is better to be alive in the flesh in the present familiar world than to exist in any other state. (Boyce, 1975, p 128)

 

(v) The Faravahar

The Faravahar or Farohar has become a prominent symbol of Zoroastrianism. It has its origins in the winged disk that was used in Ancient Egyptian and Assyrian cultures to denote the power and protection of the sun god. In the Faravahar, the winged disk supports a god or person, holding a ring. In this form, the symbol first appears during the Achaemenid era.   

 

The following are photographs of the Tomb of Darius the Great at Naqsh-e Rustam (circe 500 BCE) taken by Richard Stone. The upper photograph is the original and the lower has been enhanced to show the relief carvings. Darius stands before the sacred fire and the faravahar symbol floats above.

No one is sure exactly what the faravahar symbol means. A common interpretation is that it represents Ahura Mazda. Shahbazi (1974) argues against this since the few accepted representations of Ahura Mazda, such as the previously illustrated relief at Naqsh-e Rostam, show him holding a barsom.

There are actually very few representations of Ahura Mazda. My intuition is that the supreme deity Ahura Mazda is far beyond any portrayal by human hands, and that those supposed depictions more likely represent priests in his service, or one of the Amesha Spentas such as Khshathra Vairya, who confers temporal powers on worthy human leaders.

Another interpretation of the faravahar is that the symbol represents the individual human soul and/or its fravashi.  The following description is along these lines:   

It represents the link between the spiritual and physical worlds. The human form in the center is encircled by a ring that represents the eternal soul. The figure’s head reminds people that they have free will, a mind and an intellect with which to choose good. The right hand points upward to lead people toward Asha, the path of Truth. In the left hand is a ring symbolizing the just power of Khshathra Vairya. The figure has wings to help the soul fly upward and progress. It has a tail that serves as a rudder to help the soul balance between the opposing forces of good and evil. These forces are represented by the curved hooks on either side of the tail. The three sections of the tail, which appear as layers of feathers, remind people of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds. Throughout life, the human soul is caught between good and evil, Truth and the Lie. But with the heavenly help, or wings, of Ahura Mazda, the soul may soar to eternal goodness and light. (Harz, 2004, p 9)

According to this approach, the faravahars depicted on the historical reliefs likely represent the the fravashi of the king or priest that is the subject of the carving. Shahbazi (1974) argues against this interpretation since the faravahar has no individuality. Furthermore, the fravashi were initially considered female whereas the faravahar is always male.

Another possibility is that the symbol represents Khshathra Vairya the Amesha Spenta of righteous power, who is typically shown holding a ring or diadem.

A final interpretation, and the one that I prefer, is that the faravahar symbolizes the concept of khvarenah (or farr in New Persian) (Shahbazi, 1980; Boyce, 1982, pp 103-105). This is the right to rule conferred by Ahura Mazda upon those deserving dominion over their fellow men. The leader may become radiant (hvar means sun), and remain so if he rules in accord with asha. The concept of khvarenah has also been translated as “divine glory”

In modern times the faravahar has been used outside of any religious connotation as a symbol of Iranian nationalism. For example, it formed part of the coat of arms of the Pahlavi dynasty who ruled Iran from 1925 until the Iranian Revolution in 1979.  

 

(vi) Eschatology

Ultimately, Zoroastrians believe that the struggle between good and evil will be won by the forces of good, and the universe will be renewed (Moazami, 2000; Kreyenbroek, 2002; Staussberg, 2008, pp 39-42; Cereti, 2015). This is the doctrine of frashokereti (Avestan, making into initial state, restoration; Middle Persian frashgird).

When the end-times draw near, a virgin will bathe in the waters of Kayanse, a mythical lake that preserves the seed of Zoroaster, and will conceive the savior Saoshiant (he who brings strength), who will lead the forces of good. The savior is also named Astvat-ereta – ‘the one through whom Asha has bones’ (Rose, 2011b, p 44). He will defeat Angra Mainyu in battle, and will cause all who have died to be resurrected.

The Saoshyant will bring about the Resurrection, and will hold an assembly of all men and women in which they will realize their good and wicked deeds. There will be a Final Judgment and those to whom sin still clings will undergo another short period of punishment in hell (this time not as spirits but in the material body), while the righteous will again enjoy the delights of paradise. Then all the metal contained in the mountains of the earth will be melted. A river of molten metal will thus be formed, through which all men must pass; for those who are free of sins, this will be like a bath in warm milk, but those whose sins have not been completely atoned for will experience a fierce burning. All men, thus cleansed, will then meet together and praise Ohrmazd. (Kreyenbroek, 2002, p 46).

There are clear similarities between these Zoroastrian prophecies, which were most fully developed during the Achaemenid era, and the concepts of the Messiah that developed in Judaism at about the same time, and which significantly affected Christianity. Which of the prophecies came first, and how each tradition contributed to the other is not known (Hultgard in Stausberg, 2008, pp 106-110).

Mary Boyce notes that the ideas of an end-time and of a final judgement distinguishes Zoroastrianism from the prevalent idea of eternal reincarnation that is the basis of Hinduism and Buddhism.

With this belief in an end to human history Zoroaster appears to have made another profound break with pagan ideas, whereby (to judge from the Vedas) the generations of men were seen as succeeding one another remorselessly like waves of the sea. The strong sense inculcated by Zoroaster of both time and purpose, of all mankind and all spenta being striving towards a common end, a foreseeable goal, has been held by some to be the most remarkable characteristic of his teachings.  (Boyce, 1975, p 233).

Another intriguing aspect of the Zoroastrian view of the final judgment is that it provides universal access to paradise. A logical problem in the Christian account of judgment is why an omnibenevolent God would not forgive everyone. In the Zoroastrian account, the good are quickly taken into the new world and those tainted by sin can have their evil erased by some sort of painful purification. The rewards offered in Zoroastrianism are quasi-universal:

The righteous who are barely affected by purification and those who become entirely good without impinging on their continued survival are saved and have the best outcome. Those who undergo so much change in the purification process that it is not entirely determinate whether the post-purification person is the same as the person before purification, and in extreme cases, it is determinate that a new person emerges from the process, albeit one who retains important continuities with the pre-purification individual. (Nolan, 2025, pp 49-50)

There are similarities here to the Catholic concept of Purgatory. However, access to Purgatory is only allowed to Christian believers who repent. Non-believers and those who do not repent remain eternally damned.

 

Zoroastrian Practices

(i) Fire Temples

Fire (atar) is an essential component of all Zoroastrian rituals and religious ceremonies:

The flame is considered to be the visible sign of Ahura Mazda’s presence, the symbol of his truth (asha). According to tradition, fire was used by Ahura Mazda in the creation of cattle and human beings … and fire will be used again by him when he brings about the final renovation of the universe. (Nigosian, 1993, p 112). 

In Zoroastrian fire-temples, an eternal fire was kept burning so that worshippers could at any time be in the presence of Ahura Mazda. The fire burns during the Yazna, a ceremony wherein the priest recites passages from the Avestan scriptures.  The following shows the consecrated flame in a fire-temple in Yazd in central Iran:

The fire must be protected from pollution. Only clean and dry wood (typically sandalwood) should be placed on the fire. Priests tending the fire wear masks so that their mortal breath does not reach the flames.   

 

(ii) Burial

Zoroastrians did not cremate their dead for such a process would defile the fire which they hold sacred. They also did not bury their dead, for such a process would pollute the earth. They resorted to “excarnation:” leaving the corpse out for carrion birds to cleanse. In ancient times this was done in open areas of desert. After the Islamic invasion, Zoroastrians constructed specially raised buildings called dakhma (towers of silence) for their dead (Boyce, 1975, pp 325-330; Russell, 2013). These were generally located upon small hilltops.

After the funeral rites the corpse was taken by dakhma attendants and laid out on beds arranged in circles around a central pit. Male bodies were relegated to the outer circle, female bodies to the next circle and the bodies of children were placed in the inner circle. After several days vultures will have stripped the bones of their decaying flesh. The bones are then raked into the central pit where they will be cleansed by the rains. Over time the cleansed bones will disintegrate and be washed by the rains into wells, whence their dust will return to the earth.

Most of the dakhmas in Iran have not been active since the Middle Ages. A few survived but their usage was declared illegal in the 1970s. The Parsis community in Mumbai maintained dakhmas in the suburbs of the city. The first tower was consecrated in 1670. With the spread of urbanization and the decline in the population of scavenger birds, these have become inactive (Karkaris, 2015).

The following diagram shows a cross-section and a bird’s eye view of a dakhma

The following illustration shows two views of the dakhma at Yazd in Iran, the first from above and the second from below. .

Nowadays most Zoroastrians are buried in the ground in concrete-sealed tombs to prevent any contamination of the earth by the decaying corpse.

 

Descendants of Zoroastrianism

(i) Mithraism

Mithra persisted as a divinity (yazata) throughout Zoroastrianism. He is frequently considered as co-equal with Ahura Mazda, and it is often difficult to determine whether a particular representation is of one or the other. The following is a relief sculpture from Taq-e Bostan, near Kermanshah, that was made in the 4^th Century CE to commemorate the investiture of Ardashir II who reigned as Shahanshah from 379-383 CE. He was the brother of the Shapur the great who had reigned from 309-379 CE. The relief also celebrates the victory of the Sasanians over the Roman forces of Emperor Julian, who died on his ill-fated expedition into Persia in 363 CE.  

The figure on the left represents Mithra, shining with the radiance of the sun. Mithra stands upon a lotus. This might perhaps be related to the influence of Buddhism which had spread from India into the eastern regions of the Sasanian Empire. The figure in the center is Ardashir II. There is some debate about the figure on the right. Some consider this to be Ahura Mazda who is giving the diadem of power to Ardashir. Most current interpretations suggest that it is Shapur the Great who was the Emperor before Ardashir II. At the feet of the two emperors is the defeated body of the Roman Emperor Julian.   

The Roman legions fought long and exhaustive campaigns against the Parthians from 54 BCE to 217 CE, and these wars continued when the Parthians were replaced by the Sasanians. As early as the 1^st Century CE, Roman Legionnaires established a secret society based on Mithras, the divinity of their enemies in these Persian Wars (Boyce, 1989, pp 469-490). Mithras, the God of the Sun, was known to be never defeated (Sol Invictus). As such he had obvious appeal to military men. The society initiates were known as the syndexi, “the men who join hands” (Fear, 2022).

Unfortunately, we know little about the nature of this society or of its beliefs. Its inner workings were only understood by its initiates, and these were sworn to secrecy. The main evidence for the society comes from the numerous temples – Mithraea – that have been unearthed throughout the Roman Empire. Each Mithraeum was constructed in a cave, or in a building made to imitate a cave. Initiates gathered there to worship Mithra and to celebrate a communal meal.  

An essential part of the Mithraeum was either a fresco or a carving of Mithra slaying a bull, the “tauroctony.” The following illustration shows a marble bas-relief of the tauroctony found at Fiano Romano near Rome, and now at the Louvre museum in Paris. The carving which dates to the 2^nd or 3^rd Century CE is not large: 62 cm high and 67 cm wide. The figure of Mithra wears a Phrygian cap. This type of headgear with its forward pointing tip was named after a region of Anatolia, although it was commonly worn throughout the Persian Empire. Mithras half-straddles a bull that has been forced to the ground. The bull appears in profile, with its head on the viewers’ right. With his left hand, Mithras pulls back the head of the bull by the nostrils, and with his right hand, Mithras plunges a short sword into the shoulder of the bull. Mithras turns away from the bull and looks back over his right shoulder to the Sun in the upper left. A raven is with the sun. The Moon is represented in the upper right. A scorpion, serpent, and dog attack the bull from below. The bull’s tale ends in ears of wheat.   

Many have tried to interpret what is symbolized by the various elements of the tauroctony. Although there might be some astrological significance to the scorpion, snake and dog, most scholars feel that the general intent is to depict some divine act that provides for human salvation:

It appears that just like the crucifixion in Christianity, the slaying of the bull was seen as opening up a path to salvation that was previously closed. The teachings of how that path had been closed in the past and why the bull needed to be sacrificed to restore the link are tragically lost to us (Fear, 2022, p 181)  

The Bundahishn, a Middle Persin Zoroastrian text, recounts how a Ahura Mazda sacrificed a bull (or ox) at the beginning of creation (Chapter 3). However, another sacrifice occurs at the time of the Final Judgment during frashokereti:

Soshyant, with his assistants, performs a Yazishn ceremony in preparing the dead, and they slaughter the ox Hadhayosh in that Yazishn; from the fat of that ox and the white Haoma they prepare Hush, and give it to all men, and all men become immortal for ever and everlasting. (Bundahishn, 30, 25) (also discussed in Moazami, 20000

The tauroctony might therefore represent the longing for the end-times when men will finally become immortal. If so, the slaying of the bull in the Mithraeum would serve a similar purpose to the depiction of the crucified Christ above the altar in a Christian Church.    

Mithraism came to its end when Christianity was accepted as the state religion of the Roman Empire in the 4^th Century CE. The mystery religion had lasted for three centuries. 

 

(ii) Mani and Manichaeism

The prophet Mani was born in Ctesiphon (near modern Baghdad) in the Parthian Empire in 216 CE. His father was a Jewish Christian.  In his youth Mani travelled to India and became aware to Buddhist teachings. He considered himself the Paraclete that Christ claimed would come to comfort his people, though the Paraclete is generally interpreted to be the Holy Spirit. He preached a new teaching that combined ideas from Zoroastrianism and Christianity. Mani was tolerated by the Sasanian Emperor Shapur I but Bahram I was a zealous Zoroastrian and persecuted the Manichaeans. Mani was imprisoned and died in 274 CE. 

Manichaeism was considered a heresy by the Christian Church and his works were destroyed. He taught a stark dualism between the good spiritual world of light and the evil material world of darkness (Widengren, 1965; Levy, 2005). He urged his followers to renounce the world so that their souls could return to the domain of light after the death of their worldly bodies. Manichaeism became widespread in the Roman Empire. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) was a Manichaean before he converted to orthodox Christianity. Much of what we know about Manichaeism comes from Augustine’s writings that refute of their beliefs. Manichaeism largely died out in the Roman Empire after Christianity became the state religion in the 4^th Century CE, but it persisted in regions of central Asia such as Bactria and in western China.

The dualistic beliefs of Manichaeism also persisted in the west in small groups of believers such as the Bogomils in Bulgaria in the 10^th Century CE and the Cathars in southern France between the 12^th and 14^th Centuries CE. 

The dualism of Mani differed from that of Zoroaster in that it was “anti-cosmic” rather than “pro-cosmic” (Boyce, 1975, p 230). Mani believed that physical world was irretrievably evil, and that human souls were painfully imprisoned in their physical bodies. By renouncing all worldly desires, they could hope to be released at death back into the spiritual world – the realm of light.  Zoroaster believed the physical world basically good and that, although it was now tainted by evil, it was ultimately redeemable. At the Final Resurrection, souls would be rejoined to their now perfect physical bodies.

The following illustration shows on the left a small rock-crystal seal from the 3^rd Century CE with a representation of the prophet Mani. This might have been used by Mani to seal his letters with wax. On the right is a manuscript fragment from the 8^th to 9^th Centuries CE found in Western China showing Manichaean monks.

 

(iii) Thus Spake Zarathustra

Between 1883 and 1885, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote what was to become his most famous book: Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra). The following illustration shows a photographic portrait of Nietzsche taken in 1882 by Gustav Adolf Schultze, and the cover of the Penguin edition of the book during the 1960s with its evocative cover: Sunset Mount Blanc by Wenzel Hablik (1906).

For many people, their first introduction to Zarathustra comes through this book. Unfortunately, the book has nothing to do with ancient prophet or the religion that he founded.  

Nietzsche was aware of the basic principles of Zoroastrianism through classic authors such as Herodotus and Plutarch, and he may have been familiar with some translations of their early scriptures. Nevertheless, the fictional Zarathustra does not proclaim the beliefs of Zoroastrianism. Rather, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra wishes to correct what he (or Nietzsche) believed was his great mistakes: the distinction between Good and Evil, and the subsequent foundation of human morality (Aiken, 2003; Ashouri, 2012; Pippin, 2012).

Nietzsche describes this purpose in his autobiographical Ecce Homo, written in 1888, just before his mental breakdown, but only published posthumously. The following quotation about Zarathustra shares the verbose and vainglorious character of the rest of the book. The reference to shooting well with arrows comes from Herodotus.

I have not been asked, as I should have been asked, what the name Zarathustra means in precisely my mouth, in the mouth of the first immoralist: for what constitutes the tremendous uniqueness of that Persian in history is precisely the opposite of this. Zarathustra was the first to see in the struggle between good and evil the actual wheel in the working of things: the translation of morality into the realm of metaphysics, as force, cause, end-in-itself, is his work. But this question is itself at bottom its own answer. Zarathustra created this most fateful of errors, morality: consequently he must also be the first to recognize it. Not only has he had longer and greater experience here than any other thinker — the whole of history is indeed the experimental refutation of the proposition of a so-called ‘moral world-order’ —: what is more important is that Zarathustra is more truthful than any other thinker. His teaching, and his alone, upholds truthfulness as the supreme virtue — that is to say, the opposite of the cowardice of the ‘idealist’, who takes flight in face of reality; Zarathustra has more courage in him than all other thinkers put together. To tell the truth and to shoot well with arrows: that is Persian virtue. — Have I been understood? The self-overcoming of morality through truthfulness, the self-overcoming of the moralist into his opposite — into me — that is what the name Zarathustra means in my mouth. (Nietzsche, translated by Hollingdale, pp, 124-5)

Nietzsche had much to say in Also Sprach Zarathustra, and his attempt to do so through the words and actions of an ancient prophet is wildly creative. However, the book is an incoherent mixture of parables and folktales, that veers erratically from parody to tragedy. Most of its ideas are better expressed in Nietzsche’s other books.

Nietzsche’s main goal was to argue against the “slave-morality” that had taken hold of society, a morality that promoted humility rather than accomplishment, conformity rather than initiative, weakness rather than strength. He proposed that rather than doing what others want, we should achieve what we can, accept our destiny, fulfill the possibilities within ourselves, and become an Ubermensch: “your love of your neighbour is your bad love of yourselves” (Part I:16, Hulse translation p 52). Good versus evil (böse) is replaced by good versus bad (schlecht, often used in the sense of “poorly made, shoddy”). This is a morality based on aesthetics rather than on good and evil (Poellner, 2012; Kronman, 2019). 

Unfortunately, Nietzsche did not foresee what this new morality might entail. The Nazis took his ideas to heart, threw off all constraints, and tried to create a world that fulfilled what they considered their destiny (Golomb & Wistrich, 2002).

Modern man has found that world can be understood without the need to postulate a god, and that morality need not follow divine commandments. Nietzsche had famously proposed the idea that “God is dead” in his book The Gay Science (1882). In Also Sprach Zarathustra, Nietzsche realized the implications of this idea: “Nothing is true; everything is permitted” (Part IV: 9, Hulse translation, p 259). Ivan Karamazov voices a similar fear in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1880) which was published at about the same time as Also Sprach Zarathustra: “If God does not exist, anything is permissible.”    

Another concept that occurs toward the end of Also Sprach Zarathustra involves the circularity of time: that the world continually returns to what it once was and everything recurs:

All truth is crooked. Time itself is a circle…Must we not all have been here before – and must we not come again … must we not keep coming back forever.  (Part III:2, Hulse translation, pp 146-147)

The idea that time is circular is common in Hinduism and Buddhism, which propose that the universe eternally recurs in cycles lasting many millennia. However, the Zoroastrianism concept of time is linear: the world is created, the world suffers though the battle between good and evil, and with the defeat of evil the world once again becomes as perfect as it was when it was created. One might suggest that this process could then repeat, but that is not really part of the Zoroastrian world view.

Nietzsche becomes reconciled to the eternal recurrence by proposing a variant of Kant’s categorical imperative: that one should live one’s life in such a manner that one would wish to live it in the same way when it is eternally repeated.

Nietzche’s fictional Zarathustra is both intriguing and frustrating, both charming and frightening. However he is interpreted, he is a far cry from the legendary prophet who founded a new religion based on the struggle between good and evil.

 

Conclusion

The world is composed of opposites: good and evil, order and chaos, growth and decay, truth and deceit. Zoroaster described this state in terms of the struggle between two opposing forces. One of the appealing aspects of the religion that he founded is its optimism: good will ultimately prevail over evil. Another is the importance of humanity to the outcome of this struggle. By choosing good over evil, we can tilt the balance between the opposing forces and accelerate the final victory.

The religion of Zoroastrianism has persisted for about three millennia, although the number of its present adherents is vanishingly small in comparison to the dominant religions of the world. Nevertheless, it remains worth our while to remember the ideas of the ancient prophet: to do as much good as we can, to contemplate the fire, and to look forward to when asha once again rules the universe.  

Ashem vohu
vahishtem asti
ushta asti
ushta ahmai
hyat ashai vahishtai ashem

 

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Robert Davidson, one of Canada’s greatest artists, is one of the Haida people, whose ancestral territories are in the Haida Gwaii archipelago off the coast of British Columbia and the southern half of Prince of Wales Island in Alaska. His Haida name is G̲uud San Glans, which means “Eagle of the Dawn.” Davidson is a talented carver of argillite, jewelry and totem poles, a creator of striking masks, and a master of silkscreen printing (serigraphy).    

