First, though, some history, which is well known to Polish audiences of Wajda’s film, but perhaps less familiar to others. Katyń is the name of a forest near Smolensk in western Russia, one of the locations where over 20,000 Polish military officers and other Polish prisoners of war were executed by the NKVD, the Soviet internal security police, in the spring of 1940.  The Polish prisoners had been captured by the Soviets in September 1939 when the Soviet army invaded Poland from the east, according to the agreed upon plan between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, who were then allies. In April 1940, the Soviets began the systematic massacre of the Polish prisoners, who were executed, one by one, with a gunshot to the back of the head. The killing took place non-stop, day after day (except for the May Day holiday), until 20,000 men lay buried in mass graves in the Katyń forest and other secret locations in western Russia. The Nazis discovered the Katyń graves in April 1943 and exploited the Soviet crime for their own propaganda purposes (by then the Nazis and Soviets had dissolved their non-aggression pact and were at war with one another).  When the Soviet Army finally drove the Nazis out of the Katyń area in September 1943, the Soviet government then launched a counter-propaganda campaign, proclaiming that the Nazis had been responsible for the massacre, which they claimed had not taken place in 1940, but in 1941, when the area had been under German occupation. The Soviets maintained their innocence for fifty years, until April 1990, when the  government of Mikhail Gorbachev expressed official regret for the massacre and acknowledged that the executions had been carried out in 1940 by the NKVD.

The great Polish film director Andrezj Wajda, whose own father died at Katyń, has now made a film about the event — or, rather, as he explains in an interview, about two events: his subject is both the crime of the Katyń massacre, and also the lies that were told about it by the Soviet authorities. At the same time that Wajda has created a film whose central theme is the tension between lies and truth in history, he has also created a work of art, a fiction — not a documentary. The incidents in the film were all taken from memoirs and personal recollections of the events at the time, but the  characters of the film are fictional. The film weaves together the story of a general (two generals, as well as a naval admiral, were actually executed at Katyń) and three other military officers, along with the stories of their mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters. It is these women, in fact, who are the main focus of the film, and this reflects Wajda’s personal experience. What Wajda first knew about Katyń was the effect he saw on his own mother, and the suffering she endured.

It is the tragedy of the mourning women, in fact, which prompts Wajda to weave a mythological motif into the film: the ancient Greek myth of Antigone. As the story is told in Sophocles’s play, Antigone’s brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, had been killed in the civil war of the city of Thebes, contending for the throne that had once belonged to their father Oedipus. Their uncle, Creon, who is now the king, decrees that Eteocles will be honored but Polyneices will be left as carrion on the battlefield. Although Ismene, Antigone’s sister, begs her to obey the law, Antigone rejects her pleas and defies Creon by performing a symbolic burial of her brother. Creon then condemns Antigone to be buried alive.

Wajda sees a parallel here between the defiant Antigone and the women of Poland who defied the Soviet authorities in honoring their dead husbands and in telling the true story of their deaths. There are various ways in which the women in the film are shown defying the authorities, but the most dramatic story is that of a woman, Agnieszka, who wants to erect a tombstone for her brother, whose name was on the list of the dead at Katyń. She has the tombstone inscribed with the date April 1940, even though her sister Irena  begs her not to do so. But when Agnieszka takes the tombstone to have it placed in the church, the church officials turn her away. Then, when she takes the tombstone to the family grave at a cemetery, the police arrest her and smash the tombstone. Why? Because of the date Agnieszka has had inscribed on the tombstone: 1940. If the executions took place in 1940, it was a Soviet crime, as Katyń was under Soviet occupation at that time. If it took place in 1941, it was a Nazi crime, under the German occupation of western Russia. All Agnieszka had to do was to remove the date from the tombstone, or to put the date 1941 instead. She refused, and chose the truth instead. Like Antigone, she is buried alive; the last time we see her, she is in prison, descending the steps leading down into her cell.

