Visual Source 11.4
In the Face of Catastrophe—Questioning or Affirming the Faith
The horrific experience of the Black Death also caused some people to question fundamental Christian teachings about the mercy and benevolence of God or even of his power to affect the outcome of the plague. A late-fourteenth-century clergyman in England expressed the dismay that many must have felt:
For God is deaf nowadays and will not hear us
And for our guilt, he grinds good men to dust.47
In a similar vein, the fourteenth-century Italian Renaissance scholar Francesco Petrarch questioned why God’s vengeance had fallen so hard on the people of his own time: “While all have sinned alike, we alone bear the lash.” He asked whether it was possible “that God does not care for mortal men.” In the end, Petrarch dismissed that idea but still found God’s judgments “inscrutable and inaccessible to human senses.”48 Thus the Black Death eroded more optimistic thirteenth-century Christian views, based on the ideas of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, that human rationality could penetrate the mind of God.
Efforts to interpret Visual Source 11.4, a fifteenth-century English painting, raise similar issues to those expressed by Petrarch.
Question
Why is the death figure smiling?
Question
How are the priest and the Christ figure depicted? What possible interpretations of their gestures can you imagine?
Question
Notice that the death figure spears the dying person in the side, an action that evokes the biblical account of Jesus being speared in his side during his crucifixion. What might the artist have sought to convey by such a reference?
Question
The captions, from top to bottom, read: Christ figure: “Tho it be late ere thou mercie came: yet mercie thou shalt have.” Priest figure: “Commit thy body to the grave: pray Christ thy soul to save.” Death figure: “I have sought thee many a day: for to have thee to my pray.” How do these captions influence your understanding of the painting?
Question
Would you characterize the overall message of this painting as one of hopefulness, despair, or something else? What elements in the painting might support each of these conclusions?