Life

Robert Davidson was born in Hydaburg (“Haida city”) Alaska in 1946. His father, Claude Davidson, was a fisherman from the village of Dadens on Haida Gwaii, and an important carver in argillite, a black stone found in Slatechuck Mountain in the southern part of Moore Island. Robert’s maternal great-grandfather was Charles Edenshaw (1839-1920), a renowned carver from Masset (Wright & Augaitis, 2013). In 1947, the Davidson family moved back to Masset, where Robert spent his childhood and adolescence. In 1965 he attended high school in Vancouver. When he began carving argillite sculptures in 1966, he met Bill Reid (1920-1998; Shadbolt, 1986) and worked in his studio for 18 months.

Davison began experimenting with silk screen printing in 1968 at the Gitanmaax School of Northwest Coast Indian Art in Hazelton, in the interior of British Columbia. He produced several prints in unnumbered editions in 1969, among them, Sea Bear Box Back and Sea Bear Box Front. Later in 1969 he carved a new totem pole for the village of Masset, sending out invitations to the potlatch and pole-raising adorned with a silk screen print that combined Eagle and Raven figures (see above). Eagle and Raven are the two main moieties of the Haida lineage. Davidson continued to carve totem poles throughout his life. In the 21^st Century he produced some large aluminum sculptures of Haida design forms.

In 1970, Davidson moved back to Vancouver and published his first limited edition serigraph, Killer Whale. Since then, he has continued to produced serigraphs, usually at a rate of several per year. Wyatt (2022) documents over 150 prints between 1968 and 2022.

The designs of the early serigraphs were based on old Haida paintings and carvings. In the 21^st Century, Davidson began to use more abstract designs, though still using original Haida art forms. These formed the basis of his exhibition Abstract Impulse (Brotherton et al, 2013). At about this time, he also began to base his serigraph designs on original acrylic-on-canvas paintings rather than preparatory drawings.    

The following illustrations show the location of Haida Gwaii, and a photograph by Ulli Steltzer of Robert Davidson on Old Masset beach in 1978.

 

Bentwood Boxes

Haida artists painted on the walls of their houses, on their furniture, and on bentwood boxes. Their designs were often supplemented by carving. Many old bentwood boxes have survived. The following illustration shows the technique of making these boxes. Specially measured grooves – kerfs – are cut in a cedar plank; the plank is then steamed to make it pliable and bent into box form; the free edges are joined by glue, sewing or pegs:

The following is a famous 19^th-Century bentwood box attributed to Charles Edenshaw, now in the Canadian Museum of History:

The central section shows a high-relief carving of a beaver. The box is large (142 by 58 cm) and only carved one side. MacDonald (1996) suggests that it may have initially been constructed as a burial chest, to be displayed at the top of a mortuary totem pole.  

Another famous box – called the Great Box – was collected in 1884 and is now in the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. In 2014, modern Haida carvers Jaalen and Gwaii Edenshaw constructed a replica of this box. The design represents a sea monster, a mythical being perhaps related to the Orca. The monster has double eyes; its upper limbs have fingers and its lower limbs are flippers. The sea monster was meant to protect the contents of the box. The following illustration shows the original and the replica:

A Vocabulary of Forms

From studying the designs on bentwood boxes and other carvings, scholars have identified a basic vocabulary of forms used by Haida artists for representation and decoration (Holm, 1965; Holm & Reid, 1975; Stewart, 1979a; Gilbert &Clark, 1999, 2002).

A basic feature of Northwest Coast art is the “formline.” This is used to construct the basic design and to outline the anatomy of the subject being represented. The formline is typically black, but occasionally red. The formline varies in thickness, often tapering at junctions between major parts of the overall form.

The spaces within the formline can be filled with various forms that represent details, such as eyes and mouths, or that simply fill in the outlined spaces. These forms can be black or red depending on the importance of the detail. Sometimes a third color (usually blue-green) or cross-hatching is used for forms of lesser importance. Some spaces may be outlined by thin lines.

Various forms are shown below. Probably the most important form is the ovoid. Various theories have been proposed for the original source of this form. My preferred idea is that it represents a salmon egg resting on a surface. The U-Form is likely derived from one half of the ovoid.  The trigone probably comes from extending the U-Form out into a third point. The bottom of the illustration shows examples of how and an eye and a feather can be composed from the simpler forms. The thin lines in the eye represent the eyelids.

One common complex form is called the “salmon trout head.” Its derivation and various examples are illustrated below. The print of the steelhead salmon (also known as a salmon trout) was made in 1900 by Sherman Denton. Although it can represent an actual salmon head, the form is also used for other structures such as the joints of limbs, the palms of hands and the fins of fishes.  

Three general rules are often (but not always) used in the overall design. The first rule is to fill the space, be it a rectangular box, or a circular drum. The second rule is to keep the forms symmetrical. The third is to include forms within forms in a recursive manner.   

Robert Davidson closely studied the forms and designs on some of the old bentwood boxes. Two of his early serigraphs from 1969 were Sea Bear Box Front and Sea Bear Box Back. These designs do not represent a specific bentwood box, but rather illustrate the general idea of such boxes. The following illustration below (right) shows Sea Bear Box Back. In the belly of the monster can be seen an upside-down Kugann Jaad, or mouse woman, with two large eyes and a smiling mouth. The previously described Great Box also shows this feature. Kugann Jaad, who is able to shape-shift between mouse and woman, acts as an intermediary between human beings and the supernatural, and makes sure things happen as they should (e.g. Harris & Tait, 1976). Features of Kugann Jaad are also shown at the top of the Davidson’s design between the two ears of the monster. The illustration compares the Davidson print (on the right) to an actual bentwood box in the Canadian Museum of History:

The Davidson print shows the monster with hands on its forelimbs and flippers (with salmon-head centers) on its hind limbs. Within each ear is a representation of a human face seen in profile: eyebrow, eye, nostril and mouth.

In 1975 Davidson published the following print in bentbox format: Raven with a Broken Beak. A famous Haida story tells how the great shape-shifter Raven, when playing in the form of a salmon, was captured on a fisherman’s hook, and broke his beak trying to escape (Reid & Bringhurst, 1984).

The break in the beak is shown by the circle in the center of the print. The Raven, like many supernatural being has double eyes. In the bottom corners of the print are the Raven’s wings with the joint between wing and body represented by a variant of the salmon trout head. In the Raven’s mouth are representations of human faces: the Raven is able to talk to human beings.  

For the opening of the Bent Box Gallery in Vancouver in 1978, Davidson produced a print entitled Bent Box Design. The central section of the serigraph is effectively a self-portrait. The outer persona is represented in black formlines. In the lower body the inner artist is outlined in red formlines.

 

Four Circles

In 1977, Davidson brought out a set of four small (20 by 20 cm) prints: Raven, Eagle, Whale, and Frog. Each print portrayed the essential features of the creature within the bounds of the circular form.

Raven is the great transformer, able to change between bird and human forms. In the print this is shown by the small human face at the top of its head. Another characteristic of Raven is the broken beak that it suffered when, in the form of a salmon, it was hooked by fishermen. In the print the broken beak lies between the two wings.

Eagle is seen in profile. In the print the characteristic down-curved beak is placed between the head and wing. The ovoid in the upper beak represents the bird’s nostril.

Whale is depicted with its large mouth between the head and the two pectoral fins. At the right, the large circle represents the blowhole. Unlike the other prints of this set, this is composed mainly in black.

The lower half of the frog print shows the face of Frog, with its large toothless mouth, big eyes and nostrils. The upper half shows the body in black and the limbs in red.

 

Raven Stealing the Light

One of the most famous stories of Raven is that he stole the sun and the moon from the Old Man, who kept them hidden in a box for his daughter to play with. The curious Raven transformed himself into the form of a young boy and became part of the Old Man’s household. The Ravenchild asked the Old Man if he could hold the lights, but for a long while the Old Man refused. When at last the Old Man relented, Raven stole the bright lights, flew through the smokehole of the Old Man’s house, and ultimately released the sun, moon and stars into a world that had before been completely dark. The Old Man was upset over the loss of his precious lights, but he looked around

and for the first time saw his daughter, who had been quietly sitting during all this time, completely bewildered by the rush of events. The old man saw that she was as beautiful as the fronds of a hemlock against a spring sky at sunrise, and he began to feel a little better. (Reid & Bringhurst, 1984, p 17).

In 1977 Davidson created a print that told the story: Raven Stealing the Moon (Stewart, 1979a, p 37). The print shows Raven releasing the moon; the sun is already in the sky at the upper right. It is difficult to be sure of what is represented by the human figure on the lower right. This may be the Old Man, a chief of the Haida people, who stand to benefit from Raven’s thievery, or a human watchman observing the supernatural happenings.

 

Reflections

In 1975, Davidson printed a small (10 by 22 cm) Christmas card entitled Negative and Positive (below left) The upper image of a human face in profile was inverted and repeated on a red background below. In 1977 he reworked the earlier image to make a larger (32 by 57 cm) print entitled Reflections (below right) The face was made more detailed: the eye has taken on eyelid forms, and there are more teeth. The most intriguing aspect of the new print is the split-U form that is overprinted in red on the black center of the print. The fold between object and representation, between reality and imagination. This subtle addition is almost impossible to see on reproductions:

 

Eagle

In 1979, the University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology presented Cycles, an exhibition of Davidson’s graphic work. Davidson produced a special print Eagle for the exhibition. An outer black Eagle contains an inner red Frog. These two are interconnected: the red beak of the Eagle forms the hindlimbs of the Frog and the red tail of the Eagle forms the mouth of the Frog.

The following is Marjorie Halpin’s description of the print (Halpin, 1979, p10) with a quotation from Davidson in italics:

The eagle, shown in the outer black segment of the circle, is his outer person, his social self, that part of him that the world sees. In-side, the red middle circle. is the frog. The inner self, the heart, the gut reaction. Love. This is the first time I allowed the feeling to show, to help the outside. Without the inner frog, the eagle isn’t complete. If you take the frog away, the eagle has no mouth.

Although, at first look, the black outer eagle and the red inner frog seem sharply separated from each other, totally separate and distinct, there is continual interaction between them expressed by interpenetrating elements of each in the other. This is most obvious in the eagle’s mouth, which is totally red and in the frog circle, but it occurs at even more subtle levels as well. The narrow black formline that connects the frog’s eyes and completes the red circle, for example, is repeated in a white or negative formline in the black ovoid of the outer circle. These and other interpenetrations can be read as symbols of integration, of the combination of opposites, into a new unity or wholeness. We might call it a Haida yin/yang.

 

Forms within Forms

The interpenetration of forms is clearly evident in a set of large prints from 1983. In Ti-Silii-AA-Lis (Raven Finned Killer Whale), the details of Raven are placed in the form of the dorsal fin of a Killer Whale. At the bottom is a human hand (perhaps the human aspect of Raven) that could also be the pectoral fin of the whale.

Wolf Inside Its Own Foot uses a recursive design. The large wolf is located within the overall black form of its foot. And a smaller red wolf is located within the form of the large wolf’s foot:

Thunderbird

The Thunderbird is a supernatural being common to the myths of many North American indigenous people. This all-powerful deity created thunder by flapping its wings and lightning by flashing its eyes. The Thunderbird has a large crest (often coiled) on the top of its head, which gives it power. Early in his career, Davidson produced a beautiful traditional print of Thunderbird (1979). Within the body of the Thunderbird is represented a Woodpecker in red formlines (below left). In 2006, Davidson created a large acrylic painting of Hiilang (Thunderbird). The design is stripped to its essentials; the crest on the head, the eye, the wing, the body, leg and talons (below right). The representation has become almost abstract. When the canvas was stretched the lower edge which had been painted green became part of the image (Wyatt, 2022, p 19). The green stripe provided a gentle ground for the stark image, and was maintained for the serigraphic reproductions.   

 

Bird in the Air

Over the past twenty years, Davidson’s prints have become more and more abstract. The print Bird in the Air (2016) places an ovoid representation of an eagle within a large yellow trigone form that may represent the eagle’s beak, the ovoid being the nostril (below right). The illustration below shows the print together with two photographs of the eagle:

 

Davidson has been intrigued by the concept of “Bird in the Air” and how this seems to encapsulate the spirit of the Haida. The following illustration shows a recent small aluminum sculpture entitled Bird in the Air (2013, 28 cm high) by Davidson, and compares it to the 19^th Century silver bracelet carved by Davidson’s great-grandfather Charles Edenshaw (Wright & Augaitis, 2013, p 144).

 

 

The Recent History of the Haida People

In the late 18^th Century, it is estimated that the Haida population was somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 people. The first recorded encounter between the Haida and Europeans was in 1774 when the ship of the Spanish explorer Juan Perez anchored outside Haida Gwaii and was visited by Haida canoes. In 1787, the British captain George Dixon traded with the Haida for sea-otter furs. He named the islands after Queen Charlotte, the wife of Goerge III. Subsequently, the Haida interacted with European whalers and fur traders. In this way the Haida came into possession of European tools and weapons. Shortly after gold was discovered on Haida Gwaii in 1850, the Canadian government annexed the Queen Charlotte Islands.

In 1862, a passenger infected with smallpox arrived in Fort Victoria on Vancouver Island. This center for the fur trade later became city of Victoria, British Columbia. The disease spread rapidly through the indigenous people of the Northwest, many of whom had travelled to Vancouver Island to trade. Although the white colonizers protected themselves by vaccinations and quarantine procedures, the government did not make these measures available to the indigenous people. Instead, they burned indigenous settlements where the infection had broken out, and forced the Haida to retreat back to Haida Gwaii. By 1881, the Haida population had been reduced to below 1000 people (Macdonald, 1996, p 223, estimates that it may have been as low as 500 by 1900).  

In 1876, Christian missionaries arrived on Haida Gwaii. They thought the totem poles represented idols rather than family histories and urged the Haida to destroy them or risk not going to heaven. Together the church and the government outlawed the Potlatch ceremonies (Davidson& Davidson, 2013), and set up the Indian Residential School System. 

The first photographs of the Haida Gwaii settlements were taken by George Dawson in 1878.  Even at that early date many of the buildings were unoccupied, and many of the poles were mortuary poles rather than simple totems. By the time of Chicago World Fair in 1893, only a few buildings remained. One building and several totem poles from Skidegate were dismantled and taken to the fair, Several Haida artists were commissioned to make models of the other houses at Skidegate (Wright 2024). These models remain; the original buildings are no more. The following illustration show two of Dawson’s original photographs of Skidegate, and a modern photograph of one of the house models that was displayed at the fair:

Despite ravaging disease and cultural genocide, the Haida people have survived. In 2010 the islands reverted to their indigenous name Haida Gawai (Islands of the Haida). Today the Haida form a thriving cultural community. The population is now about 5000.

The survival of Haida culture is in part due to the tenacity and creativity of their artists. In 1969, Robert Davidson erected the first new pole in Masset in over 90 years: the 12-meter Bear Mother Pole. In 1978 Bill Reid erected the 16-meter Dogfish Pole in Skidegate. The following illustration shows on the left a totem in front of a derelict house in Kayung as photographed by Richard Maynard in 1884. The remaining people from Kayung on the east side of Masset Inlet had by then moved to the nearby village of Masset. The pole is presently in the British Museum. The middle totem is the Bear Mother Pole from 1969 and the right is the Dogfish Pole from 1978.

The serigraph technique initially used by Robert Davidson to present Haida designs, has become widespread among Haida artists. Their prints provide an easy way for the Haida to preserve the images of their culture, and to proclaim its beauty to the rest of the world.

Some sense of the Davidson’s determination can be found in an address that he gave on Haida Culture in 1991 (reprinted in Augaitis, 2006, pp 48-55). The following paragraphs are from the beginning and the end of that address:

We call ourselves Xaadaa 7Iaa Isiss, “The Good People.” The common derivative has become “Haida People.” We are the survivors of a once proud and prosperous nation who enjoyed the fruits, beauty, and magic of the place we call Haida Gwaii. Our philosophy has been to be generous and hospitable to the new people who we came to call the Yaats Xaadee, “Iron People.” The arrival of outsiders began a time of great change in our history, our values and our outlook on life. We have suffered great losses since the arrival of the Yaats Xaadee, of our population, cultural knowledge, and especially our self-esteem, our sense of identity; members of a whole generation were denied their own cultural values. There have been many changes, some of them good, and some from which we are still recovering. …

The next thing we need to reclaim is our language. Language holds insights and philosophies of our culture. It will add to the foundation we are rebuilding, as a nation, from the frustrations that came through my parents’ generation, from the experiences they lived through as children. It can come only from us as Haida People. The benefits we gain can only come from the efforts we put into reclaiming our ancestral values. Our forefathers had a position in the world, they had an understanding of their universe through generations of development. It is now time for us to regain our place in the world. It has been over two hundred years since the Yaats Xaadee first arrived on the shores of Haida Gwaii. This is a very short time in our development as a people. We have experienced many changes to date, we have suffered great losses, we have survived many obstacles, we have gained many new insights, but through it all our spirit is still alive. We cannot carry the burdens of confusion, self-abuse and lost identity anymore. It is our responsibility to pick up the pieces and mend them, to become whole again as a healthy, progressive, contributing and developing people.

 

A Man of Many Talents

This essay has focused on Robert Davidson’s serigraphs. He is also renowned for his carvings in argillite, silver jewelry, masks and carved poles (Stewart, 1979b; Thom, 1993; Steltzer, 1994; Rhyne, 1998; Davidson website). The following illustration shows an argillite carving with figures of bear, raven and eagle from top to bottom (height 18 cm), a silver bracelet with Beaver design, a Bear mask and the 1989 pole Breaking the Totem Barrier (height 6 meters).

 

Hope

We can conclude with a recent print entitled Hope (2024). This has become almost completely abstract although one can sense the feathers (below). It represents an idea rather than a creature. The print may refer to the poem by Emily Dickinson, written around 1861:

 

References

Augaitis, D. (2006). Raven travelling: two centuries of Haida art. Vancouver Art Gallery.

Bringhurst, R. (1999). A story as sharp as a knife: the classical Haida mythtellers and their world. Douglas & McIntyre.

Brotherton, B., Farr, S., Haworth, J. (2013). Robert Davidson: abstract impulse. Seattle Art Museum.

Davidson, S. F., & Davidson, R. (2018). Potlatch as pedagogy: learning through ceremony. Portage & Main Press.

Gilbert, J., & Clark, K. (volume 1, 1999; volume 2, 2002). Learning by designing: Pacific Northwest Coast Native Indian art. Raven.

Halpin, M. M. (1979). Cycles: the graphic art of Robet Davidson, Haida. Museum Note 7. UBC Museum of Anthropology.

Harris, C., & Tait, D. (1976). Mouse woman and the vanished princesses. McClelland & Stewart

Holm, B., (1965). Northwest coast Indian art: an analysis of form. University of Washington.

Holm, B., & Reid, B. (1975). Indian art of the Northwest coast: a dialogue on craftsmanship and aesthetics. University of Washington Press.

MacDonald, G. F. (1996). Haida art. Douglas & McIntyre.

Reid, B., & Bringhurst, R. (1984). The raven steals the light. Douglas & McIntyre.

Rhyne, C. (1998). Expanding the circle: the art of guud san glans, Robert Davidson. Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College.

Shadbolt, D. (1986). Bill Reid. Douglas & McIntyre.

Steltzer, U. (1994). Eagle transforming: the art of Robert Davidson. Douglas & McIntyre.

Stewart, H. (1979a). Looking at Indian art of the Northwest Coast. Douglas & McIntyre.

Stewart, H. (1979b). Robert Davidson: Haida printmaker. Douglas & McIntyre.

Thom, I. M. (1993). Robert Davidson: eagle of the dawn. Vancouver Art Gallery.

Wright, R. K. (2024). Skidegate house models: from Haida Gwaii to the Chicago World’s Fair and beyond (Hlg̲aagilda naa gii niijing.a k’ad.dala k̲wan: X̲aayda Gwaay.yaay sdaa uu Chicago Tllgaay K̲’aaysguux̲an gud ad is). University of Washington Press.

Wright, R. K & Augaitis, D. (2013). Charles Edenshaw. Blackdog Publishing.

Wyatt, G. (2022). Echoes of the supernatural: the graphic art of Robert Davidson. Figure.1.

Very little is known about the life of Matthias Grünewald, a painter (German Maler) who worked in the early decades of the 16^th Century in Germany. He is renowned for the pictures he created between 1512 and 1516 for the altarpiece of the Monastery of Saint Anthony in Isenheim in southern Alsace. The face of Saint Sebastian in one of these paintings (above) is considered to be a self-portrait. 

Life of Mathis der Maler

Very few details are available about the life of the painter who came to be known as Matthias Grünewald (Anderson, 2003). His first name has been considered as Matthias, Matthis or Mathis. His surname is disputable: Nithart, Neithardt, Gothart or Gothardt. The name “Grünewald” (green wood) was given to him by his first biographer, Joachim van Sandrart, about a century and a half after his death. The major confusion in his biography is whether Mathis Nithart and Mathis Gothart were one or two people. My intuition is that they were two distinct individuals: one a master painter and the other a water artist (builder of fountains), who also worked as an assistant painter (cf Bruhn, 1998, pp 21-42; Sebald, 1988, 2002). 