Of course, making mythological allusions is a risky business in any form of art, so Wajda makes sure we recognize the connection between Antigone and Agnieszka by weaving Sophocles’s play Antigone into the plot of the film. To pay for her brother’s tombstone, Agnieszka sells her hair to the theater in Krakow so that it can be made into a wig. An actress at the theater explains that the German actresses had taken all the wigs away with them when they evacuated the city. The actress needs a wig because her own hair was shaved off in the Auschwitz concentration camp (located just thirty miles from Krakow). As the hairdresser is cutting off Agnieszka’s hair, the actress recites some lines from the role she will play — but still without any mention of the name Antigone. She speaks about someone who has lost the will to live after her brother has died, a woman who has gone mad in a world filled with evil. Wajda is giving us one clue after another, provoking us to see the myth in the history.  Finally, just in case we did not detect Antigone in the actress’s recitation of her lines, the myth is revealed unmistakably in the next scene: when Agnieszka collects the money for her hair at the ticket window, there is a large poster advertising the play, with the name “Antygona”  prominently displayed  in very large letters, plain for all to see.

This story of a tombstone, in a different form, took place in Wajda’s own life, many years after the war. In defiance of the authorities, Wajda dared to inscribe his father’s tombstone with the date 1940, as he explains in the interview accompanying the film: “The date was what mattered” (“Data była ważna”). The date on a tombstone is the historical fact that connects the story of Wajda’s own life with the fictional character of Agnieszka in the film, and with the ancient Greek myth of Antigone.

Thus, not only does Wajda expose the lies of the Katyń coverup, he also gives the story a mythological dimension. The tragedy of Antigone becomes the tragedy of every mother, wife, and child of the Katyń victims, women like Wajda’s own mother, women who could not honor their dead and who could not name their executioners. Unlike the Soviet lies that pretended to be the historical truth when they were not, Wajda uses both the power of fiction and the power of myth to tell, at last, a true story of Katyń.

Works Cited:

• Wajda, Andrzej, director. Katyń. Screenplay by Przemyslaw Nowakowski, based on the book Post Mortem by Andrzej Mularczyk. (The DVD contains an hour-long interview with Andrzej Wajda.) 2007.

First, however, let’s review that spectrum of interpretation. In the traditional Greek fable, which I discussed in the first article in this series, the lion is a dangerous and greedy character who takes everything, or almost everything, for himself. The moral is that someone who partners with a lion will end up empty-handed as a result. This anti-authoritarian message is turned upside-down by the Islamic poet Rumi, as I discussed in that first article. For Rumi, the lion is a symbol of God, whose awesome power demands total obedience. The “lion’s share” is not a symbol of injustice or exploitation, but is an allegory of the spiritual gulf dividing the Creator from his creation. The medieval Christian preacher Odo of Cheriton, whom I discussed in the second article in this series, likewise interprets the “lion’s share” as an allegory of God’s divine justice and obedience to authority. This variety of interpretation is a key element in the fables’ longevity, allowing storytellers in different ages and cultures to adapt the stories to their own worlds.

The question of divine and secular authority was central to the 17th-century world of Sir Roger L’Estrange. Born in 1616 during the reign of King James I, L’Estrange took the side of James’s son, King Charles I, in the English Civil War, defending the king’s divine right to rule. The young L’Estrange was sentenced to death in 1644 for his participation in a conspiracy in support of the king, although he was finally pardoned by Oliver Cromwell in 1653. In 1663, following the restoration of the monarchy with the reign of Charles II, L’Estrange became a journalist and eventually a member of Parliament. His massive collection of 500 Aesop’s fables, in which each fable is accompanied by a lengthy “reflection,” was published in 1692, near the close of L’Estrange’s long public career. The choice of subject matter is no surprise. Just as Aesop’s fables had played a part in the turbulent political discourse of ancient Greece and Rome, they were also a regular feature of early modern English politics (Annabel Patterson’s Fables of Power: Aesopian Writing and Political History). While some writers discovered populist morals in the fables, L’Estrange was an ardent monarchist, as Patterson explains:

[L'Estrange] pinned [each fable] down securely with an authoritarian gloss, […] repeating over and overagain the same political doctrine: the subject’s duty of obedience, the fickleness of the mob, the dangers of giving the people the gost of a voice in the way they shall be governed. (141)