Given this intuition, the main stages of Grünewald’s biography are as follows. He was born in about 1480 in Aschaffenburg. After learning the techniques of painting, he worked for the episcopal court of Mainz, painting altarpieces in several churches in Frankfurt. In 1512, he married Anna, a young woman of Jewish descent who had recently converted to Christianity, and bought a house near the cathedral in Frankfurt. In the same year he was commissioned to paint the altarpiece in the Monastery of Saint Anthony in Isenheim. While he worked on the altarpiece, Anna stayed in Frankfurt. Grünewald was assisted in Isenheim by an older painter, Matthis von Würzburg, and the two men lived together. After finishing the Isenheim altarpiece, they returned to Frankfurt. Grünewald continued to paint under the patronage of Cardinal Albrecht von Brandenburg, who was the Archbishop of Mainz from 1514-1545 and the Archbishop of Magdeburg from 1513-1545. Albrecht, one of the most powerful prelates in the Holy Roman Empire, was a patron of artists such as Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, and Matthias Grünewald.  

These were times of great social upheaval. Luther published his Ninety-Five Theses (A Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences) in 1517. These were specifically addressed to Albrecht von Brandenburg, who used indulgences to support his life of luxury and patronage. The theses marked the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

The German Peasants’ War (Deutscher Bauernkrieg) began in 1524. Though partly related to the Lutheran rebellion against the Catholic Church, the revolt was mainly directed at the feudal aristocracy. Some of the reformist clergy supported the peasants. However, Luther was terrified of the anarchy that might result, and encouraged the nobility to eliminate the rebellious peasants. Pitchforks were no match for artillery. Over 100,000 peasants were massacred and the revolt came to an end in 1525. It is not known whether Grünewald participated in the rebellion, or how he was affected by it. His friend died in 1528 in Halle where he was working as a hydraulic engineer. Grünewald appears to have moved back to Aschaffenburg where he died in 1532.

A portrait in the Chicago Art Institute, initialed MN, has been considered as a possible self-portrait by Grünewald (Mathis Nithart), though its authenticity and dating is unclear. My intuition is that it is the work of the young Grünewald and that it dates to about 1500. The following is the portrait and its description by Sebald in his poem After Nature (1988, translated by Hamburger, 2002)

       The small maple panel
shows a scarcely twenty-year-old
at the window of a narrow room.
Behind him, on a shelf not quite
in perspective, pots of paint,
a crayon, a seashell and a precious Venetian
glass filled with a translucent essence.
In one hand the painter holds
a finely carved knife of bone
with which to trim the drawing-pen
before continuing work on a female nude
that lies in front of him next to an inkwell.
Through the window on his left a
landscape with mountain and valley
and the curved line of a path is visible.

 

The Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony

Saint Anthony the Great (251-356 CE) was a Christian monk from Egypt who lived most of his adult live alone in the desert. At the beginning of his desert life, he was assailed by monstrous demons and tempted by seductive women. Despite a severe asceticism bordering on starvation, he nevertheless lived to be 105 years old. Although he was buried in the desert, his remains were miraculously discovered about two centuries after his death and transferred to Constantinople. In 980, a French count named Jocelin de Châteauneuf bought the relics from Constantinople to a monastery in what is now known as Isère in the French Alps. The relics were found to alleviate a disease characterized by skin inflammation, gangrene, hallucinations and convulsions that often broke out in devastating epidemics. In 1095 Gaston de Valloire founded the Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony (also known as the Antonines) in gratitude for his son’s miraculous cure. The Abbey of Saint Antoine in Isère became the mother church of the order.

The disease came to be known as “Saint Anthony’s Fire.” The cause was the consumption of bread made from rye contaminated by the fungus Claviceps purpurea (Grzybowski et al, 2021). The fungus produces ergotamine and other compounds: these cause peripheral vasoconstriction and excessive stimulation of the central nervous system. The nature of the disease, however, was not known in the Middle Ages: it was first attributed to blighted rye in 1676 by Denis Dodart, but the fungus itself was not identified until the 19^th Century.     

Grateful patients gave land and money to the Antonines. This support allowed them to establish other hospitals in various locations in France, and later in other European countries. The Isenheim monastery in southern Alsace was founded around 1300. As the years went by, the Antonine hospitals also treated patients who suffered from leprosy, from the Black Death (an epidemic of bubonic plague) in the 14^th Century, and from the syphilis epidemics of the 16^th Century. The program of treatment involved prayer and the application of vinous extracts from the saint’s relics in Isère (Saint vinage). Whatever success occurred, however, was likely the result of the concomitant improvement in hygiene and nutrition.  

In 1505, the Antonines at Isenheim commissioned a carved wooden altarpiece from Niklaus Hagenauer (Mayr, 2003). The altarpiece contains a gilded central statue of Saint Anthony, flanked by Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Jerome: asceticism aided by doctrine and by scripture. The predella of the altarpiece contains polychrome statues of Christ and the 12 apostles. In 1512 the Antonines asked Grünewald (Mathis der Maler) to adorn the altar with paintings (Hayum, 1989; Scheja, 1969; Réau, 1920; Sieger, 2025). Over the next 4 years he created two fixed wings, two sets of retractable wings painted on both sides, and a cover for the predella The retractable wings could be opened to provide three distinct views of the altar. An animation of the opening is provided below. This has been adapted from that at the SmartHistory website, and provided with a brief excerpt of music from the first movement of Hindemith’s symphony Mathis der Maler. Following that is a diagrammatic representation of the three views.

First View of the Altarpiece

Other than on holy days, the altarpiece was kept closed and the viewer was presented with the terrifying representation of the crucified Christ. The scene is set in the darkness that fell “over all the land” (Matthew 27: 45) as Christ died.  

The gigantic body of the dead Christ is rendered with brutal naturalism and seems to leap out at one with redoubled violence, as if to take the viewer in an ambuscade: flesh in the greenish color of death with the scars of the frightful ordeal, an atrocious benumbed pain written across the face, the mouth extinguished in death, the body pulled up high by the tensile arch of the crossbeam and, at the same time, twisted with the torsion of the tree of the Cross, all limbs ripped out of joint, the loincloth in tatters, while a thorn of the crown pins the head fast in an excruciatingly painful position digging low and deep into the chest (Scheja, 1969, p 15).

The cross is contorted as though it shares in the agony. The crossbar is bowed under the weight of the dead body. The vertical post is twisted: it faces to Christ’s right above his head and to his left at his feet. The resin of the wood mixes with the blood of the dead Christ (Bryda, 2018)

The vision of Christ on the Cross as a dead body rather than as a suffering savior perhaps comes from the visions of the 14^th Century mystic Saint Bridget:

The color of death spread through his flesh, and after he breathed his last human breath, his mouth gaped open so that one could see his tongue, his teeth, and the blood in his mouth. Th e dead body sagged. His knees then contracted bending to the side. His feet were cramped and twisted about the nails of the cross as if they were on hinges (quoted in Bryda, 2018, p 13)

On Christ’s right side his mother Mary swoons, and is supported by the disciple John. Near them, Mary Magdalene laments the death of her teacher. The figures vary in their size as in their importance to the story.

On the left side of the crucified Christ is a representation of John the Baptist. This is in no way realistic: John was from another time – he was beheaded before Christ was crucified. Yet he was the last of the prophets to announce the significance of Jesus as the son of God. His words are written in red:

Illum oportet crescere me autem minui
[He must increase, but I must decrease]. (John 3:30)

At the feet of the Baptist is a lamb from whose chest blood drops into a communion chalice. When John had baptised Jesus, he had proclaimed “Behold the Lamb of God!” (John 1:36) The Baptist’s right arm points dramatically to the crucified Christ. The eye may move to the attendant figures but Grünewald insists that it return to the dead Christ. 

In The Emigrants, W. G. Sebald describes the experience of Max Ferber on viewing the Isenheim crucifixion

The monstrosity of that suffering, which, emanating from the figures depicted, spread to cover the whole of Nature, only to flood back from the lifeless landscape to the humans marked by death, rose and ebbed within me like a tide. Looking at those gashed bodies, and at the witnesses of the execution, doubled up by grief like snapped reeds, I gradually understood that, beyond a certain point, pain blots out the one thing that is essential to its being experienced — consciousness — and so perhaps extinguishes itself; we know very little about this. What is certain, though, is that mental suffering is effectively without end. One may think one has reached the very limit, but there are always more torments to come. One plunges from one abyss into the next. (Sebald, 1993/1996)

Perhaps the sight of the dead Christ served to numb the pain and suffering of the patients who came to Isenheim for treatment. 

The fixed wings of the altarpiece provide a stark contrast to its horrifying centerpiece. On the left Saint Sebastion tranquilly suffers through his wounds. On the right Saint Anthony remains unperturbed by the demon threatening him through the window at his shoulder. Both Saints are invoked for protection against disease. Saint Sebastian actually survived the onslaught of arrows that pierced his body. Saint Anthony endured his temptations and lived to die of old age.

Radiographic examination of the Saint Sebastian has revealed that the head was painted over an earlier version. In After Nature, Sebald interprets this in terms of the existence of two painters: Grünewald and Mathis Nithart:

And indeed the person of Mathis Nithart
in documents of the time so flows into
the person of Grünewald that one
seems to have been the life,
then the death, too, of the other.
An X-ray photograph of the Sebastian
panel reveals beneath the elegiac
portrait of the saint
that same face again, the half-
profile only turned a tiny bit further
in the definitive overpainting.
Here two painters in one body
whose hurt flesh belonged to both
to the end pursued the study
of their own nature. At first
Nithart fashioned his self-portrait
from a mirror image, and Grünewald
with great love, precision and patience
and an interest in the skin
and hair of his companion extending
to the blue shadow of the beard
then overpainted it.
The martyrdom depicted is
the representation, to be sensed
even in the rims of the wounds,
of a male friendship wavering
between horror and loyalty.

 

Second View of the Altarpiece

On holy days the altarpiece was opened to show a sequence of paintings depicting episodes from the life of Christ. On the left is the Annunciation. The center, where once was presented the horror of the death of Jesus now shows the wonder of his birth. Heavenly angels provide a marvelous music while the baby Jesus plays with a golden rosary on the lap of his mother Mary. 

In 1938, Paul Hindemith completed an opera about Mathis de Maler. The prelude to the opera is a musical version of the concert of the angels in the Isenheim altarpiece. This was also used as the first movement of his 1935 Symphony Mathis der Maler. Hindemith introduces three themes: a setting of an old German hymn Es sungen drei Engeln (There sang three angels) mainly in the brass, a lively melody on the strings and a more peaceful tune on the flute. He then plays these themes against each other. The following is an illustration of the painting together with the initial introduction of the themes in the Symphony Matthis der Maler with the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra led by Marin Alsop:

The beautiful angel in the foreground of Grünwald’s Concert of the Angels is playing a viola da gamba, the forerunner of the modern violoncello. Grünewald was clearly familiar with the instrument, which has been closely studied and reproduced. However, the direction of the bowing is strangely reversed from normal. It is difficult to understand what his means (Rasmussen 2001). Perhaps the angel is producing heavenly rather than earthly music. Even more disconcerting is the angel directly behind and above the foreground cellist. This angel is covered in iridescent green feathers and looks upset rather than entranced by the birth of Jesus. Mellinkoff (1988) proposed that this is the angel Lucifer who rebelled against God, brought about the fall of man, and is now aghast that man will be redeemed by the birth of Christ.

Between the concert of the angels and the representation of Mary and the infant Jesus is a vision of a woman, with a crown of flames, surrounded by a bright yellow and red aureole (see below). No one is sure who she represents. Malinkoff (1988) suggests that she is Ecclesia (Church), who with the birth of Christ takes over from Synagoga as the intermediary between man and God. Others (e.g., Réau, 1920, p 187-94; Scheja, 1969, p 48) consider her to be the Eternal Mary, Queen of Heaven, the woman “clothed with the sun” of Revelation 12. She is there to witness herself in her temporal form together with her infant son.  

The most striking painting in the second view of the altarpiece is the Resurrection on the right side. Christ arises from the tomb in glory, scattering and tumbling the guards:

Joris-Karl Huysmans, the first modern critics to consider the importance of Matthias Grünewald in Trois Primitifs (1905, reprinted in part in Huysmans & Ruhmer, 1958), described The Resurrection:

As the sepulchre opens, some drunks in helmet and armour are knocked head over heels to lie sprawling in the foreground, sword in hand; one of them turns a somersault further off, behind the tomb, and lands on his head, while Christ surges upwards, stretching out his arms and displaying the bloody commas on his hands.
This is a strong and handsome Christ, fair-haired and brown-eyed, with nothing in common with the Goliath whom we watched decomposing a moment ago, fastened by nails to the still green wood of a gibbet. All round this soaring body are rays emanating from it which have begun to blur its outline; already the contours of the face are fluctuating, the features hazing over, the hair dissolving into a halo of melting gold. The light spreads out in immense curves ranging from bright yellow to purple, and finally shading off little by little into a pale blue which in turn merges with the dark blue of the night.
We witness here the revival of a Godhead ablaze with life: the formation of a glorified body gradually escaping from the carnal shell, which is disappearing in an apotheosis of flames of which it is itself the source and seat.
… Having dared to attempt this tour de force, Grünewald has carried it out with wonderful skill. In clothing the Saviour he has tried to render the changing colours of the fabrics as they are volatilized with Christ. Thus the scarlet robe turns a bright yellow, the closer it gets to the light-source of the head and neck, while the material grows lighter, becoming almost diaphanous in this river of gold. As for the white shroud which Jesus is carrying off with him, it reminds one of those Japanese fabrics which by subtle gradations change from one colour to another, for as it rises it takes on a lilac tint first of all, then becomes pure violet, and finally, like the last blue circle of the nimbus, merges into the indigo-black of the night.

This is no ordinary representation of the Resurrection. Christ has not just risen from the tomb: he has also been transfigured into a vision of the Godhead. Scheja, 1988, p 40) notes how Grünewald has accurately depicted Dante’s vision of the Trinitarian Godhead at the end of The Divine Comedy published two centuries before his painting (Paradiso XXXIII 115-120):

Nella profonda e chiara sussistenza
de l’alto lume parvermi tre giri
di tre colori e d’una contenenza;

e l’un dall’altro come iri da iri
parea reflesso, e il terzo parea foco
che quinci e quindi igualmente si spiri.

[There appeared to me in the profound and bright
reality of that exalted light
three circles of three colors and one size.

As rainbow by rainbow, one seemed reflected
by the second, and the third seemed a fire
that breathed as much from one as from the other.]
(translation by Louis Biancolli)

 

Third View of the Altarpiece

As well as the statues created by Niklaus Hagenauer the third view has two lateral paintings that are the obverse of the Madonna and Child and the Concert of Angels. These represent The Tribulations of Saint Anthony and The Meeting between Saint Anthony and Saint Paul.

Although often called the “temptations” of Saint Anthony, the subject of Grünewald’s painting on the right is more accurately considered his “tribulations.” Scheja (1969, p 28) tells the story from original biography of Saint Anthony written by Athanasius a few years after his death. When Anthony first went to the desert he was attacked by demons. Despite the pain, he refused to give up his devotion to Christ. Finally, the heavens opened, light streamed down from Christ in majesty, and the demons vanished. Anthony had passed his test and was worthy of his God. Anthony cried out the words written at the lower left of the painting (Hayum, 1989, p 79):     

Ubi eras ihesu boni, ubi eras? Quare not affuisti ut sanares vulnera mea?
[Where were you good Jesus, where were you? Why were you not there to heal my wounds?]

The poor wretch at the lower left of the painting represents a patient suffering from ergotism. The distal parts of his fingers have been lost to gangrene and his skin is covered with sores (Grzybowski et al, 2021). The image serves as an intermediary between the patients in the hospital and Saint Anthony. Even the fingers of Saint Anthony’s left hand are turning grey with incipient gangrene (Kluger& Brandozzi, 2023). The patients can see in the painting that their disease is the same as that of Saint Anthony. They can therefore hope that God may relieve their pain, just like he drove away the demons that tormented Saint Anthony. The following is Hindemith’s musical version of Saint Anthony and the Demons: from the beginning of the 3^rd movement of his Mathis der Maler symphony:

The painting on the left is as tranquil as that on the right is turbulent.  After his tribulations, Saint Anthony sought out Saint Paul, an older ascetic who had retired to the desert. Paul convinced him that the monastic life was worth pursuing. Although the meeting was reported to have taken place in a cave, Grünewald locates it in a peaceful wooded landscape with a gently doe acting as an intermediary between the two saints. In the background a stag waits patiently. On a high branch, a raven, accustomed to providing Paul with his daily slice of bread, gets ready to deliver two slices. The head of Saint Paul is another self-portrait of Grünewald (Scheja, 1969, pp 30-33; von Mücke, 2011)

 

Afterlife of the Altarpiece

The altarpiece remained in the abbey church at Isenheim until the French Revolution (1789-1799) led to the suppression of the monasteries. In 1852, the altarpiece was moved to the new Unterlinden Museum located in Colmar, about 25 km north of Isenheim. The museum is housed in what was once a convent for the Dominican sisters, originally built in 13^th Century.

After the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), Alsace became part of Germany. The unification of Germany bought with it a desire for a distinct national culture. Philosophers conceived a Northern or Gothic tradition in art, as distinguished from Mediterranean Classical art (Rosenblum, 1975; Stieglitz, 1989). Its characteristics were a sense of the sublime, an emotional intensity, a mystical predisposition, and a deep subjectivity (or inwardness, Innerlichkeit). Grünewald’s paintings fitted easily into these ideas.

During World War I, for safety’s sake, the altarpiece was taken away from Colmar to Munich, where it was exhibited to great acclaim. The peace arrangements after the war included a requirement that the altarpiece to be returned to Colmar. Since 1919, the altarpiece has lived there in the Unterlinden Museum. The following illustration shows how it is exhibited.

The visitor can go behind first section to see the paintings on the obverse side of The Crucifixion – The Annunciation and The Resurrection. And then behind the The Nativity (Angel Concert and Madonna with the Infant Jesus) to see The Temptation of Saint Anthony and The Meeting between Saint Paul and Saint Anthony.      

 

Otto Dix

Otto Dix (1891-1969) studied art at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. When war was declared in 1914, he volunteered for the army and served for the duration of the war. He took part in the Battle of the Somme in 1916, was transferred for a while to the Eastern Front, and then back to Flanders for the end of the war. He was profoundly affected by the horrors he experienced. After the war he painted images representing both his ghastly memories of trench warfare and his anger at the hypocrisy and depravity of post-war German society. He was one of the painters of Der neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) Exhibition of 1925.

Dix became a professor at the Dresden Academy in 1927. A 1929 photograph by Hugo Erfurth is shown on the right. Between 1929 and 1932 he worked on a large triptych entitled Der Krieg (The War) based on old German triptychs especially that of Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece (Bayer, 1920).

The left wing of the triptych, entitled Aufmarsch (Deployment), depicts the soldiers leaving for the frontline early in the morning before the mists have cleared.

The right wing, entitled Nachtlicher Ruckzug (Nightly Retreat) shows a soldier (a self-portrait of the artist) trying to bring a wounded colleague back to safety behind the frontlines.

 

The central section, Der Krieg, takes the place of the Crucifixion in a medieval altar. Instead of Christ on the cross

a rotting corpse has been hurled onto iron girders in similar fashion. His eye sockets have already become black holes, the teeth are bared, with what remains of his uniform hanging in tatters. (Bayer 1920)

The corpse points to another dead body on the right. This is clearly an illusion to Grünewald’s Isenheim altarpiece wherein John the Baptist points dramatically to the crucified Christ. The body to which the finger points is upside down and riddled with bullet holes in much the same way as Grünewald’s Christ was covered in sores. The background to these horrors is a landscape completely destroyed by artillery.

The predella of Dix’s triptych shows several soldiers lying down under what might be a camouflage screen. It is unclear whether they are dead or sleeping. If the latter there is a clockwise circular logic to the triptych: the exhausted soldiers will wake up, advance to the front again, engage in the murderous work of war, and then retreat, wounded and exhausted to sleep another night.

Dix’s description of the war was loathed by the Nazi government, who wished to portray war as an occasion for heroism rather than a field of horror. In 1933 Dix was dismissed from his position at the Dresden Academy. Many of his paintings were removed from galleries and destroyed. Some were included in the Exhibition of Degenerate Art in 1937. Dix saved the triptych, took it apart, and stored it in a friend’s farmhouse until after the war. The Galerie der Neue Meister (Gallery of Modern Masters) in Dresden purchased the painting in 1968.     

 

Paul Hindemith

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) studied music at Dr. Hoch’s Konservatorium in Frankfurt and joined the Frankfurt Symphony Orchestra after graduation. He served in the German army on the frontlines in Alsace during the last year of the war.

After the war, he founded the Amar Quartet, playing the viola, and began to compose. During the 1930s he worked on his Opera Mathis der Maler, based on the life of Matthias Grünewald. As he was writing this music, he used some of the orchestral interludes in the opera to make his Symphony Mathis der Maler which was published in 1935.  The opera was not completed until 1938. Because the Nazis considered his music degenerate, Hindemith was unable to get the opera performed in Germany. He emigrated to Switzerland in 1938 and then to the United States in 1940.

As well as the modernity of the music, the subject matter of the opera was anathema to the Nazi powers (Bruhm, 1998, 2002; Paret, 2008; Watkins, 2002; Fuller, 1997). It revealed the horrors of war: the summary executions, the raping and pillaging. One of the scenes concerned the burning of Lutheran books as ordered by the Catholic Church. This made obvious reference to the Nazi book burnings which had begun in the early 1930s.

The opera has been performed only rarely. A 1977 production starred Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau as Mathis. A striking recent production in Vienna that was captured on DVD by Naxos in 2012.

The opera is concerned with the life of Matthias Grünewald after he completes the Isenheim altarpiece. Hindemith imagines that Mathis leaves the service of Albrecht von Brandenburg and joins the rebellion of the peasants. Throughout these terrible times, images from the altarpiece (and Hindemith’s musical versions thereof) return to comfort or to haunt the painter. During the rebellion, he takes care of Regina, a young woman whose father, one of the leaders of the rebellion, was cruelly executed before her eyes. The beginning of the 6^th scene of the opera finds them fleeing from the mercenaries through the forest of the Odenwald southeast of Frankfurt, Mathis tries to comfort the grieving Regina with the story of the Concert of Angels who played music at the nativity of Jesus. The following is part of the aria, as sung by Wolfgang Koch as Mathis and Katherina Tretyakova as Regina: 

             Alte Märchen woben
Uns fromme Bilder, die ein Widerscheinen
Des Höheren sind. Ihr Sinn ist dir
Fern, du kannst ihn nur erahnen.
Und frommer noch reden
Zu uns die Töne, wenn Musik, in Einfalt hier
Geboren, die Spur himmlischer Herkunft trägt.
Sieh, wie eine Schar von Engeln ewige Bahnen
In irdischen Wegen abwandelt. Wie spürt man jeden
Versenkt in sein mildes Amt. Der eine geigt
Mit wundersam gesperrtem Arm, den Bogen wägt
Er zart, damit nicht eines wenigen Schattens Rauheit
Den linden Lauf trübe. Ein andrer streicht
Gehobnen Blicks aus Saiten seine Freude.
Verhaftet scheint der dritte dem fernen Geläute
Seiner Seele und achtet leicht des Spiels.

              Wie bereit
Er ist, zugleich zu hören und zu dienen.

REGINA
Es sungen drei Engel ein süssen Gesang,
Der weit in den hohen Himmel erklang.

The following is a translation

                 Old fairy tales wove
Pious images for us that are a reflection
Of something higher. Their meaning is so
Far from you, that you can only guess.
And music speaks even more piously
When, born here in simplicity,
It brings a breath of heaven.
See how a host of angels eternally follow
Our earthly paths. How one feels each one
Is immersed in their gentle office. One plays the violin
With a wondrously bared arm, lightly bowing
Lest any roughness darken
Cloud the gentle melody. Another,
With an uplifted gaze, strokes joy from the strings.
The third seems captivated by the distant chiming
of his soul and hardly attends to the music.

                    How ready
he is to listen and serve at the same time.

REGINA
Three angels sang a sweet song
That resounded far into the heavens.

 

The Comfort of Images

Hindemith’s Mathis comforts the grieving Regina by describing to her his painting of the Concert of Angels. The world is difficult to understand. The suffering that occurs is often unjustified. So we tell ourselves stories – we weave together fairy tales – to make sense of the world. We can represent these stories in paintings and in music.

The story that Grünewald unfolds in the Isenheim altarpiece is the myth of a Son of God who suffered and died so that we may be redeemed and live forever. And the life of Saint Anthony who lived in holiness so that our illness can be cured. 

And even if these are only stories, the comfort they provide is real.

 

References

Andersson, C. (2003). Grünewald, Matthias [Gothart Nithart, Mathis; Gothardt-Neithardt, Matthis]. Grove Art Online.

Bayer, M. (2020).  Der Krieg: Otto Dix’s War Triptych, memory, and the perception of the First World War. In Hutchison, M., & Trout, S. (Eds.). Portraits of Remembrance. (pp 250-269) University of Alabama.

Bruhn, S. (1998). The temptation of Paul Hindemith: Mathis der Maler as a spiritual testimony. Pendragon. (difficult to find; preview in Google Books)

Bruhn, S, (2002). Wordless songs of love, glory, and resurrection: musical emblems of the holy in Hindemith’s saints. In Voicing the ineffable: musical representations of religious experience. (pp 157-188). Pendragon.

Bryda, G. C. (2018). The exuding wood of the cross at Isenheim. Art Bulletin, 100(2), 6–36.

Fuller, M. (1997). Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler: A parable for our times. New Blackfriars, 78(916), 260–267.

Grzybowski, A., Pawlikowska-Łagód, K., & Polak, A. (2021). Ergotism and Saint Anthony’s fire. Clinics in Dermatology, 39(6), 1088–1094.

Harrisville, R. A. (2004). Encounter with Grunewald. Currents in Theology and Mission, 31(1), 5-14.

Hayum, A. (1989). The Isenheim altarpiece: God’s medicine and the painter’s vision. Princeton University Press.

Huysmans, J.-K. & Ruhmer, E. (1958). Grünewald: the paintings. Phaidon Press.

Kluger, N., & Brandozzi, G. (2023). Digital necrosis in the Isenheim altarpiece (1512–1516). Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology, 37(7), 1265–1267. 

Mayr, V. (2003). Hagenauer [von Hagnow; Hagnower], Nikolaus [Niclas]. Grove Art Online.

Mellinkoff, R. (1988). The devil at Isenheim: reflections of popular belief in Grünewald’s altarpiece. University of California Press.

Paret, P. (2008). Beyond Music: Hindemith’s Opera Mathis der Maler as political document. Historically Speaking, 9(5), 6–9.

Rasmussen, M. (2001). Viols, violists and Venus in Grunewald’s Isenheim Altar. Early Music, 29(1), 60–74.

Réau, L. (1920). Mathias Grünewald et le retable de Colmar. Berger-Levrault. (Available at archive.org)

Rosenblum, R. (1975). Modern painting and the northern romantic tradition: Friedrich to Rothko. Harper & Row.

Scheja, G. (1969). The Isenheim Altarpiece. H.N. Abrams.

Schloss, M. F. (1963) Grünewald and the Chicago portrait. Art Journal, 23(1), 10-16.

Sebald, W. G. (1988). Nach der Natur. Franz Greno, Nordlingen,

Sebald, W. G. (1988, translated by Hamburger, M. 2002). After nature. Hamish Hamilton.

Sebald, W. G. (1993, translated by Hulse, M., 1996). The emigrants. Harvill.

Sieger, J. (accessed 2025). Der Isenheimer Altarund seine Botschaft [The Isenheimer Altarpiece and its Message] (Google provides a reasonable translation)

Stieglitz, A. (1989). The reproduction of agony: toward a reception-history of Grünewald’s Isenheim Altar after the First World War. Oxford Art Journal, 12(2), 87–103.

Snyder, J. (1985). Northern Renaissance art: painting, sculpture, the graphic arts from 1350 to 1575. Prentice-Hall.

von Mücke, D. (2011). History and the work of art in Sebald’s After Nature. Nonsite.

Watkins, G. (2002). Prophecies and Alarms. In Proof through the Night (pp. 403-416). University of California Press.

 

Ely Cathedral was originally situated on a low island in the middle of the Fens, a region of marshland in eastern England lying inland of the Wash. Because of the flatness of the surrounding land the cathedral could be seen from great distances, appearing as the “Ship of the Fens.” The marshes were drained in the 17^th Century, but it is still easy to imagine the building floating above the waters: the embodiment of Auden’s image of the English cathedrals:

Luxury liners laden with souls,
Holding to the east their hulls of stone.
(Auden, 1936, p 43; also McDiarmid, 1978, p 292)

The Present Cathedral

The following illustration shows the cathedral as viewed from the southeast.

The present building was begun in 1083 by the Normans soon after their conquest of England. They bought with them a style of architecture known as “Romanesque” on the continent but considered “Norman” in England. The style was characterized by large weight-bearing columns surmounted by semi-circular arches. As the years passed, additions, collapses and renovations to the original building left it with a blend of styles that still somehow achieve harmony rather than incoherence.

The following is the view of the cathedral from the south from Bentham (1771, Plate 42, scale 100 ft):

The West end of the cathedral shows its mixture of styles. The following illustration shows a engraving from King (1881, plate XII) as well as two modern photographs showing the Gothic arches on the Galilee Porch and the Norman arches on the south west transepts

The following is a floor plan of the cathedral:

The dashed semicircular lines in the Presbytery show the eastern extent of the original Norman cathedral.

Saxon Beginnings

The region of England northeast of London – comprising the present counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex – was settled by Angles and Saxons in the 5^th and 6^th Centuries CE. Multiple kingdoms were set up on the island of Britain: East Anglia, Northumbria, Mercia, Essex, Sussex, Wessex, and Kent. Augustine of Canterbury arrived in England in 597 CE; and the various Saxon kingdoms in England soon converted to Christianity.

Anna, the king of East Anglia (reigned 636-654 CE), a devout Christian, probably reigned in Exning – just east of present-day Cambridge. A large ancient earthen wall, known today as the Devil’s Dyke, stretching from the southern end of the Fens to the River Stour, appears to have built as a defense against the Mercian kingdom to the west. The following map shows the kingdom of East Anglia at the time of Anna:

Anna’s daughter Æthelthryth (or Etheldreda) was born in 636 CE (Keynes, 2003). In 652, at the age of 16, she was married to Tondberct, a prince who ruled over part of the Fens. This was a political marriage, designed to extend Anna’s domain, and Æthelthryth insisted on maintaining her virginity. As a wedding gift she was given the Isle of Ely in the Fens. The name “Ely” probable comes from the Old English elge meaning “region of eels.” Tonberct died in 655, and Æthelthryth retired to live in Ely.

After Anna died fighting against the Mercians at the battle of Bulcamp in 654, Æthelthryth was married in 660 for a second time to Ecgfrith, a 16-year-old prince of Northumbria. Once again, she insisted on maintaining her virginity. In 670, she formally took the veil as a nun and lived in the double monastery (for both monks and nuns) at Coldingham, in what is now southeast Scotland. In 672, in need of an heir, Ecgfrith decided that he wished to consummate his marriage, and sent armed men to apprehend his wife. She and her attendants fled to Ely; Ecgfrith’s men were prevented from capturing her by the tidal waters of the Fens. Æthelthryth then founded a new monastery at Ely, where she presided as abbess until her death in 679. The following illustration shows two of the capitals on the octagon pillars in Ely cathedral (from Bentham, 1771, plates 9 and 10): Æthelthryth’s taking of the veil, and her miraculous salvation by the rising waters of the Fens. On the right is a 1960 statue of Æthelthryth by Phillip Turner.

Little is known of the abbey at Ely after its founding. In 869 the Vikings conquered the kingdom of East Anglia and much of Northumbria and Mercia. Alfred the Great (849-899) ultimately prevented the Vikings from further expansion, but allowed the continuation of Danelaw in the eastern parts of England from 886 to 1066. The original abbey of Æthelthryth may have been destroyed or may have simply fallen into disuse during the early Viking period. However, Ely Abbey was re-founded toward the end of the 10^th Century as a monastery for monks alone. As his boat approached Ely, King Cnut (reign 1016-1035) was impressed by the music of the monks and wrote a poem, a fragment (perhaps the refrain) of which survives (Parker, 2018):

Merie sungen ðe muneches binnen Ely
ða Cnut ching reu ðer by.
Roweþ cnites noer the lant
and here we þes muneches sæng.

[Sweetly sang the monks in Ely
When Cnut the king rowed by;
‘Row, men, nearer to the land
So we can hear the friars’ song.’]

 

The Norman Cathedral

Under the direction of Abbot Simeon, the Normans initiated the construction of a large abbey church in Ely in 1083. The remains of Saint Æthelthryth were moved from the old church to the new in 1106. Her marble tomb was placed in a shrine bedecked by gold and jewels behind the high altar. The building was granted cathedral status by Henry I 1109. The nave, central tower and transepts were completed by about 1140, and the western transepts and tower were finally finished by about 1190.

The nave is 72 meters long and 22 meters high. There are three levels: the arcade, gallery (or tribune) and clerestory, the last containing large windows for light (clerestory means “clear storey”). The proportions for these levels are 6:5:4 (Clifton-Taylor, 1986, p 36). The arcades of the gallery are divided into two and those of the clerestory into three. The columns alternate between piers with multiple shafts and piers with large cylindrical columns, providing a gentle visual rhythm. The aisles on either side of the main nave are each one half the width of the nave (Fernie, 2003). The roof was made of the same timbers that were used to provide the scaffolding when constructing the nave.

The following illustration shows on the left a diagram of the nave (Dehio & Bezold, 1887, plate 88), On the right is a modern photograph that shows its three levels, and at the bottom a photograph that illustrates the alternation of the main columns.

The monk’s door and the prior’s door from the cloisters into the nave were likely built and decorated in the 1130s. Both are intricately sculpted. The prior’s door (shown below in a plate from Bentham, 1771, and in a modern photograph) is surmounted by a tympanum containing Christ in Majesty surrounded by two angels. Though far less accomplished than the Romanesque sculptures in France, it has its own charm.

The Gothic Cathedral

The Galillee Porch was added to the west front of the cathedral in the first two decades of the 13^th Century. As we have already noted the style is early Gothic: the blind arcades decorating the façade have pointed arches, narrow columns, and trefoil openings.

A little later, the east end of the Cathedral was extended to form a Presbytery: a space for the monks to worship separate from the choir and the nave. This extension in a richly decorated Gothic style was completed in 1252 (Maddison, 2003). The large columns of the arcade are divided into multiple smaller columns and the pointed arches are geometrically ornamented. The tribune gallery has twin trefoiled openings beneath a large pointed arch. The clerestory has lancet windows with an inner row of cinquefoil arches. The stone vault is supported by tierceron ribs.

The following illustration shows a view of the choir and presbytery toward the east by John Eaton (2016) surrounded by two views of the north wall, the left by Arthur de Smet (1972) and the right from Broughton (2008):

In 1321, work began on a large separate Lady Chapel north of the choir and presbytery. Constructing the foundations for this new building led to the central section of the cathedral being undermined by water. The central bell tower of the cathedral collapsed in 1322, damaging parts of the north transept and the choir. Under the direction of Alan of Walsingham a new octagonal tower was built, with the stonework completed by 1328 (Maddison, 2003). The crowning glory of the tower was a magnificent “lantern” built of timber that allowed light to descend into the cathedral (completed in about 1340). The following illustration shows the octagon viewed from the western tower and a diagram of the carpentry underlying the lantern from Hewett (1974, plate 76):

The following illustration shows views of the lantern from the interior of the cathedral:

Because of the lantern, Ely cathedral provides a marvelous interplay of light and shadow. Frederick Evans took many photographs in 1897 and published these in Camera Work in 1903 (Lyden, 2020). Two of his images are below:

After the stonework of the octagon was completed Bishop Hotham and Akan of Walsingham then returned to complete the lady chapel – a wonder of Decorated English Gothic. The vault is supported by interconnecting ribs forming star shapes (lierne, from French lier, to tie, or stellar vaulting). This approach supports a wider vault than the simple tierceron ribbing. The large windows are supported by thin vertical columns that extend outward to provide a buttressing effect. The following illustration shows a photograph of the chapel and a diagram of the lierne vaulting.

The chapel was completed in the 1340s. The lower sections of the walls are decorated with vegetal patterns, giving the visitor a sense of being in a garden (Broughton, 2008). The present chapel is very different from the way it was in the 14^th and 15^th Centuries. At that time, numerous painted sculptures existed in the niches, and the windows were made of stained glass.

The Monastery

Ely Cathedral, like Canterbury, Durham, and Norwich, was a monastic cathedral. The monks at these cathedrals followed the Benedictine order. The bishop of a monastic cathedral was the titular abbot of the monastery, but the monks were essentially led by the prior. Although most of the old cathedrals in England were monastic, some cathedrals, such as Lincoln and Hereford were secular and had no associated monastery.

The monastery (or priory) at Ely was prosperous. Many of the medieval buildings of the monastery still stand. Some are used by King’s Ely School. The following plan shows the probable layout of the monastery (Dixon, 2003). The castle motte is the site of a fortress in Norman times.

The Reformation

As the years wore on the monastery at Ely became rich. The sale of indulgences brought in much money. Death acted like the church’s tax-collector, as those in need of heaven left their land and possessions to the church rather than to their children. Pilgrims to the shrine of Æthelthryth/Etheldreda were expected to make significant donations to the church. Æthelthryth was also called Saint Audrey. Ribbons bought at her shrine were called “St Audrey’s lace,” whence comes the word “tawdry” for overpriced finery. Some Bishops at Ely made special ornate chapels for themselves: Bishop Alcock (1486-1500) at the end of the north aisle and Bishop West (1515-33) at the end of the south aisle. It was easy to accuse the church of luxury and greed.

As the 16^th Century progressed, Henry VIII came to need both a new wife and a source of gold. In 1533 Henry appointed Thomas Cranmer as Archbishop of Canterbury. Cranmer allowed him to marry Anne Boleyn. In 1534, Thomas Cromwell, the king’s chancellor, arranged for Parliament to pass the Act of Supremacy declaring the king to be the head of the English Church. In 1537, Cromwell convened a synod of British bishops who produce a book The Institution of the Christian Man, espousing many of the principles proposed by Martin Luther. In 1839 Parliament passed a bill to allow the Dissolution of the Monasteries. All of the small monasteries were to be closed, their monks let go, and their assets expropriated by the king. The monasteries associated with the cathedrals were also to be closed, although some of their monks could remain as officers in the newly secularized cathedrals.

On 18 November, 1539, Prior Robert Seward and 23 other monks signed a deed of surrender of the monastery of Ely to Henry VIII (Duffy, 2020, pp 31-45). There was not much else they could do. The abbots of Gastonbury and Reading had been executed on November 13 for refusing to dissolve their houses. The monastery and cathedral were held at the pleasure of the monarch and its riches were duly plundered. In 1541 the cathedral was given a royal charter as a secular cathedral. The church which had been devoted to Saint Etheldreda and Saint Peter, was renamed “The Cathedral Church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Ely.”

The bishop during this time was Thomas Goodrich, a colleague of Thomas Cranmer. Trained in theology at Cambridge University, he was appointed Bishop of Ely in 1534 and remained bishop until his death in 1554. After the dissolution of the monastery, he ordered the destruction of the shrine of Ethelreda, the defacement of the statues in the Lady Chapel, and the removal of the statues in the chapels of Bishop’s Alcock and West. Every one of the 147 statues of Mary and the other saints in the Lady Chapel was beheaded. Goodrich continued as bishop after the death of Henry in 1547; during the reign of Edward VI (1547-53), he was also appointed Lord Chancellor (1552). He died in 1554, before Mary (reign 1553-8) had time to pursue her vengeance.

The following illustration shows two photographs from the 1890s by Frederick Evans showing the mutilation of the statues in the Lady Chapel and the empty plinths on the gateway to Bishop West’s chapel. Also shown is the memorial brass to Thomas Goodrich, located on the floor of the south presbytery. The bishop holds in his right hand both a bible and the seal of England, emblematic of his chancellorship.

After the Reformation the cathedrals of England fell into disrepair. The architecture was contemptuously referred to as “Gothic” or barbaric (see Clifton-Taylor, 1986, pp 9-12). In 1699, the north west transept of Ely Cathedral collapsed (Fernie, 2003, p 96). There was no money to rebuild:

To this day, Ely looks like the wounded veteran of some forgotten war. (Jenkins, 2016, pp 91-2)

Watercolors by J. M. W. Turner from the 1790s show the cathedral octagon and the dilapidated Galilee Porch.

Repair

The cathedral was extensively restored during the 19^th Century: The roof of the nave was retimbered and painted; the windows were provided with stained glass; the choir was provided with new stalls and a beautifully carved choir screen; the high altar received an intricate reredos (from French arere, behind, dos, back).

The following illustration shows some of the carvings above the choir stalls. These depict episodes in the life of Jesus: the supper at Emmaus, the appearance of the risen Jesus to Thomas, and the ascension:

Ely in the Present

Most people in England no longer attend church, and those who believe that there is a God are equaled by those who believe that there is not. What should be the place of the church in modern society?

Intriguing to me are the modern statues that now adorn the cathedral. Below are illustrations of four of these works. Clockwise from the upper left are the Virgin Mary in the Lady Chapel urging us to exultation by David Wynne (2000), Christ and Mary Magdalene wondering at the mystery of the resurrection by David Wynne (1967), Christ in Majesty above the pulpit by Peter Ball (2000), and half-life-size statues by Sean Henry on the empty plinths in Bishop West’s chapel, part of an installation entitled Am I My Brothers Keeper? in 2024.