The “subject’s duty of obedience” is indeed what we find in L’Estrange’s presentation of the fable of the lion’s share, where the lion embodies an absolute secular authority which must be obeyed at all costs:

There was a Hunting-Match agreed upon betwixt a Lion, an Ass, and a Fox, and they were to go Equal Shares in the Booty. They ran down a Brave Stag, and the Ass was to Divide the Prey; which he did very Honestly and Innocently into Three Equal Parts, and left the Lion to take his Choice: Who never Minded the Divident; but in a Rage Worry’d the Ass, and then bad the Fox Divide; who had the Wit to make Only One Share of the Whole, saving a Miserable Pittance that he Reserv’d for Himself. The Lion highly approv’d of his Way of Distribution; but Prethee Reynard, says he, who thee to Carve? Why truly says the Fox, I had an Ass to my Master; and it was His Folly made me Wise.
THE MORAL. There must be no Shares in Sovereignty.

For L’Estrange, this lion is a symbol of the sovereign monarch, and there must be “no Shares in Sovereignty” – in other words, the exorbitant share of the lion king is exactly what the lion deserves.  Yet as L’Estrange himself admits in the reflection added to the moral, “This Fable is diffidently Moralliz’d Elsewhere.” This “elsewhere” includes L’Estrange’s own collection of fables, where he tells the story of the lion’s share a second time, and with a quite different slant. This other version does not endorse the absolute authority of the lion king, but  instead provides a cautionary moral, which warns you to beware of men more powerful than yourself:

A Lion, an Ass, and some other of their Fellow-Foresters, went a hunting one day; and every one to go share and share-like in what they took. They pluck’d down a Stag, and cut him into so many Parts; but as they were entring upon the dividend, Hands off, says the Lion, This Part is mine by the Privilege of my Quality; this, because I’ll have it in spite of your teeth; this again, because I took most pains for’t; and if you dispute the fourth, we must e’en pluck a Crow about it. So the Confederates Mouths were all stopt, and they went away as mute as Fishes.
THE MORAL. There’s no entring into Leagues or Partnerships with those that are either too powerful, or too crafty for us. He that has the Staff in his Hand will be his own Carver.

In this version of the story, L’Estrange does not insist that authority should be obeyed, but instead that it should be avoided. Instead of interpreting the lion as an emblem of royal sovereignity, this time L’Estrange characterizes this lion as “too powerful” and “too crafty,” a “carver” rather than a king. Notice, too, that the plot is slightly different. Instead of the Greek version of the story which features the witty repartee of the lion and the fox, this version, derived from the Roman poet Phaedrus, keeps the lion’s companions in total silence. Confronted by the brute force of the lion’s power, the other animals can say nothing at all. It’s still a story of the “lion’s share,” but this time the lion’s share is a symbol of coercion and exploitation,  and no longer the divine right of kings.

Working with these different versions of the fables, L’Estrange embraced the task of moralizing the stories for his own political purposes, just as the politicians of ancient Greece and Rome had done in their time. Yet if you want to find L’Estrange’s wonderful book of fables in a bookstore today, you will have no luck in the History or Politics section. Instead, you must go to the Children’s section, which is where Aesop’s fables have been consigned in our own day and time. Enshrined in the Everyman’s Library of Children’s Classics published by Knopf, you will indeed find a modern edition of L’Estrange’s fables, beautifully illustrated, and with his explosive 17th-century prose intact.  It’s my favorite of all the English translations of Aesop’s fables, but surely not 21st-century children’s fare.

Meanwhile, keep your ears open for the next time you hear someone use the phrase “the lion’s share.” It’s still a very common English phrase, although most people no longer know the fable that it comes from. Consider the context in which the phrase is used, and ask yourself which side of the spectrum it has landed. Is “the lion’s share” being used to symbolize something natural and right, the large proportion necessarily due to someone who is the king of the beasts…? Or is it instead something unfair and exorbitant, the share that is wrongly taken by force…? You might even engage in a bit of fable revival, and tell your own version of the story about what happened when the lion went hunting in partnership with the other beasts.