An optimistic view of the future is from Nicholas Orme (2017, p 262):

The most astonishing feature of cathedral history, when one has journeyed through its seventeen hundred years, is its immense and varied creativity. If we take buildings, there is the evolving history of their plans and construction, the sourcing of the materials, the labours of craftsmen, the elaboration of the decoration, and the successive layers of repair and restoration. There is the worship, complex in its calendar, its liturgical texts, the ways in which it is done, and the application of the worship to God, saints, or popular, needs. There is the vast range of arts involved in producing worship and its setting: sculpture, painting, stained glass, metalwork, fabrics, singing, instrumental music, and chorography. There is the written and spoken word in prayer- and hymn-books, preaching, inscriptions, archives, libraries, guide-books, and service-sheets.

A more restrained understanding of what it is like to visit a church when faith has passed away can be found in a 1954 poem by Philip Larkin entitled Church Going, the last verse of which reads:

A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognised, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.

References

Atherton, I. (2003). The dean and chapter: reformation and restoration. In Meadows & Ramsay, op cit, pp 169-192.

Auden, W. H. (1936). Look, stranger!  Faber & Faber

Bentham, J. (1771). The history and antiquities of the conventual and cathedral church of Ely : from the foundation of the monastery, A.D. 673, to the year 1771 : illustrated with copper-plates. Cambridge University Press.

Broughton, L. (2008). Interpreting Ely cathedral. Ely Cathedral Publications.

Clifton-Taylor, A. (1967, revised 1986). The cathedrals of England. Thames and Hudson.

Dehio, G., & Bezold, G. v (1887). Die kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes. Atlas 1 (Tafel 1-116). Stuttgart.

Dixon, P. (2003). The monastic buildings at Ely. In Meadows & Ramsay, op cit, pp 144-155.

Duffy, E. (2020). A people’s tragedy: studies in reformation. Bloomsbury Continuum.

Eaton, J. (2016). English medieval cathedrals. Blurb.

Fernie, E. (2003). Architecture and sculpture of Ely Cathedral in the Norman period. In Meadows & Ramsay, op cit, pp 97-11.

Hewett, C. A. (1974). English cathedral carpentry. Wayland.

Jenkins, S. (2016). England’s cathedrals. Little, Brown.

Keynes, S. (2003). Ely Abbey 672-1109. In Meadows & Ramsay, op cit, pp 3-58.

King, R. J. (1881). Handbook to the cathedrals of England. Volume 3. Eastern Division: Oxford, Peterborough, Norwich, Ely, Lincoln. J. Murray. Available at archive.org.

Lyden, A. M. (2010). The photographs of Frederick H. Evans. J. Paul Getty Museum.

McDiarmid, L. S. (1978). W. H. Auden’s “In the Year of My Youth…” The Review of English Studies, 29(115), 267–312.

Maddison, J. (2003). The Gothic Cathedral: new building in a historic context. In Meadows & Ramsay, op cit, pp 113-141.

Meadows, P., & Ramsay, N. (2003). A history of Ely Cathedral. Boydell Press.

Orme, N. (2017). The history of England’s cathedrals. Impress Books.

Parker, E. (2018). ‘Merry sang the monks’: Cnut’s Poetry and the Liber Eliensis. Scandinavica, 57(1), 14-27.

 

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) was one of the great forces in modern architecture. In the early years of the 20^th Century, he designed many beautiful houses in a characteristic style that later defined the Prairie School of Architecture. This post comments on some of these houses.

Early Life

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in rural Wisconsin with the baptismal name of Frank Lincoln Wright. His mother Anna (1838-1923) was the daughter of Richard Lloyd Jones who had emigrated with his family from Wales in 1844 when Anna was 6 years old. She was trained as a teacher and, in 1866, married William Cary Wright (1825-1904), an itinerant musician and preacher from Massachusetts. The couple had three children: Frank, Jane and Mary-Ellen. The marriage was not a happy one, and Wright divorced his wife in 1885. After this Frank changed his name to Frank Lloyd Wright in honor of his mother’s family. He later occasionally used the initials FLLW, but it is not clear if this referred to two middle names or simply to the Welsh double-L at the beginning of Lloyd.

In his autobiography, Wright attributed his love of architecture to his mother’s influence. She bought her young son a selection of Froebel’s blocks. Friedrich Froebel (782-1852) was a German pedagogue who initiated the idea of Kindergarten (Brosterman, 1997). He designed various collections (Gabe or gift) of simple blocks that could be used by young children to build different structures (Stiny, 1980). The following illustrations shows one of the collections (from Brosterman, 1997, p 53) and some structures that could be built (from Adams, 2022, p 107).

 

Wright later remembered:

The smooth, shapely maple blocks with which to build, the sense of which never afterward leaves the fingers: form becoming feeling. (Wright, 1977, p 34).

 

Apprenticeship

Wright studied civil engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, but left in 1887 before finishing his degree. He then worked for various architects in Chicago before becoming an apprentice in 1888 with Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) of the firm Adler and Sullivan. The following illustration shows photographs of Sullivan and Wright taken around 1890.

Sullivan used steel girders to provide the skeleton for tall buildings (Twombly, 1986, pp 281-332). Before the advent of steel, the height of buildings was limited since the weight of the building had to be completely supported by the walls. Sullivan did not, however, simply build tall. He insisted on ornamentation, which he considered essential to the visual appeal of the buildings. The following illustration shows the St. Nicholas Hotel in Saint Louis (1894) and the Chicago Stock Exchange Building (1893). Both buildings have been demolished, although the arch of the main door to the stock exchange has been preserved.

The following illustration shows a skylight from the Saint Nicholas Hotel, a harbinger of Wright’s later windows.

Sullivan’s ideas of form had lasting effects on the thinking of Wright. In an article entitled “The tall office building artistically considered” (1896), he proposed

It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things super-human, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.

The following are comments by Timothy Samuelson (Samuelson & Ware, 2021):

Shortened to “form follows function,” the phrase was used by Sullivan throughout his life and was frequently cited in reference to him. He protected its simple, universal message by not offering concrete definitions of its meaning. As applied to architecture, it described how a building’s form and its function evolve harmoniously. But the word “follows” soon led to the belief that Sullivan meant that the functional aspects of a building should take precedence in determining its form. As a result, many came to criticize the creatively abstracted forms and rich ornamental details of Sullivan’s buildings as violations of his own words. After Sullivan’s death, practitioners of functionalist design increasingly adopted this interpretation, making it seem as though Sullivan were a prophet of a philosophy he never actually advocated.

Frank Lloyd Wright proposed the rephrasing to “Form and function are one.” Although Wright was the most perceptive inheritor of Sullivan’s philosophy, he, too, missed the point. For Sullivan, form and function were among the infinite parts that combined and interacted to create a single, vibrant whole.

Wright left Sullivan & Adler to open his own architectural practice in 1893. Wright always revered Sullivan, considering him his lieber Meister (beloved teacher).

 

A Home in a Prairie Town

Over the 1890s, Wright evolved a new style for family homes. Instead of starting with an outer building and then fitting the necessary rooms into it, he worked from the central fireplace outward. He added the required spaces in much the same way as he might have put Froebel blocks together (Stiny, 1980). One room led into another with little if any separation. The rooms were provided with long bands of vertically oriented windows to allow free entry of light. The second storey was separated from the ground floor by a long, low-hipped belt roof, which extended beyond the walls to provide covered porches and terraces. The roof of the second story then paralleled the lower roof. The result was a building that was characterized by long horizontal lines, fitting organically into the flat landscape of the prairie. Ornament was minimal: an easy interplay of texture and geometry. The windows used stained glass, with simple geometric designs, to provide light, color and shadow (Heinz, 2000). These ideas became the principles of the Prairie School of Architecture (Brooks, 1972).

Wright described this type of home in an article in the Ladies’ Home Journal entitled “A home in a prairie town” (1901). The following illustrations are from that article. The lower shows the sequence of interior spaces along the long axis of the building: a library, a two-story living room with a gallery above, a dining room. Everything flows together

to offer the least resistance to a simple mode of living, in keeping with a high ideal of the family life together

Wright estimated that such a building would cost about $7000, which would be about $260,000 today: a very reasonable price. Though no one took him up on the particular design published in the Ladies’ Home Journal, Wright was soon building multiple homes using the principles proposed in his article.  

Wright’s Prairie homes follow a definite spatial grammar (Koning & Eizenberg, 1981). The following diagrams illustrate the two main patterns of Wright’s prairie homes. The main spatial structure is the living area centered around the hearth. To this is added the service areas (kitchen, servant’s quarters, etc). The sleeping areas for the family are then added in a second storey.  

 

The Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo

An important early example of the Prairie style was the Martin House finished in 1905 (Hess et al. 2006; Bayer et al., 2015)

The house, situated on a large site with extensive landscaping, was connected to a conservatory by a long glass-roofed pergola. Within the conservatory, Wright placed a full-scale replica of the Nike of Samothrace, a Greek statue from the 2^nd Century BCE, now in the Louvre. An additional home – the Barton house – for Martin’s sister and her husband was also included on the site. 

The plan of the Robie house was very similar to that proposed in Wright’s article on the Prairie home. However, the overall size was larger, and the second storey was expanded to be as large as the ground floor.

The following photographs by Mike Shriver show the interior of the house: the areas noted on the plan as the library and the dining room:

The Darwin Martin House ultimately cost about 40 times the amount quoted in the article about the Prairie home. Wright later worried about the fact that he was building houses only for the rich; in the 1930s he designed a more affordable set of Usonian houses (“Usonia” comes from “United States of North Independent America”) (Seargeant, 1976). The first of these – the Herbert and Katherine Jacobs First House in Madison, Wisconsin – was constructed on a budget of $5500 in 1937 (equivalent to$120,000 today).     

 

The Frederick C. Robie House, Chicago

The Robie House, built on a relatively narrow piece of land in Chicago, was finished in 1910 (Hoffman, 1984; Larkin & Pfeiffer, 1993; Hess et al., 1996):

The following photograph of the terrace and belvedere (Larkin & Pfeiffer, 1993) shows the marvelous concatenation of horizontal levels:

 

The following illustration shows a photograph from 1911 together with Wright’s graphic rendition of the house.

The following are the windows onto the porch:

The Francis W. Little House, Wayzata, Wisconsin.

The Little House in Wayzata was built in 1916, one of the last of the Wright’s Prairie homes (Jordy, 1983; Kaufmann, 1992). Having earlier had Wright design their house in Chicago, the Littles commissioned a new home when they moved to Wayzata, a suburb of Madison. The site overlooked the length of Lake Minnetonka. The house contained the largest living room of all Wright’s Prairie Houses. When the house was demolished in 1972, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York recreated the living room in its new American Wing.  The following are photographs of the two ends of the room:

On the table at one end of the room is a replica of the Nike of Samothrace, smaller than in the Martin house, but still striking in how it accentuates the lightness of the space.

 

Jory (1983) describes the room:

Here is the huge, pier-like fireplace at one end, with the fireplace opening forced low. Long bands of casement windows run the length of the room, sixteen of them on either side, set under deep, shelf like planes with transom windows above. The marked horizontals of the shelving—“banding lines,” Wright termed them—underscore the basic rectangular shape of the space, against which recessions (alcoves) and projections (piers) can move back and forth. Hence the basic shape is always resonantly present; yet the shifts add peripheral resiliency, ambiguity, and mystery to the space. The banding shelf also intensifies the horizontality of the space, giving “spread” to it, thus striking the keynote of Wright’s feeling for the restfulness of “prairie” horizontals. It scales down the spaciousness to human height by marking a perimeter just a bit over head height, and it provides long “roofed” alcoves at the windows—mini-chambers the length of the room—inviting one in toward the windows with their long, cushioned benches from which one takes in the view, not through the staring eye of a plate glass “picture window,” but in a cinematic manner, through a series of frames in which the same image shifts ever so slightly as one scans the reel.

Over the windows Wright spun a geometrical web of stained glass. It provides color. It completes the hierarchy of interior ornament with glinting intricacy at the perimeter. It creates a gossamer planar reference in space against which outside distances can be gauged. … The Little house glass is spare compared to the splendid patterns found in that of some other Wright houses … Undoubtedly, more spectacular glass would have been desirable for this period room, as a demonstration of what Wright could do. But Little wanted a minimal linear pattern with only the tiniest glints of color in his windows. He rejected a more elaborate scheme suggested by Wright. He feared it would interfere with the view of the lake.

The following illustration shows the windows:

Organic Architecture

The Prairie Home was the first of Wright’s great architectural achievements. It provided the basis for his “organic architecture” (Wright, 1930/2008; Wright & Meehan, 1987). Wright used this term to stress the close relationships between the building and the land, and between the building and the materials used in its construction. He also used it to distinguish his approach from that of Corbusier, who was proposing that a home was a “machine for living.” The following are the principles of organic architecture as applied to the family home (Wright, 1930/2008, pp 73-75):

1. To reduce the number of necessary parts of the house and the separate rooms to a minimum, and make all come together as enclosed space—so divided that light, air and vista permeated the whole with a sense of unity.
2. To associate the building as a whole with its site by extension and emphasis of the planes parallel to the ground, but keeping the floors off the best part of the site, thus leaving that better part for use in connection with the life of the house. Extended level planes were found useful in this connection.
3. To eliminate the room as a box and the house as another by making all walls enclosing screens—the ceilings and floors and enclosing screens to flow into each other as one large enclosure of space, with minor subdivisions only. Make all house proportions more liberally human, with less wasted space in structure, and structure more appropriate to material, and so the whole more livable. Liberal is the best word. Extended straight lines or stream-lines were useful in this.
4. To get the unwholesome basement up out of the ground, entirely above it, as a low pedestal for the living-portion of the home, making the foundation itself visible as a low masonry plat-form on which the building should stand.
5. To harmonize all necessary openings to “outside” or to “inside” with good human proportions and make them occur naturally—singly or as a series in the scheme of the whole building. Usually they appeared as “light-screens” instead of walls, because all the “Architecture” of the house was chiefly the way these openings came in such walls as were grouped about the rooms as enclosing screens. The room as such was now the essential architectural expression, and there were to be no holes cut in walls as holes are cut in a box, because this was not in keeping with the ideal of “plastic.” Cutting holes was violent.
6. To eliminate combinations of different materials in favor of mono-material so far as possible; to use no ornament that did not come out of the nature of materials to make the whole building clearer and more expressive as a place to live in, and give the conception of the building appropriate revealing emphasis. Geometrical or straight lines were natural to the machinery at work in the building trades then, so the interiors took on this character naturally.
7. To incorporate all heating, lighting, plumbing so that these systems became constituent parts of the building itself. These service features became architectural and in this attempt the ideal of an organic architecture was at work.
8. To incorporate as organic Architecture—so far as possible—furnishings, making them all one with the building and designing them in simple terms for machine work. Again straight lines and rectilinear forms.
9. Eliminate the Decorator. He was all curves and all efflorescence, if not all “period.”

 

Wright and Modernism

In later years Wright contributed glorious new buildings to our heritage, becoming an acknowledged master in all areas of architecture. The following are two photographs of Wright; one in the stance of a prophet, taken in 1915; and one by Yousuf Karsh from the height of his fame in 1954:

 

Below are architectural sketches for two of his most famous buildings: Fallingwater, the Edgar J. Kaufmann house near Mill Run, Pennsylvania, completed in 1937 (see Levine, 1996, Chapter VIII); and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, completed in 1959 (Levine, 1996, Chapter X). These and six other buildings are listed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List, among them the Frederick C. Robie House.  

 

 

Envoi

We can perhaps best conclude our comments on the early work of Frank Lloyd Wright by acknowledging the brand that he created in those early years (de Monchaux, 2018). The red square and its many variants became his signature, and the logo for his two studio/teaching-communities: Taliesin, in Wisconsin, and Taliesin West, in Arizona.

 

References

Bayer, M. et al. (2015). “Darwin D. Martin House – Cultural Landscape Report”. Bayer Architecture.

Brooks, H. A. (1972). The Prairie School: Frank Lloyd Wright and his Midwest contemporaries, University of Toronto Press. 

Brosterman, N. (1997). Inventing kindergarten. H.N. Abrams.

de Monchaux, T. (2018). Building a brand: the enduring legacy of Frank Lloyd Wright. Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

Heinz, T. A. (2000). Frank Lloyd Wright’s stained glass & lightscreens. Gibbs Smith.

Hess, A., Weintraub, A., & Smith, K. (2006). Frank Lloyd Wright: prairie houses. Rizzoli.

Hoffman, D. (1984). Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House: the illustrated story of an architectural masterpiece. Dover.

Jordy, W. H. (1983). The “Little house” at the Metropolitan. The New criterion, 1(5), 56-61.

Kaufmann, E. (1992). Frank Lloyd Wright at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, 40(2), 1-57.

Levine, N. (1996). The architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. Princeton University Press.

Koning, H., & Eizenberg, J. (1981). The language of the Prairie: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie houses. Environment and Planning. B, 8(3), 295–323.

Larkin, D., & Pfeiffer, B. B. (1993). Frank Lloyd Wright: the masterworks. Rizzoli

Samuelson, T., & Ware, C. (2021) Louis Sullivan’s Idea. Alphawood Foundation.

Sergeant, J. (1976). Frank Lloyd Wright’s Usonian houses: the case for organic architecture. Whitney Library of Design.

Stiny, G. (1980). Kindergarten Grammars: designing with Froebel’s Building Gifts. Environment and Planning. B, 7(4), 409–462.

Sullivan, L. (1896). The tall office building artistically considered. Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine, 57 (March 1896), 403-406.  

Twombly, R. C. (1986). Louis Sullivan: his life and work. Viking.

Wright, F. L. (1901). A home in a prairie town. The Ladies’ Home Journal. February, 1901, 18 (2), 17. Available through HathiTrust.

Wright, F. L., (1930. Facsimile edition, 2008). Modern architecture: being the Kahn lectures for 1930. Princeton University Press.

Wright, F. L. (1977). An autobiography. Horizon Press.

Wright, F. L., & Meehan, P. J. (1987). Truth against the world: Frank Lloyd Wright speaks for an organic architecture. Wiley.

Henry Moore (1898-1986), one of the greatest sculptors of the 20^th Century, created striking three-dimensional forms using many different techniques – carving, casting, modelling – and many different materials – stone, bronze, iron, wood, concrete, polystyrene. In the words of Herbert Read (1965, p 259)

He is a maker of images – or, as I prefer to call them because they have material existence – of icons, and he is impelled to make these icons by his sense of the forms that are vital to the life of mankind.

Each of Moore’s works was derived from nature, but Moore simplified and abstracted the experience to provide an emotional understanding rather than a sensory representation This essay comments on the nature of form and considers some of Moore’s works.

Personal History

In 1966 a sculpture by Moore entitled Three Way Piece Number 2, but generally known as The Archer was erected in the square in front of Toronto’s new City Hall, designed by the modernist Finnish architect Viljo Revell (1910-1964). Revell had asked Moore to design a sculpture to complement the new building. Unfortunately, the city council refused to finance the sculpture. Undaunted, the mayor Philip Givens arranged to pay for it through private donations. Despite the misgivings of some, the sculpture and the city hall have become immensely popular. Below are two photographs from 1966, the one of the right showing Henry Moore and Philip Givens.

I was intrigued by Toronto’s controversial sculpture, and in 1968 on a trip to London, I was able to see a large exhibit of Moore’s work at the Tate (Sylvester, 1968). His work affected me deeply: the forms he presented resonated in my mind.  

In the early 1970s, Moore donated a large collection of his work to the Art Gallery of Toronto, and in 1974 the gallery opened its Henry Moore Sculpture Centre (Wilkinson, 1987). The focus of the centre is a large room containing many plaster maquettes used by Moore for casting in bronze.

In 2014, to celebrate its 40^th anniversary, the centre arranged for Geoffrey Farmer to illuminate these maquettes with changing lights and to provide a sonic accompaniment for the forms (Whyte, 2014). He called the experience Every day needs an urgent whistle blown into it. It demanded your attention and I was completely fascinated by the play of light and sound on the forms. Several of the illustrations that follow are photographs taken during my visits to this particular exhibition. 

 

Some Comments on Form

Form is a word of many meanings. The first four meanings given by Wiktionary for the noun “form” in the sense of physical objects are:

1. the shape or visible structure of a thing or person
2. a thing that gives shape to other things as in a mold.
3. regularity, beauty or elegance.
4. the inherent nature of an object; that which the mind itself contributes as the condition of knowing; that in which the essence of a thing consists.

Ancient Greek philosophy had much to say about form (see recent commentaries by Ainsworth, 2024; Fine, 2023; Koslicki, 2018; Koslicki & Raven, 2024; and Silverman, 2014). A “Theory of Forms” is attributed to Plato and Socrates, although this theory is not clearly delineated in the dialogues of Plato. The basic concept holds that an object that we perceive through our senses is but a poor and transitory example of a perfect and eternal form (eidos) that exists in some domain separate from everyday reality. However, the true form of something can be grasped through the exercise of reason. For example (from Book X of The Republic, circe 375 BCE), though we may experience many different versions of a table, we can discern an idea of a table to which all these versions conform.