Works Cited

• Patterson, Annabel. Fables of Power: Aesopian Writing and Political History. 1991.
• L’Estrange, Sir Roger. Fables of Aesop, and Other Eminent Mythologists, with Morals and Reflexions. 1692. (The full text of the 1738 edition of the book is available online at Google Books.)

In 1968 Ursula K. LeGuin published The Wizard of Earthsea, the first volume in the Earthsea trilogy, followed by The Tombs of Atuan in 1971 and The Farthest Shore in 1972. Although Le Guin has since returned to the land of Earthsea in other writings, the trilogy focuses on the central character, a wizard named Ged, whose exploits unfold in a series of confrontations between the land of the living and of the dead. In the first volume, the young Ged uses a forbidden spell to summon a spirit from the land of the dead. Another wizard exerts all his power to send the spirit back. As that wizard then lies dying, we glimpse his journey from life into death:

The death of a great mage, who has many times in his life walked on the dry steep hillsides of death’s kingdom, is a strange matter: for the dying man goes not blindly, but surely, knowing the way. (63)

We learn more about “the hillsides of death’s kingdom” when Ged later attempts to heal a dying child. His spirit follows the child’s spirit, “running fast and far ahead of him down a dark slope, the side of some vast hill.” Ged realizes he has come too far, and he struggles up the hill and over the low wall that divides life and death:

Either he must go down the hill into the desert lands and lightless cities of the dead, or he must step across the wall back into life. (81)

Ged returns into life, but he will indeed later go down into those lightless cities, in The Farthest Shore, third novel in the trilogy.

As The Farthest Shore begins, Earthsea is stricken by a strange disaster. Magicians no longer remember their spells, singers no longer remember their songs, and there is gloom and madness everywhere. It turns out that a wizard named Cob, seeking immortality, has opened up a breach between the world of the living and the dead so that he can freely pass back and forth, never dying. The hole he has created is sucking out the forces of life itself which power the wizards’ spells and and inspire the singers’ songs. It is up to Ged, now the greatest wizard of his age, to find Cob and close the breach.

On his journey Ged is accompanied by a boy, Arren, whose presence fulfills an ancient prophecy. For centuries, the throne of the King of Earthsea had been empty, awaiting the one “who has crossed the dark land living and come to the far shores of the day” (17). These “far shores of the day” by which Ged and Arren reach the land of the dead — and which give the novel its title — lie at the western edge of the world, on the island of Selidor, a “beautiful and desolate place” (158), where there are no homes of men or of animals. As Ged and Arren walk the island of Selidor, looking for Cob, the desolation of the place prompts Arren to exclaim that Selidor is “as dead as the land of death itself” (165). Ged swiftly corrects him:

Look at this land; look about you. […] The hills with living grass on them, and the streams of water running . . . rising cold out of the earth where no eyes sees it, running through the sunlight and darkenss to the sea. (165)

In contrast to the springs of the living land, the land of the dead will be a dry place, unwatered by the streams of being.

Ged and Arren follow Cob into the land of the dead, descending the sloping hillside, and crossing over the wall, going farther than Ged had gone in pursuit of the dying child long ago. They enter the cities of the dead:

The marketplaces were all empty. There was no buying and selling there, no gaining and spending. Nothing was used; nothing was made. (172)

The dead show no signs of their dying or their death: “quiet were their faces, freed from anger and desire, and there was in their shadowed eyes no hope” (173). There is no song or any other craft in the realm of the dead, and those who loved each other in life do not know each other now.

Leaving behind the cities, Ged and Arren then follow the Dry River, which runs beneath the Mountains of Pain, until they find the door that Cob has opened between the worlds, which is at the dry spring of that dry river, the “mouth of dust, the place where a dead soul, crrawling into earth and darkness was born again, dead” (183). Using all his magic powers, Ged closes the door. Ged and Arren lack the strength to go back to the low wall on the hillside, so they must try to climb over the mountains themselves. When Ged collapses, Arren picks him up and carries him towards the summit. From that summit, he sees the shore of that westernmost island, Selidor, where they had left their bodies behind to make this journey among the dead. Arren then awakes, but Ged’s spirit has still not returned to his body. The journey had been a dream, but it was none the less real for having been a dream: Arren’s  thirst is that of someone who had been a long time in the dry land. After a while, Ged too finally awakens, and they travel back to the inner islands of Earthsea, and to the royal island of Havnor, where Arren is crowned king, having fulfilled the ancient prophecy.