Socrates’ Allegory of the Cave (from Book VII of The Republic) is often understood as explaining the nature of forms. Socrates asks us to imagine that we are imprisoned deep in a cave. All we can see are shadows on the wall of the cave. These shadows are cast by various objects held in front a great fire by a group of puppeteers. The puppeteers themselves do not cast shadows since they are behind a wall, above which they hold their objects.  Now, suppose one of the prisoners were to escape and to climb back past the puppeteers and the fire to the entrance of the cave. She would at first be dazzled and confused by the light of the sun.  But after a while she would be able to see the real world. And if she were then to return to the cave and try to convince the other prisoners of what she had discovered, they would consider her crazy.

Socrates (or Plato) is proposing that what we normally perceive is an illusion. Reality can only be attained by leaving behind our preconceptions and grasping the true nature of the world. This is similar to the Apostle Paul’s comment (Tyson, 2024)

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.  (I Corinthians 13:12)

Indeed, Plato actually used the same metaphor in the Phaedrus (circe 370 BCE)

For there is no light of justice or temperance or any of the higher ideas which are precious to souls in the earthly copies of them: they are seen through a glass dimly; and there are few who, going to the images, behold in them the realities, and these only with difficulty. (Jowett translation)

Socrates’ allegory has been interpreted in different ways. An epistemological interpretation is that we cannot know the true reality through what we perceive, but can only discover it if we reason beyond appearances. An ethical interpretation is that we cannot know how to be good by observing the world but only by understanding the ultimate nature of goodness. Whatever the interpretation, the allegory gets lost in its details (e.g. Wilberding, 2004). Who or what are the puppeteers? What are the objects they use to cast the shadows? What is the fire in the cave that causes the shadows? It might have been simpler for the sun to cast shadows of objects in the outside world onto the wall of the cave.

We are left with the simple idea that what we perceive as good or true may not be so. The good or the true may need some deeper understanding. The religious will claim that this understanding comes by faith; the scientific will claim that it comes by reason.

Aristotle had completely different ideas about form from Plato (Fine, 2003; Ainsworth, 2024). For him, form was what gave objects their individuality. Any thing was a combination of substance (hule) and form (morphe): a theory that goes by the name of “hylomorphism.” In this approach form is not the universal and general idea of which a particular object was a poor copy, but rather that which made that particular object itself. Form was one of the four types of cause: material, formal, efficient, and final. 

 

The Young Moore

Henry Moore was born in 1898 in Castleford, near Leeds, Yorkshire, where his father worked as a supervisor in one of the coal mines. Having heard about Michelangelo in school, he decided at the age of 11 years that he would be a sculptor (Barassi et al, 2017, p 11).

The rolling hills of Yorkshire are a result of glacial erosion. As the glaciers retreated, they left behind “erratic” rocks that remain scattered across the landscape. The young Moore was impressed by one such erratic, Adel Rock: 

For me it was the first big, bleak lump of stone set in the landscape and surrounded by marvelous gnarled prehistoric trees. It had no feature of recognition, no element of copying of naturalism, just a bleak powerful form, very impressive. (quoted in Moore &Hedgecoe, 1986, p 35)

The following photograph is by John Hedgecoe (copied from Moore & Wilkinson, 2002, p 30)

Moore served in France with the Prince of Wales Own Civil Service Rifles and was injured by gas in 1917. After the war he obtained a veteran’s educational grant and attended Leeds School of Art from 1919-21. He then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London from 1921-24. Upon graduating, he became an instructor at the college.

In London, Moore became familiar with the sculptures and the plaster casts held by the many museums in the city. A travelling fellowship also gave him an opportunity to study works in France and Italy. Moore became especially intrigued by the long history of reclining figures in sculpture. The illustration on the following page shows some historical reclining figures: the Tiberinus, a Roman sculpture from the 2^nd Century CE representing the God of the River Tiber with his horn of plenty, the Dionysios from the Parthenon (5^th Century BCE), the Chichen Itza Chacmool from the 9^th Century CE, and Night by Michelangelo (1531).

Moore was particularly fascinated by the power of the pre-Columbian Mexican Chacmool figures, some of which he saw in the British Museum and others he read about. No one knows what these sculptures represented, nor what they were actually called. The name Chacmool, meaning “jaguar” in the Mayan language, was invented by an archeologist. The bowl on the stomach may have held offerings to the gods. In some places and at some times such offerings may have been related to human sacrifice.

Moore’s first major work Reclining Figure (1929) carved out of Hornton stone paid homage to the Chacmool sculptures of Mexico.

It has a definite influence from Mexican sculpture, from that particular figure, the Chacmool figure! Now except for the turn in the head of the Chacmool, which I think is a wonderful sculpture, you get a side view of the body, and the legs are both doing the same thing, both sides are both doing the same thing, that is it’s a symmetrical pose, and although I wasn’t consciously trying to compete with this figure in the brown Hornton one, perhaps my desire to get more three dimensions into sculpture made me use a pose in which the top leg comes over and the body is twisted, the arm is up and the other arm is down, that is, I was using a much less symmetrical pose. (quoted in Moore & Wilkinon, 2002, pp 253-4)

The following illustration shows the 1929 sculpture as well as an anonymous photograph of Moore with the sculpture in his studio in 1930:

One of Moore’s colleagues in Leeds and in London was Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975). Hepworth was likely the first modern sculptor to use the hole as an essential part of her creations (Vertu, 2021). The illustration on the right shows Pierced Form (1931), a carving in pink alabaster, that was destroyed by bombing during World War II, and only exists in this photograph. Hepworth’s creations hearken back to the gongshi or “Scholar’s Rocks,” naturally weathered stones, strangely shaped and often containing holes, that have been used as objects of contemplation in the East.     

 

Moore began to use holes in his sculpture soon after. In a BBC program in 1937 he remarked

A piece of stone can have a hole through it and not be weakened — if the hole is of a studied size, shape and direction. On the principle of the arch, it can remain just as strong. The first hole made through a piece of stone is a revelation. The hole connects one side to the other, making it immediately more three-dimensional. A hole can itself have as much shape-meaning as a solid mass. Sculpture in air is possible, where the stone contains only the hole, which is the intended and considered form. (quoted in Moore & Wilkinson, 2002, pp 95-96)

The following is a reclining figure carved in elmwood from 1939:

Reclining Figures

The reclining figure became Moore’s most common theme. Almost all of his reclining figures are women. The following illustration shows on the left a page of sketches from 1934. Moore reworked the page into a presentation copy in 1954 using watercolor and crayon to unify and highlight the drawings. On the right are some of his many lithographs showing reclining figures from the 1970s.

The reclining figure can convey many meanings. In its relation with the ground, it combines aspects of both the human figure and the natural landscape. Sylvester (1968, p 5) remarks

But the primary intention is ‘energy and power’: Moore’s reclining figures are not supine; they prop themselves up, are potentially active. Hence the affinity with river-gods: the idea is not simply that of a body subjected to the flow of nature’s forces but of one in which these forces are harnessed. 

To my thinking Moore’s reclining figures appear to be waking up. They may thus embody the idea of matter becoming conscious. In this respect, it is appropriate that one of Moore’s most impressive reclining figures was commissioned in 1955 for the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation in Paris. The sculpture could serve to illustrate the awakening of collaboration between nations.

Moore initially made a plaster maquette which was 2.35 meters long. From this, seven bronze versions were cast. Since he thought that the bronze version was too dark and too small to be placed in front of the UNESCO building, Moore carved a larger (5.08 meters long) version in travertine stone, the same as used for the building. Moore often scaled his creations to fit the location. The following illustration shows the stone sculpture, the sculpture in place in Paris in a photograph by John Hedgecoe (1998, p 136), and the plaster maquette under the lights of Geoffrey Farmer in Toronto.   

 

Moore’s reclining figures came in many forms. An interesting version shows a relining figure on a pedestal (1960). This may relate to the 3^rd-Century BCE Etruscan sarcophagi in Tuscania. The following illustration shows one such sarcophagus, a drawing from 1936 (from Clark, 1974, Figure 85), and the plaster maquette in Toronto under the lights and shadows of Geoffrey Farmer.

 

Relations between the Pieces

In the late 1950s Moore began to consider the idea of creating reclining figures composed of two parts. In conversation with John Hedgecoe (Moore & Hedgecoe, 1986, p 112) he remarked

Making a sculpture in two pieces means that, as you walk around it, one form gets in front of the other in ways that you cannot foresee, and you get a more surprising number of different views than when looking at a monolithic piece. … If you are doing a reclining figure, you just do the head and the legs. You leave space for the body, imagining that other part even though it isn’t there. The space then becomes very expressive.

He also related the new sculpture to childhood memories of Adel Rock:

While I was making it my Two Piece Reclining Figure recalled for me Adel Rock and the Rock at Etratat by Seurat. This particular sculpture is a mixture of the human form and the landscape, a metaphor of the relationship of humanity with the earth.

Moore is likely conflating Seurat’s Le Bec du Hoc at Grandcamp (1985), illustrated below on the right, which was at one time owned by his friend Kenneth Clark, with one of Monet’s many paintings of the Cliff at Etratat (left).

The following illustration shows a recent photograph of Adel Rock:

And finally, the Two Piece Reclining Figure 2 (1960) as a plaster maquette in Toronto and as a bronze casting in the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (viewed from the other side):

Moore soon began to experiment with more abstract forms placed in relation to each other. His Large Two Forms (1969) brings two shapes that might derive from pelvic bones into a close and possibly sexual relationship. The sculpture began as a small plaster maquette (16 cm) and then was carved in red Soraya marble (length 2 meters): The following illustration shows some black and white photographs by Moore (Sylvester, 1968) and a more recent color photograph:

Moore scaled the forms up using polystyrene (length 6 meters) and cast them in bronze. One of the castings was initially installed outside the Art Gallery or Ontario in 1973. In 2017 it was moved to the nearby Grange Park, where it can be more easily viewed from all directions:

Pointing

In 1940 Moore made a small (length 19 cm) sculpture in steel entitled Three Points.

He remarked that

this pointing has an emotional or physical action in it where things are just about to touch but don’t. There is some anticipation of this action. Michelangelo used the same theme in his fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, of God creating Adam, in which the forefinger of God’s hand is just about to touch and give life to Adam. It is also like the points in the sparking plug of a car, where the spark has to jump across the gap between the points.

There is a very beautiful early French painting (Gabrielle d’Estrées with her Sister in the Bath), where one sister is just about to touch the nipple of the other. I used this sense of anticipation first in the Three Points of 1940, but there are other, later works where one form is nearly making contact with the other. It is very important that the points do not actually touch. There has to be a gap. (quoted in Moore & Wilkinson, 2002, p 260-1)

Probably the most famous of Moore’s pointed sculptures is the Oval with Points (1960). This began as a small plaster model (height 16 cm). Based on this Moore made a plaster maquette (height 110 cm) from which bronze versions were cast. Finally, he made a larger version in bronze with a height of 332 cm. the following illustration shows the original plaster model in the Art Gallery of Ontario, the large bronze version in the sculpture park run by the Henry Moore Foundation in Perry Green, Hertfordshire, and the medium-size plaster maquette under the lights of Geoffrey Farmer at the Art Gallery of Ontario:

The sculptures have a clear focus where the two points come close together. The points divide the hole in the center into two parts, which make their own form out of the emptiness. The eye wanders from the structure of the oval to the focus, then through to holes to what is beyond.

 

Standing Figure: Knife Edge

In 1961 Moore created a small figure (about 25 cm tall) by adding modelling clay to a fragment of a bird’s breastbone. The figure no longer exists except in a photograph by John Hedgecoe (1968, p 360). Using this as a model, Moore then made a plaster maquette that was 163 cm tall. The following illustration shows two views of the plaster maquette:

Using this maquette, Moore cast several versions of the figure in bronze and one in fibreglass. An even taller version (2.8 meters) was then cast in bronze. The following illustration shows the original model, the fibreglass casting (now in the Art Gallery of Ontario) and a bronze casting of the taller version placed as a memorial to W. B. Yeats in St Stephen’s Green in Dublin

In 1976, Moore arranged for a further enlargement – Large Standing Figure: Knife Edge. The following figure shows multiple views of one o the castings of this sculpture, now in Greenwich:

From the “front” the statue resembles a human figure with arms indicating the way to go, or an angel with wings opening to begin flight. At one time Moore called it Winged Figure, a name appropriate to its origin in the breast bone of a bird. From the “side” it does appear as a cutting edge. The form brings many ideas to mind.

The following illustration shows the fibreglass version at the Art Gallery of Ontario as experienced under the lights of Geoffrey Farmer. To me it was a little like watching the shadows on the wall of Plato’s cave.  

 

A Maker of Forms

This essay has only mentioned a few of the themes in Moore’s sculptures. Over his long and productive life, he considered many others: among them the mother and child, the family, seated figures, warriors, energy, and heads of various kinds. His forms were occasionally naturalistic but more often abstract. He commented on the process of abstraction:  

People say ‘Are you trying to be abstract?’ thinking then that they know what you are doing though, of course, they don’t understand what the devil it is all about. They think that abstraction means getting away from reality and it often means precisely the opposite – that you are getting closer to it, away from a visual interpretation but nearer to an emotional understanding. When I say that I am being abstract, I mean that I am trying to consider but not simply copy nature, and that I am taking account of the material I am using and the idea that I wish to release from that material. (quoted in Moore & Hedgecoe, 1986, p 87).

Moore always insisted that his work must come from nature.

One doesn’t quite know how ideas have been generated or where thy come from. Sometimes one is influenced by a particular pebble or other natural form, but it’s equally possible to sit down with a blank sheet of paper and a pencil and a scribble will turn into something which is worth developing. It depends on how much background you have to draw on. The older you are, the more observant you are of the world, of nature, and forms, and the more easily you can invent. But it has to come from somewhere in the beginning, from reality, nature. (quoted in Moore & Hedgecoe, 1986, p 122)

How do Moore’s forms relate to the ancient philosophical ideas of form? At times he seemed to be seeking the essence or perfect form of something. Some have considered his work in relation to the archetypes that underlie human thought (Neumann, 1959), but this does not help me understand the sculptures.

More often than not, Moore was creating forms rather than portraying them. He was more Aristotelian than Platonic. He followed Aristotle’s four causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. He worked with many different materials, he conceived of forms, he arranged for the material to be made into these forms to be made from the materials, and he did this to help us to understand the world and ourselves.

 

Final Statement

We can let Moore have the final word on his work. The following is from a 1930 article (quoted in Moore and Wilkinson, 2002, p 188)

Each sculptor differs in his aims and ideals according to his different character, personality and his point of development. The sculpture which moves me most is full blooded and self-supporting, fully in the round, that is, its component forms are completely realised and work as masses in opposition, not being merely indicated by surface cutting in relief; it is not perfectly symmetrical, it is static and it is strong and vital, giving out something of the energy and power of great mountains. It has a life of its own, independent of the object it represents.

Moore likely derived the idea of the energy and power of great mountains from reading Ezra Pound’s 1916 memoir of Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915), a young French sculptor who died in the trenches of World War I. His wrote in the journal Vortex (quoted in Pound, 1916, p 9)

Sculptural energy is the mountain.
Sculptural feeling is the appreciation of masses in relation.
Sculptural ability is the defining of these masses by planes.

Below are some photographs of Moore with his sculptures: by Bill Brandt (1946), by Yousuf Karsh (1972) and by Arnold Newman (1966).

References

Ainsworth, T. (2024) Form vs. Matter. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Barassi, S., Wood, J., Moore, T. (2017). Becoming Henry Moore. Art Books Publishing

Clark, K. (1974). Henry Moore drawings. Thames and Hudson.

Fine, G. (2003). Plato on knowledge and forms. Oxford University Press.

Hedgecoe, J. (1998). A monumental vision: the sculpture of Henry Moore. Collins & Brown.

Hedgecoe, J., & Moore, H. (1968). Henry Spencer Moore. Simon & Schuster.

Koslicki, K. (2018). Form, matter, substance. Oxford University Press.

Koslicki, K., & Raven, M. J. (Eds.). (2024). The Routledge handbook of essence in philosophy. Routledge.

Moore, H., & Hedgecoe, J. (1986, reprinted 1999). Henry Moore: my ideas, inspiration and life as an artist. Collins & Brown.

Moore, H., & Wilkinson, A. G. (2002). Henry Moore, writings and conversations. Lund Humphries.

Neumann, E. (1959). The archetypal world of Henry Moore. Pantheon Books.

Pound, E. (1916). Gaudier-Brzeska: a memoir. John Lane, The Bodley Head.

Read, H. (1965). Henry Moore: a study of his life and work. Thames and Hudson.

Silverman, A. (2014). Plato’s middle period metaphysics and epistemology. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Stephens, C. (2010). Henry Moore. Tate Publishing (Skira Rizzoli)

Sylvester, D. (1968). Henry Moore. Arts Council of Great Britain.

Tyson, P. G. (2015). Returning to reality: Christian Platonism for our times. Lutterworth. (Chapter 4. Platonist Ideas in the New Testament can be downloaded)

Vertu, K. (2021). The hole story. Medium, June 6, 2021.

Whyte, M. (2014). Geoffrey Farmer on Henry Moore: All that is solid melts into air. The Toronto Star, 7 July 2014

Wilberding, J. (2004). Prisoners and puppeteers in The Cave. In Sedley, D. (Ed.) Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy. (pp 117-140). Oxford University Press.

Wilkinson, A. G. (1984). The drawings of Henry Moore. Garland.

Wilkinson, A. G. (1987). Henry Moore remembered: the collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto. Art Gallery of Ontario.

n the 9^th and 10^th Centuries CE, Europe began to awaken from the has come to be known as the Dark Ages. Imposing churches were erected and many of these were decorated with sculptures. This new style of art and architecture, thought to be derived from that of the Roman Empire, has been called “Romanesque.” The sculpture from this time is full of a tremendous vitality and marked by a rich imagination. Some of the most impressive examples adorn the portal of the Abbaye de Saint Pierre in Moissac in southwestern France.

History of the Abbey

Moissac, situated on the confluence of the Garonne and Tarn rivers in southwest France (see map below), is surrounded by rich agricultural land. Legend has it that a monastic community was founded there in the 6^th Century CE by Clovis, the first king of the Franks, though the monastery likely began a century later (Vidal et al., 1979). Over the years the monastery was pillaged by various invaders: the Arabs in the 8^th Century, the Normans in the 9^th Century, and the Hungarians in the 10^th Century. In the 11^th Century, as more and more pilgrims began to travel to Santiago de Compostella in Spain (Oursel, 1970), Moissac became an important way-station on the route from Geneva (dotted purple line):

 

In 1047, Saint Odilon, the 4^th Abbot of Cluny, arranged for the monks in Moissac to be affiliated with the Benedictine Abbey at Cluny. In 1059, Durand de Bredon, archbishop of Toulouse, was installed as its first abbot. He arranged for the abbey church and cloisters to be rebuilt, and in 1063, the Abbaye de Saint Pierre de Moissac was reconsecrated. Abbot Durand is commemorated in a bas-relief sculpture in the east gallery of the cloisters (see illustration on the right adapted from Vidal et al, 1979). The sculptures adorning the portal and the porch were created under the direction of abbot Ansquitil (Franzé, 2015) during the years from 1100 to 1115 (Forsyth, 2010).   

 

The Concept of “Romanesque”

The architecture and sculpture of the middle of the 10^th to the beginning of the 13^th Centuries is usually considered “Romanesque,” a term (roman in French) first used by Charles de Gerville (1769-1853) in the early 19^th Century (Charles & Carl, 2012). He proposed that the style was a revival of the art and architecture of the Roman world before the Barbarian invasions. In England, Romanesque architecture is often called “Norman” since it came with the Norman Invasion in the 11^th Century.  

The key characteristic of Romanesque architecture was the use round arches (Toman, 2004, pp 24-30; Charles & Carl, 2012, p 17). The transition to pointed arches in the late 12^th Century marked the onset of “Gothic” architecture. Both terms are inaccurate: Romanesque architecture has little to do with the Romans, and Gothic architecture has nothing to do with the Goths.

The period of time between the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 CE and the rise of the Romanesque after 1000 CE has often been considered a time of ignorance and violence – the European “Dark Ages.” However, such a concept is inappropriate. Multiple separate kingdoms existed during this time, and each of these fostered its own learning, art and architecture. The Visigothic kingdom ruled much of Spain until the Arab Conquest in the 8^th Century. The Merovingian dynasty governed France from the 5^th to 8^th Century. The Carolingian Empire (the precursor of the Holy Roman Empire) controlled much of France and Germany in the 9^th Century. The kingdom of Asturias ruled northwest Spain in the 8^th to 10^th Centuries. The Vikings established the Duchy of Normandy in northwest France the 10^th Century. Celtic monasteries in Ireland sent their missionaries and their artists back to convert and teach the people of the old Roman Empire. And Europe could not help but be affected by the Islamic art of Moorish Spain, and the magnificent art of the Byzantine Empire and Ravenna. The period of the so-called Dark Ages was actually a time of intense artistic ferment, wherein different styles came together and interacted (Busch & Lohse, 1966; Oursel, 1973, pp 13-86; Fleischer, 2004).  

Romanesque architecture differs from Roman architecture in its use of steeples and towers. Christian churches differ from Roman temples in their concentration on interior teaching rather than external show. Romanesque sculpture differs from Roman sculpture in its vitality and imagination, characteristics that it learned from Celtic and Norse carvings, in an iconography that follows Byzantine precedents, and in an ornamental geometry that largely comes from Islam.

The French language is particularly confusing in its description of artistic styles. “Romanesque” is roman in French, and “Roman” is romain. The word romanesque in French actually means “romantic” or “novelistic.” In French, the noun roman meaning “novel” derives from an earlier word romanz, meaning “story” (or “romance”). Another use of the French term romanesque is to describe the European languages that derived from Latin, equivalent in English to “romance” The only word that is equivalent in French and English is romantique, “romantic”

 

The Portal

The following diagram shows the south portal of the Abbaye de Saint Pierre. Sculpture adorns all parts of the portal as well as the walls of the porch in which it is located:

Tympanum

The tympanum represents the vision of John as described in Revelation (80-100 CE). Though some have proposed that the author of the Gospel of John also wrote this Apocalypse, most scholars now believe that Revelation came from a different person: a Christian prophet who retired to meditate and write on the island of Patmos off the coast of Asia Minor near Ephesus (Koester, 2014, pp 65-69; Pagels, 2012, pp 2-3). The first of John’s visions is striking:   

And immediately I was in the spirit: and, behold, a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne.

And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone: and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.

And round about the throne were four and twenty seats: and upon the seats I saw four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment; and they had on their heads crowns of gold.

And out of the throne proceeded lightnings and thunderings and voices: and there were seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God.

And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.

And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle. (Revelation 4: 2-7)

Christ in majesty (Maiestas Domini) is the focus of this vision. This type of representation – a bearded Christ, wearing a crown, seated on a throne, holding a book, his head surrounded by a halo that usually incorporated a crucifix – had developed over the preceding centuries in illuminated manuscripts. The following illustration shows examples from the Codex Amiatinus (700-720), the Godescalc Evangelistary (783) and the Bamberg Apocalypse (1000-1020). 

 

The following is a bas-relief sculpture of Christ in Majesty from the 7^th-Century sarcophagus of Saint Agilbert in Jouarre, about 70 km east of Paris. 

The Moissac tympanum represents in monumental stone the words of the prophet John.

 

In the center, Christ in Majesty is surrounded by four creatures and two angels (Schapiro & Finn, 1985, pp 77-104; Vidal et al., 1979, pp 95-99). The feet of Christ rest upon a crystalline sea, as described in the passage from Revelation, but not in the illuminations illustrated above. Bede’s interpretation (early 8^th Century) of this is that it represents the baptism that is necessary for Christian salvation (Wallis, 2013, p 134).

The setting for Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel The Name of the Rose is a monastery loosely based on the Sacra di San Michele, an abbey on Mount Pirichiano in Piedmont, Italy. However, the portal of the fictional abbey church is clearly based on that in Moissac (Geese, 2004, p 259). The young monk Adso describes his impression of the Christ in Majesty:

I saw a throne set in the sky and a figure seated on the throne. The face of the Seated One was stern and impassive, the eyes wide and glaring over a terrestrial humankind that had reached the end of its story; majestic hair and beard flowed around the face and over the chest like the waters of a river, in streams all equal, symmetrically divided in two. The crown on his head was rich in enamels and jewels, the purple imperial tunic was arranged in broad folds over the knees, woven with embroideries and laces of gold and silver thread. The left hand, resting on one knee, held a sealed book, the right was uplifted in an attitude of blessing or—I could not tell—of admonition. The face was illuminated by the tremendous beauty of a halo, containing a cross and bedecked with flowers, while around the throne and above the face of the Seated One I saw an emerald rainbow glittering. Before the throne, beneath the feet of the Seated One, a sea of crystal flowed, and around the Seated One, beside and above the throne, I saw four awful creatures—awful for me, as I looked at them, transported, but docile and dear for the Seated One, whose praises they sang without cease.

Surrounding the central figure of Christ are four creatures. Although there are other interpretations, most scholars suggest that these creatures represent the writers of the four gospels since each is holding a book:

Matthew has the human face because he begins his gospel with Jesus’ human genealogy; Mark is the lion because he begins with a voice roaring in the desert; Luke is the ox because he begins with offering in the temple; and John is the eagle because of the book’s soaring opening lines. (Koester, 2014, p 353).

Each of the creatures has six wings. Bede considered the number six auspicious because it is both the sum and product of the first three numbers (Wallis, 2013, p 135). The sculptural representations of the four creatures, with their wings and books, are marvelously dynamic – they twist themselves toward the focus of their praise. There is a striking contrast between the immobility of the central Christ and the movement of the surrounding creatures: one exists in eternity whereas the others try to portray this in human time. Beside the creatures are two angels, each holding a scroll, unopened on the left and open on the right.    

Surrounding the central group are 24 “elders” arrayed in white gowns and wearing golden crowns. No one knows who they represent. They may be: the elders of the Christian Church in Jerusalem; the Christian Apostles and the leaders of the tribes of Israel; the whole church composed of both priests and people; or those who have already died and been resurrected (Quispel, 1979, p 49; Koester, 2024, pp 360-363; Wallis, 2013, p 136). Twenty-four is another auspicious number: the product of the first four integers.

Hearn (1981, pp 170-172) stresses the remarkable variability of the elders, who differ in the posture of their legs or arms, in the way they hold their instruments, in the shape and ornamentation of their crowns, and in the decorations of their robes. Yet all the elders are the same in that they are looking at Christ.

 

 

Each of the elders holds a stringed instrument (probably a version of the vielle or medieval fiddle) but the number of strings and the shape of the sounding body vary from elder to elder. Only one appears to be actually playing his instrument with a bow (see right). Most of the elders also hold a goblet in their hand.

 

In The Name of the Rose, Adso is completely entranced by the elders:

Around the throne, beside the four creatures and under the feet of the Seated One, as if seen through the transparent waters of the crystal sea, as if to fill the whole space of the vision, arranged according to the triangular frame of the tympanum, rising from a base of seven plus seven, then to three plus three and then to two plus two, at either side of the great throne, on twenty-four little thrones, there were twenty-four ancients, wearing white garments and crowned in gold. Some held lutes in their hands, one a vase of perfumes, and only one was playing an instrument, all the others were in ecstasy, faces turned to the Seated One, whose praises they were singing, their limbs also twisted like the creatures’, so that all could see the Seated One, not in wild fashion, however, but with movements of ecstatic dance—as David must have danced before the Ark—so that wherever their pupils were, against the law governing the stature of bodies, they converged on the same radiant spot. Oh, what a harmony of abandonment and impulse, of unnatural and yet graceful postures, in that mystical language of limbs miraculously freed from the weight of corporeal matter, marked quantity infused with new substantial form, as if the holy band were struck by an impetuous wind, breath of life, frenzy of delight, rejoicing song of praise miraculously transformed, from the sound that it was, into image.  Bodies inhabited in every part by the Spirit, illuminated by revelation, faces overcome with amazement, eyes shining with enthusiasm, cheeks flushed with love, pupils dilated with joy: this one thunder-struck by a pleasurable consternation, that one pierced by a consternated pleasure, some transfigured by wonder, some rejuvenated by bliss, there they all were, singing with the expression of their faces, the drapery of their tunics, the position and tension of their limbs, singing a new song, lips parted in a smile of perennial praise. (p 42)

The following photographs of some of the elders and their ecstasy:

The Trumeau

Carved from one piece of stone, the trumeau (deriving from the Germanic root thruma, trunk, stump) of the Moissac portal is one of the most striking pieces of Romanesque sculpture (Vidal et al, 1979, pp 99-100; Schapiro, 1931, pp 525-529; Schapiro & Finn, 1985, pp 128-132). On the front of the pillar are arrayed three pairs of lions. The lions are similar in style to the lion of Mark in the tympanum. Each lion is definitely sexed with either female breasts or male genitalia. The iconography of lions harkens back to the Ishtar gate of Babylon, and to Coptic sculptures. Their intertwining owes much to the complex patterns of Islamic imagery. Behind the lions is a pattern of vines and rosettes.  

 

On the sides of the trumeau are carved sinuous and elongated representations of the prophet Jeremiah with an open scroll and the apostle Paul with a book of his letters. Jeremiah looks downward in melancholy as he laments the state of Jerusalem and foresees the Babylonian captivity. Paul looks upward with hope for the redemption offered to those who elect Christ as their savior. My intuition is that the sculpture of Paul may be a portrait of the abbot Ansquitil, who devised the iconography of the portal and supervised its construction.

 

The Birth and Childhood of Jesus

The walls of the porch portray two narratives related to salvation and damnation (Schapiro & Finn, 1985, pp 107-126; Forsyth, 2002). On the east wall are represented episodes from the birth and childhood of Jesus. In the lower section of the wall are the Annunciation, the Visitation, and the Adoration of the Magi. Though these were damaged during the French Revolution, the upper panel of the wall is well preserved.

 

It represents from right to left: the presentation in the temple (Luke 2; 23-32), the angel warning Joseph that Herod is planning to massacre the infants of Bethlehem and the flight to Egypt (Matthew 2: 13-23), and the fall of the idols of Heliopolis.

The last episode may derive from a prophecy of the Messiah in Jeremiah 43: 11-13:

And when he cometh, he shall smite the land of Egypt, and deliver such as are for death to death; and such as are for captivity to captivity; and such as are for the sword to the sword.

And I will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods of Egypt; and he shall burn them, and carry them away captives: and he shall array himself with the land of Egypt, as a shepherd putteth on his garment; and he shall go forth from thence in peace.

He shall break also the images of Bethshemesh, that is in the land of Egypt; and the houses of the gods of the Egyptians shall he burn with fire.

Heliopolis (Greek) and Bethshemesh (Hebrew) both mean “city of the sun.” A passage in one of the apocrypha describes the destruction of the idols and temples of Egypt when the Holy Family arrived for their sojourn there (Forsyth (2002; Franzé, 2015). The fall of the idols may also relate to the success of the First Crusade which had recently liberated Jerusalem in 1098 (Franzé, 2015).

 

Dives and Lazarus

The upper sculptures of the west wall of the porch recount the parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16: 19-26).

There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day:

And there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores,

And desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table: moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.

And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom: the rich man also died, and was buried;

And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom.

And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame.

But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things: but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.

And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.

Dives is the Latin word for a rich man, and Lazarus is the name of a beggar, derived from the Hebrew Eleazar or “God is my help” (Lazarus in this parable is not the Lazarus that Jesus later raised from the dead. Their common name is just coincidence).

During his life, Dives enjoyed his luxury and took no notice of Lazarus. After they died, Lazarus was taken to Abraham’s bosom whereas Dives went to hell. Justice was served. The parable has always been popular. The poor are more numerous than the rich.

 

The right side of the Moissac tableau shows Dives eating a sumptuous meal. He pays no heed to Lazarus, who lies on the ground in the lower center part of the panel, beset by dogs. At his death Lazarus is taken by the angel to the bosom of Abraham. This is in accord with the law as personified on the far left of the sculpture. The fate of Dives is played out in a separate representation lower down on the wall (not illustrated). Devils take both his soul and his accumulated riches. Like Dives, this sculpture has not survived well.

An old English ballad, dating from medieval times, retells the story with the refrain

Then Lazarus laid him down and down
And down at Dives’ door
“Some meat, some drink, brother Dives,
Bestow upon the poor”

Ralph Vaughan-Williams composed Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus for Harp and String Orchestra (1940), based on various versions of the ballad.

Henderson (1972, p 90) points out that the parable of Dives and Lazarus follows appropriately from the warnings of the prophet John that come immediately before his vision of Christ in Majesty:

Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked:

I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see.

As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent. (Revelation 3:17-19)

 

The Artists

The overall conception of the portal and the cloister of the Abbaye de Saint Pierre has long been attributed to the Abbot Ansquitil. The chronicle of Aymeric de Peyrac, an abbot of Moissac in the 14^th Century wrote:

Dictus Ansquitilus fecit fieri portale pulcherrimum [The said Ansquitil arranged for the most beautiful portal to be made] (quoted by Vidal et al 1979, p 96)

The central pillar of the west gallery of cloister (illustrated on the right) has an intricately carved epigraph that reads

ANNO AB INCARNATIONE ÆTERNI PRINCIPIS MILLESIMO CENTESIMO FACTVM EST CLAUSTRVM ISTVD TEMPORE DOMNI ANSQUITILII ABBATIS AMEN VVV MDM RRR FFF

De la Haye (2023, p 133-135) suggests that the final abbreviations might have represented

VIR VITÆ VENERABILIS / MOYSSIACENSEM DOMUM MELIORAVIT / RESTITUIT RESTAURAVIT REXIT / FAUSTE FORTUNATE FELICITER,

Thus, a full translation would read

In the year 1100 following the incarnation of the Eternal Lord, this cloister was erected, in the time of the Abbot Ansquitil: a man of venerable life who improved, rebuilt, restored and governed the house of Moissac, favored, fortunate and felicitous

He also suggests that the fish scale (écaille in French, escata in the old Occitan language) ornamentation at the top of the pillar is a punning reference to the name Ansquitil.

The names of the sculptors who worked under the direction of the learned abbot remain unknown. Vidal et al (1979, p 96, my translation), however, notes

By a detail, usually unnoticed or forgotten, we know their person, if we do not know their name; because we can see them represented to the left and right of the tympanum, under the second arch: one in a working position, tools in hands, a bearded man in the prime of life; the other, young and beardless with a broad and blissful face, identifiable by the secret sign of initiation of the bare foot. They contemplate their work.

 

Doorway to Eternity

The doorway to a church marks the boundary between the problems of the world and the peace that comes with salvation. Just before he describes his vision of Christ in Majesty, John of Patmos conveys Christ’s message: 

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3: 20)

Vernery (2019) comments on how the doorway is the threshold between a world wherein time and mortality hold sway and a life attuned to the mysteries of eternity. The sculptural representations provide material images of a spiritual idea:

La perception sensible des sculptures donne lieu à la construction d’une image mentale rendue une par la contemplation. Une fois cette forme conceptuelle mise en place en l’esprit, l’homme est amené à se détacher de la sensation corporelle. Laissant les images matérielles sur le parvis de l’abbatiale en en franchissant physiquement l’espace, il conserve mentalement ce qu’elles ont éveillé en lui.

[The perception of the sculptures creates a mental image that becomes unified by contemplation. Once this conceptual form becomes established in the mind, one becomes detached from bodily sensation. Leaving the material images on the square in front of the abbey church while physically crossing the space, one mentally preserves what they awakened]

The spiritual idea is the concept of Christ in Majesty. This is what separates the temporal from the eternal

Vernerey (2020) also remarks about how the very process of sculpting, wherein matter is removed to reveal the hidden form, is analogous to the crossing from the outer world into the inner mysteries. Just as the process of sculpture extracts images from raw material, so the entry into the church extracts the soul from the temporal world.

The present is much different from the days when a hundred monks led lives of prayer and ritual in Moissac. In 1793 the mobs of the French Revolution drove the monks from the abbey and damaged many of the statues that were easily accessible. Years later, the abbey church became a simple parish church. The cloister and other remaining monastery buildings became a museum.  

In our secular age we no longer believe in the specifics of salvation that Ansquitil arranged to be displayed in stone. Yet the portal still makes us think of processes beyond the flow of time, that we can write about and wonder at.

 

References

Busch, H., & Lohse, B. (1966). Pre-Romanesque art. Macmillan.

Charles, V., & Carl, K. (2012). Romanesque Art. Parkstone-International

de la Haye, R. (1995, revised 2023) Apogée de Moissac. L’abbaye clunisienne Saint-Pierre de Moissac à l’époque de la construction de son cloître et de son grand portail, Maastricht.

Eco, U. (1980, translated W. Weaver, 1983). The name of the rose. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Eco, U. (translated W. Weaver, 1984). Postscript to The Name of the Rose. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Fleischer, J. (2004). Pre-Romanesque church walls and their “language.” In Petersen, N. H., Clüver, C., & Bell, N. (Eds.). Signs of change: transformations of Christian traditions and their representation in the arts, 1000-2000. (pp 247-264) Rodopi.

Forsyth, I. H. (2002). Narrative at Moissac: Schapiro’s Legacy. Gesta, 41(2), 71–93.

Forsyth, I. H. (2010). The date of the Moissac Portal. In Maxwell, R. A. & Ambrose, K. Current directions in eleventh- and twelfth-century sculpture studies. (pp 77-99). Brepols.

Franzé, B. (2015). Moissac et l’oeuvre de l’abbé Ansquitil (1085-1115): un discours de penitence. Hortus Artium Medievalium, 21, 385-405

Geese, U. (2004). Romanesque sculpture. In R. Toman (Ed.). Romanesque: architecture, sculpture, painting. (pp 256-380). H. F. Ullman (Tandem).

Hearn, M. F. (1981). Romanesque sculpture: the revival of monumental stone sculpture in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Cornell University Press, 1981.

Henderson, G. (1972). Early Medieval. Penguin Books.

Koester, C. R. (2014). Revelation: a new translation with introduction and commentary. (Anchor Bible). Yale University Press.

Oursel, R (Ed.) (1970). Les Chemins de Saint-Jacques: textes de saint Augustin et des Miracles de saint Jacques. Zodiaque.

Oursel, R. (1973, 1976). Floraison de la sculpture romane. 1. Les grands découvertes. 2. Le coeur et la main. Zodiaque.

Pagels, E. H. (2012). Revelations: visions, prophecy, and politics in the book of Revelation. Viking.

Quispel, G. (1979). The secret Book of Revelation: the last book of the Bible. McGraw-Hill.

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Schapiro, M., & Finn, D. (1985). The Romanesque sculpture of Moissac. Georges Braziller.

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Vernerey, É. (2020). En deux temps, un mouvement. Définir la temporalité du sacré par la sculpture sur le porche de Moissac. Temporalités

Vidal, M., Maury, J., & Porcher, J. (1979). Quercy roman. (3rd Ed.). Zodiaque.

Wallis, F. (2013). Bede: Commentary on Revelation. Liverpool University Press.

 

This post describes some of the events that occurred in Ronda, a town in southern Spain, during the summer of 1936. After the Spanish Civil War broke out, Anarchists quickly took control of the town, and murdered many supporters of the Nationalist cause. Two months later, advancing Nationalist forces captured Ronda, and drove most of its people from their homes. Those that refused to leave suffered bloody reprisals. These events quickly became mythic rather than historic. In one story, the Anarchists had murdered the town’s Falangists by having them beaten to death in the town’s plaza and then thrown into the canyon that cuts through the center of the town. Ernest Hemingway recounted this version in his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. However, most historians now agree that this never happened.  

Ronda

Ronda is one of the most beautiful of the pueblos blancos (“white towns”) perched on the inland hills of Andalusia. The name comes from the buildings that were white-washed to protect them from the heat of the sun. Through the center of Ronda runs the Guadalevin River, which has carved through the limestone cliffs a steep-walled canyon, el tajo, reaching depths of more than 100 meters. The most striking bridge over the river is the Puente Nuevo constructed in 1793 at the point where the canyon opens into the huge valley know as la caldera (cauldron) The following illustration shows the bridge viewed from the West (left) and from the Southeast (right).

The large building just to the north of the bridge used to be Ronda’s casa consistorial (town hall) where the ayuntamiento or local council met. In the 1990s this was converted into a parador (state-owned luxury hotel). The following illustration shows the old city hall with its arcades facing the large town square. On the far left can be seen a low wall looking over the canyon.

Ronda has many other luxury hotels. The Hotel Reina Victoria, a summer resort for the English stationed in Gibraltar, was built on the cliff overlooking la caldera in 1906. The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke stayed there for several months in the winter of 1912-1913. The gardens beside the hotel have a commemorative statue of Rilke gazing out over valley (shown below in a photograph by Bryan Appleyard).

In Ronda, Rilke continued working on a set of poems that would not be complete until ten more years had passed – the Duino Elegies. He was also able to compose several poems about Spain. In the third part of a poem called The Spanish Trilogy he praised the peasants he could see in the valley, hoping that he might become as attuned to the universe as a simple shepherd:

Langsamen Schrittes, nicht leicht, nachdenklichen Körpers,
aber im Stehn ist er herrlich. Noch immer dürfte ein Gott
heimlich in diese Gestalt und würde nicht minder.
Abwechselnd weilt er und zieht, wie selber der Tag,
und Schatten der Wolken
durchgehn ihn, als dächte der Raum
langsam Gedanken für ihn.

slow stepping, not light-footed, his body lost in thought,
but splendid when he stands still. A God might
secretly take his form and not be any the lesser.
By turns he tarries and continues on like the day itself
and the shadows of the clouds
pass through him, as if the vast space
were thinking slow thoughts for him.
(translation Paul Archer)

The poetry is beautiful. However, one cannot help but wonder about how shepherd felt looking up toward the hotel on the cliff. And whether this young shepherd would participate in the revolution some twenty years later.

As well as the canyon and its bridge, Ronda is famous for its plaza de toros (bullring) which was built in 1785. The bullring is seen in the upper left of the aerial view of Ronda in the following illustration:

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) first visited Ronda in 1923 and became enamored of its site and of the bullfights (Buckley, 1997). In his 1932 book on the traditions of bullfighting, Death in the Afternoon, he remarked

There is one town that would be better than Aranjuez to see your first bullfight in if you are only going to see one and that is Ronda.

Hemingway visited Spain during the Civil War, although at that time he could not visit Ronda, which was controlled by the Nationalists. He returned to Ronda many times in the 1950s. For the bullfights, and for the memories.

 

The Spanish Civil War

In 1931, the Spanish king was deposed and a new government was proclaimed: the Second Spanish Republic, the first having lasted for less than two years (1873-1874) before being aborted by a military coup. The governing coalition of the Second Republic was composed of many separate and feuding parties, among them Anarchists, Communists, Republicans and Catalonian Separatists. The right-wing opposition contained parties favoring the Monarchy or the Catholic Church. The Falangist party, a fascist organization was founded in 1933 in response to the new republic.

The government had to deal with multiple problems

• much of the land was owned by the aristocrats, who managed large tracts of land (latifundia), and who treated the peasants as slaves
• the military was far larger and more powerful than necessary for a country that had long ago lost its empire
• the church sided with the generals and the aristocrats, for they were the source of their power and wealth
• the new industries, run by a small number of capitalists, exploited the workers who made the factories run, and who were organizing into unions
• the police force – the Guardia Civil – mainly existed to support the landed aristocrats and the capitalists.

The course of the Second Republic was extremely turbulent. The government reduced funds for the military, and closed down the military academy in Zaragoza, run by General Franciso Franco. Strikes occurred and these were put down with excessive force. Attempts to take land away from the latifundista were unsuccessful. The government tried to restrict the role of the church in the educational system. Many of the poor, urged on by anarchists and communists, attacked the church. In 1933, Pope Pius XI published an encyclical Dilectissima Nobis (“Dear to us”) specifically deploring the anti-clerical violence in Spain.

In the election of January,1936, the left-wing parties in the Popular Front won a majority against a coalition of the right-wing parties named the National Front. Many have suggested that the election was rigged to some extent, and the voting was followed by much violence. Manuel Azana Diaz (1880-1940), who had served in various positions in the preceding government, became the president of the newly elected Republican government.

In July 1936, General Emilio Mola, supported by General Franciso Franco, called for a coup to end the republic and to return the nation to its previous form. The leftist parties reacted by calling for a Revolution of the workers. The country descended into anarchy. The Nationalists (or Rebels) were able to take control the north of the country, but the Republicans (or Loyalists) held off the coup in the south and in the major cities. The Civil War had begun (Thomas, 1961; Graham, 2005: Payne, 2012).

The governments of Germany and Italy immediately provided assistance to the Nationalists, and Russia came in on the side of the Republicans. England and France decided that they should not intervene in the internal politics of Spain. However, volunteers from these and many other countries (even Germany and Italy) began to organize the International Brigades to fight with the Republicans: among them were the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the United States and the Mackenzie-Papineau Brigade from Canada.

Soon after the coup was declared, Franco borrowed planes from Italy and Germany and transported troops from North Africa to shore up the Nationalists in Seville, a Catholic stronghold. The regions of the country controlled by the Nationalists (blue) and the Republicans (white) in July, 1936) are shown in the following map (derived from Preston, 2012, p 658): 

From Seville, General Franco sent troops northward to join up with the Nationalists besieging Madrid. Another key point in the fighting was near Teruel, where Nationalist soldiers were attempting to advance to the sea to cut off Barcelona from Madrid. Franco also sent troops eastward to relieve the city of Granada.

Mola died in a plane crash in June of 1937, and General Franciso Franco Bahamonde (1892-1975) became the supreme leader (el caudillo) of the Nationalist forces. The following illustration shows the leaders of the two sides. On the left is a modernist stone statue of Manuel Azena by José Noja and Pablo Serrano that was not erected until 1979. On the right is a bronze equestrian statue of Francisco Franco by José Capuz Mamano initially cast in 1964. Various versions of this statue were erected in several of the major cities of Spain.

The following figure shows propaganda posters from both sides of the civil war. On the left is a poster stating “No Pasareis” (You shall not pass). This slogan and its variant “No Pasaran” (They shall not pass) was used by the Republicans throughout the war. The Communist politician Dolores Ibarruri Gomez (also known as La Pasionara – the passionate one) used the latter version in a famous speech urging on the defenders of Madrid in November 1936. The Republican poster comes from the two parties that were the mainstay of the Popular Front: the CNT (Confederacion Nacional de Trabajo) and the FAI (Federacion Anarquista Iberica). The right poster is from the Falangists. In the background are the four red arrows held together by a yoke, the Spanish version of the fasces (bundle of rods) of the Italian Fascists. Superimposed is a hand on a rifle. The call is “To arms – Homeland, Bread and Justice.”

Events in Ronda during 1936ca)

Soon after the military coup was declared in July, 1936, members of the CNT took control in Ronda and many of the small towns in Andalusia. Members of the Guardia Civil and many local Nationalist leaders were executed. Similar outbreaks of violence occurred in many regions of Spain. This “red terror” was not condoned by the Republican Government, which had difficulty controlling its many factions.

Once the Nationalists had shored up control of Seville, Franco placed the bloodthirsty General Queipo de Llano in command of retaking Southern Spain. After Granada was relieved, the Nationalists returned to the other cities of Andalusia. Reaching Ronda in September, 1936 they quickly subdued the town, and took bloody revenge. Those killed by the Nationalists far outnumbered those who had been murdered in the summer (Preston, 2012).

Exactly what had happened in Ronda during these early months of the war was not clear. The Nationalists declared that the anarchists had murdered several hundred people and thrown them over the cliff. This claim was used to justify their reprisals.

Many of the townspeople left Ronda and fled to Malaga, but this city soon fell to the Nationalists in February 1937. Republicans in Malaga were rounded up and shot. The Nationalists boasted that they executed more Republicans in seven days than the Republicans had killed in the seven months they were in control of the city (Preston, 2012, p 177).

Most of the citizens of Malaga, together with a few surviving Republican soldiers, then tried to reach Almeria along the coastal road – walking, riding donkeys and hanging onto rickety vehicles for a distance of about 200 km. These refugees were strafed and bombed by planes, and shelled by Nationalists warships. The number of people killed in what became known as the Malaga-Almeria Massacre was over 3000. The Canadian physician Norman Bethune used the few vehicles available to him to help the refugees travel to Almeria (Stewart, R., & Majada Neila, 2014), but this had little effect. The following photograph shows the refugees:

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Hemingway came to Spain toward the end of 1937 to produce a documentary film on the Civil War – The Spanish Earth – to help raise money for the Republicans. The photograph below shows him in the Republican trenches at Teruel (low center) together with the filmmaker Joris Ivens (high center).

After the Spanish Civil War ended in1939, Hemingway wrote For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), a novel based on what he had heard about the violence perpetrated by both sides during the conflict. The following illustration shows some of the covers used by various editions of the book, the original on the left:

The epigraph to the novel is from John Donne’s Meditations upon Emergent Occasions (1624) The quotation ends with:

any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.

The novel’s central character is Robert Jordan, an American Professor of Spanish, and an explosives expert, now a volunteer serving with the Republicans. In the spring of 1937, he is ordered to blow up a mountain-bridge to prevent Nationalist forces from Segovia from reaching Madrid. For this task he recruits the help of a band of Republican guerillas, led by Pablo and his woman Pilar. Jordan falls in love with Maria, a beautiful young woman serving as the band’s cook. Maria’s father, the Republican mayor of Valladolid, and her mother had been executed by the Nationalists early in the war. She herself had her head shaved, and was raped and imprisoned, before finally escaping to the mountains.

One evening, Pilar tells Jordan and Maria what had happened in Ronda at the beginning of the war. Pablo, the leader of the local anarchists in the town, had captured the barracks of the Guardia Civil and executed all the guards. He had also rounded up the main supporters of the Nationalists and imprisoned them in the city council. Pilar describes the center of the town (see preceding illustrations):  

The town is built on the high bank above the river and there is a square there with a fountain and there are benches and there are big trees that give a shade for the benches. The balconies of the houses look out on the plaza. Six streets enter on the plaza and there is an arcade from the houses that goes around the plaza so that one can walk in the shade of the arcade when the sun is hot. On three sides of the plaza is the arcade and on the fourth side is the walk shaded by the trees beside the edge of the cliff with, far below, the river. It is three hundred feet down to the river.

Pilar then describes how the town square was set up for the execution of the fascists:

Pablo organized it all as he did the attack on the barracks. First he had the entrances to the streets blocked off with carts though to organize the plaza for a capea. For an amateur bull fight. The fascists were all held in the Ayuntamiento, the city hall, which was the largest building on one side of the plaza. It was there the clock was set in the wall and it was in the buildings under the arcade that the club of the fascists was.

Pablo organized the peasants and workers who had gathered in the square:

He placed them in two lines as you would place men for a rope pulling contest, or as they stand in a city to watch the ending of a bicycle road race with just room for the cyclists to pass between, or as men stood to allow the passage of a holy image in a procession. Two meters was left between the lines and they ex-tended from the door of the Avuntamiento clear across the plaza to the edge of the cliff. So that, from the doorway of the Ayuntamiento, looking across the plaza, one coming out would see two solid lines of people waiting.
They were armed with flails such as are used to beat out the grain and they were a good flail’s length apart. All did not have flails, as enough flails could not be obtained. But most had flails obtained from the store of Don Guillermo Martin, who was a fascist and sold all sorts of agricultural implements. And those who did not have flails had heavy herdsman’s clubs, or ox-goads, and some had wooden pitchforks; those with wooden tines that are used to fork the chaff and straw into the air after the flailing. Some had sickles and reaping hooks but these Pablo placed at the far end where the lines reached the edge of the cliff.

The assembled crowd was told that they must kill the fascists by beating them to death. One of the peasants asked Pilar why, and she reported the following exchange:

“To save bullets” I said. “And that each man should have his share in the responsibility”
“That it should start then. That it should start.” And I looked at him and saw that he was crying. “Why are you crying, Joaquin?” I asked him. “This is not to cry about.”
“I cannot help it, Pilar,” he said. “I have never killed any one.”

One by one, the fascists were led out of the city hall and made their way through the crowd of peasants. One by one, they were beaten and clubbed to death. And one by one, their bodies were cast over the edge of the cliff into el tajo.

This fictional representation of the Anarchist terror in Ronda is extremely powerful. In the novel Hemingway also describes Nationalist atrocities in Valladolid – the summary execution of Maria’s parents and her abuse and rape by the Falangists. This vivid portrayal of the brutality of the war should make us rethink our hatreds. We are all in this life together; we are diminished by the death of any man; the bell tolls for us.  

Later in the novel, Jordan and the guerilla band succeed in blowing up the bridge. but Jordan is severely wounded and unable to move. He convinces that the rest of the band to retreat while he stays to delay the advancing Nationalists. He insists that Maria leave with the guerillas. The novel ends with Jordan trying to stay conscious as the soldiers come closer. Talking to himself, he claims

And if you wait and hold them up even a little while or just get the officer that may make all the difference. One thing well done can make ⸺  

Hemingway leaves the thought unfinished. The novel ends with an officer of the Nationalist forces riding slowly up toward where Jordan awaits him. 

The book sold well, and in 1943 it was made into a film starring Gary Cooper as Jordan, Ingrid Bergman as Maria, Akim Tamiroff as Pablo and Katina Paxinou as Pilar. The film was an international success, although it was not distributed in France or Germany until after World War II (see posters below). The film received multiple nominations for the Academy Awards, with Katina Paxinou winning for best supporting actress.

The film follows the novel quite closely. When Pilar recounts her tale of what happened in Ronda at the beginning of the Civil War, the movie shows in flashback some of the brutal executions in the plaza:

The bridge that Jordan dynamites just before the end of the movie is as high as the Puente Nuevo in Ronda:

Historical Accounts of the Events in Ronda

The history of The Spanish Civil War (1961) by Hugh Thomas was the first major examination of what happened in Spain during the war. The book became a best seller soon after it was published and it has since gone through two revisions and multiple printings:

Thomas discussed the events in Ronda:

In country districts. revolution itself often consisted primarily of the murder of the upper classes or the bourgeoisie. Thus the description, in Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, of how the inhabitants of a small pueblo first beat the male members of the middle class and then flung them over a cliff, is near to the reality of what happened in the famous Andalusian town of Ronda (though the work was the responsibility of a gang from Malaga). There, 512 were murdered in the first month of war. (p 263 in 1989 printing)

Other historians have proposed that the Ronda executions described by Hemingway, although based on accounts he had heard, was completely fictional. Buckley (1997) described what happened in Ronda in the Summer of 1936, according to the records maintained in the town hall:

On 19 July 1936 the commander of the small army garrison in Ronda, upon reports of a military uprising in Morocco, went to the Town Hall with a small platoon and demanded that the mayor submit to his authority and publicly announce that the city was under martial law and the army was taking control. The mayor belonged to the left-wing coalition known as the Popular Front. He refused to follow the commander’s orders and swiftly disarmed him and his small band of soldiers, heavily outnumbered by the peasant groups beginning to assemble on the plaza outside the town hall. Thus, Ronda remained loyal to the Republican government of Madrid, and did not fall to the fascists until 18 September 1936.
However, it would be would be wrong to assume that during these two months the Republican government in Madrid had any control over the town or its inhabitants. As soon as the reports of a military rising in Africa began to spread, the peasants from neighboring villages poured into Ronda and in effect took control. Although the mayor was nominally in charge, the real power belonged to a “Comite” formed by the peasants themselves, most of whom belonged to CNT (Confederacion Nacional del Trabajo), the Anarchist Labor Union.
The task of this committee was three-fold: first, to arrest all persons suspected of having fascist sympathies; second, to insure that food was evenly distributed to all inhabitants (money was outlawed and vouchers with the CNT rubber-stamp were issued); third, to prepare to defend Ronda from a probable attack by fascist troops stationed in Seville.
The word “revolution” immediately comes to mind when we attempt to describe the situation in Ronda in summer 1936. The Secretary’s “Record of Proceedings” for 28 July 1936, preserved in Ronda’s Town Hall, displays revolutionary rhetoric: “[W]e are living through a moment of historic transcendence … the fascist coup has spurred the populace to rise to the last man and to demand social justice . . . a new society is being born, based upon liberty, justice and equality … justice has now become `revolutionary justice’ designed to cleanse the state of all fascist elements as well as to establish the basis for a new social order etc.”

Many priests and supporters of the Nationalist cause were executed. However, these victims were not killed in the plaza, but were driven away from the center of the town and shot. It is difficult to determine the number of those killed, but it was likely much less than the 512 claimed by the Nationalists. None of the bodies were thrown into el tajo. This story seems to have been invented by General Queipo to inflame his troops as they went about their reprisals.

Corbin (1995) considers the story about the executions in the plaza and the casting of the bodies into el tajo as an example of myth-making. Myths have their basis in historical events but the stories become altered in the telling, often to justify the actions of those in power:

Any story of the past has a double construction and a double truth. The truth of the tale told is its historical truth; the truth of its telling is its mythical truth.

The story of the executions by el tajo served the purpose of the Nationalists: it portrayed the class hatred of the anarchists and communists and the violence that they promulgated in the early weeks of the Civil War. This then justified their violent repression. Society must be protected from any recurrence of such revolutionary terror.   

In The Spanish Holocaust (2012) which describes the repression of the Spanish Republicans during and after the Civil War, Paul Preston summarizes the events in Ronda:

Famous for its Roman and Arab bridges and its exquisite eighteenth-century bullring, Ronda had suffered a pitiless repression at the hands of anarchists led by a character known as ‘El Gitano.’ Initially, the CNT committee had maintained a degree of order although churches were sacked and images destroyed, but soon there were murders being carried out by anarchists from Malaga and also by locals. However, there is no substance to the claim, first made by Queipo in a broadcast on 18 August and popularized by Ernest Hemingway’s novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, that large numbers of prisoners were killed by being thrown into the tajo. The many rightist victims were shot in the cemetery. Francoist sources claim that victims of the red terror from Ronda and the nearby pueblos of Gaucin and Arriate numbered over six hundred. On 16 September, when Varela took the town, the defenders fled and his forces suffered only three casualties in the assault. His men stopped and interrogated anyone found in streets and shot many of them. Over half of the population fled towards Malaga. Under the new authorities, those of the town’s defenders who had not fled were subjected to a bloody repression and the theft of their property. (p 171)

In the White City

The American poet, Philip Levine, spent time in Spain trying to learn more about the Spanish Civil War and the poets that wrote about it (Levine, 2016). He also wrote about Ronda in a prose-poem entitled In the White City (2009).

From up there—& he points to the bridge high above us—they tossed down the fat barber, the Falangist, to his death. “It is all in the book by the American communist.” “The communist?” I say. Yes, the friend of Fidel Castro, Comrade Hemingway “The tourists come because of your Mr. Hemingway, that is why you are here.” Who can argue with this young, balding lieutenant of the Guardia Civil who has dared to leave his barracks lacking his tricorne & with only a small sidearm? In felt house slippers he stands at ease on the west streets of his town, Ronda, to show me the world. “On those rocks,” he continues, pointing to a ledge half way down the gorge, “he first hits & his belly explodes. Then they rape his beautiful daughter, the film star that is Swedish, & when they have finish they shave her head. That is why we execute them all.” Does he mean that is why in the novel the Nationalists executed them. (I am careful not to say “the fascists”; it is 1965.) “No, no, executed them here, in life or death”—he smiles at his little joke—“up there on the bridge”— & he points again,— “by military firing squad one at a time, properly. That is why the whole town must witness & learn. It is educational.” But, I insist, the death of the Falangist was merely in a novel that made no effort to be true to events, una novela, a fiction, a best seller. The lieutenant enjoys this repartee, he’s amused by my innocence, he shakes his head, he is discreet & patient with this visitor to his ancient city that boasts the first Plaza de Toros in all the world. “You Americans,” and he suppresses his laughter, “you think because he was a famous red he could not tell the truth. They do not give Noble Prizes to liars.”

The poem illustrates how history becomes mixed up with fiction, with movies, and with photographs to form the myths that we remember about the past. Hemingway was not a communist and, though he spent time in Cuba, he was not a friend of Castro (Michaud, 2012). This idea stems from photographs of the two of them together at a fishing competition, the only time they ever met. The character Maria in Hemingway’s novel, played by the Swedish film-star in the movie, was the daughter of a mayor who was executed in the Civil War, but this was in a different town, and the mayor there was a Republican executed by the Nationalists. The poem ends with the idea that fiction written by a winner of the Noble (sic) Prize has to be true.

The following is an etching of the Puente Nuevo in Ronda done by Gary Young for a broadside edition of Levine’s poem.

Epilogue

By the spring of 1938, the Nationalists ultimately made their way to the sea, isolating Barcelona from Madrid. After Franco’s troops marched into Barcelona in January 1939, Manuel Azana was among the thousands of refugees who fled from Barcelona to France. In March, Madrid was taken and Franco declared victory on April 1, 1939, and became the Prime Minister of Spain, continuing in this office until 1973. During and after the war, many thousands of Republicans were executed by the Nationalists in a repression known as the “white terror” or the “Spanish Holocaust” (Preston, 2012). Hemingway’s novel was translated into Spanish as Por quién doblan las campanas, but was not allowed into Spain until 1969. The movie was not shown there until 1978. Hugh Thomas’s history of the war was forbidden in Spain until after the death of Franco in 1975. Today Spain continues to unearth the bodies of those executed during and after the war, and to seek some understanding of the violence and brutality of those days (Anderson, 2017). The myths need to be converted back into history.

References

Anderson, P. (2017). Knowing and acknowledging Spain’s dark Civil War past. Journal of Contemporary History, 52(1), 129–139.

Buckley, R. (1997): Revolution in Ronda: the facts in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Hemingway Review, 17(1), 49-57.

Corbin, J. (1995). Truth and myth in history: an example from the Spanish Civil War. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 25(4), 609-625

Graham, H. (2005). The Spanish Civil War: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press.

Hemingway, E. (1932). Death in the afternoon. Scribner.

Hemingway, E. (1940). For whom the bell tolls. Scribner.

Levine, P. (2009). News of the world: poems. Alfred A. Knopf.

Levine, P. (2016). The Spanish Civil War in Poetry. In Levine, P. (edited by Hirsch E., 2016). My lost poets: a life in poetry. (pp 139-163). Alfred A. Knopf.

Michaud, J. (2012). Hemingway, Castro, and Cuba. New Yorker (May 24, 2012).

Payne, S. G. (2012). The Spanish Civil War. Cambridge University Press.

Preston, P. (2012). The Spanish holocaust: inquisition and extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain. HarperPress.

Stewart, R., & Majada Neila, J. (2014). Bethune in Spain. McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Thomas, H. (1961, revised and enlarged, 1989). The Spanish Civil War. Harper & Row.