Ged and Arren have brought nothing and no one out of the kingdom of the dead, only themselves — but they did close the gap in the world, so that the springs of life are no longer flowing out of Earthsea. In LeGuin’s imaginary world, the land of the living and the land of the dead must be kept separate. Death is something to be feared, indeed, but the land of the dead is not a place of punishment; rather, it is part of the natural balance of the world, the balance of light and dark, of water and dust, of waking and sleeping. This hero’s journey has won Arren a kingdom, but we also see the toll paid on such a journey, as Ged has lost his powers of magic. Ged had suspected this would be the price he would pay for having long ago used a forbidden spell to summon one of the dead into the land of the living. That was the terrible mistake he had made as a “Wizard of Earthsea,” and only by making this journey beyond “The Farthest Shore” was he able to set things right again, at last.

Works Cited

• Le Guin, Ursula K. A Wizard of Earthsea. 1968. Bantam, 1975.
• Le Guin, Ursula K. The Farthest Shore. 1972. Bantam, 1975.

The Biblical basis for the story is scanty indeed. The descent of Jesus into the underworld forms part of the ancient Apostles’ Creed, where Jesus is said to have “gone down to those beneath” (Latin, descendit ad ínferos). There is a Biblical echo of this statement in Ephesians 4:9: “he descended into the lower parts of the earth” (Latin Vulgate, descendit in inferiores partes terrae). The Latin adjective inferus simply means “lower, below, underneath,” as you can see in the English word “inferior.” Yet in ancient Roman culture, the “underneath world” was already regarded as the abode of the dead, so that the plural form of the adjective, inferi, often stood simply for “the dead.” In English, this same Latin root even gives us the word “inferno,” which has lost its sense of “below,” and instead now refers to any kind of terrible “fire,” not limited to the fires of hell.

The fullest written account of the “Harrowing of Hell” is not found in the Bible, however, but in the non-canonical Gospel of Nicodemus, a text which probably dates back in some form to around the 3rd century or even earlier. Here we read how Jesus, after his crucifixion, descended into hell and brought salvation to the souls of the dead who were prisoners there. The story begins with a dialogue between Hades and Satan, who have heard word that Jesus is coming,  which prompts a debate about the power of Jesus. Hades is afraid, because he has heard of the miracles  Jesus has performed on earth. Satan, on the other hand, has heard that Jesus was crucified as a common criminal; he is certain that they will be able to bind and  subdue Jesus when he arrives in their realm.

When Jesus arrives, Hades bids his servants to bolt and lock the doors, but to no avail; Jesus shatters the gates and enters. He seizes Satan and binds him in iron chains, then consigning him into Hades’s keeping until the second coming. Jesus next turns his attention to the patriarchs. He raises up Adam, along with all the prophets and the saints. Together, they all depart up out of Hades, and ascend into Paradise. (You can read a full account in the Gospel of Nicodemus online.) The “Harrowing of Hell” portion of that Gospel was widely circulated in other compilations of religious literature, most notably in the Golden Legend of the lives of the saints, compiled by Jacob of Voragine in the 13th century.

The literary versions of the “Harrowing of Hell” in turn gave rise to many  works of art, including the “mystery play” tradition of medieval religious drama. Most commonly, however, people would learn about Jesus’s descent into the underworld from the artwork which decorated the churches and cathedrals of Europe. In the remainder of this article, I would like to look at ten different visual depictions of the story, to see what details we can observe in each artist’s rendering of the scene.

Let’s start with a modern Orthodox  icon. In this very simple depiction, Jesus has broken through the doors to hell which he tramples underfoot (notice the locks all broken asunder), and he rescues Adam and Eve. As often, Adam is shown as an old man, while Eve is young. The traditional name for this scene in the Orthodox tradition is the “Anastasis,” the “Raising Up” as you can see written in the icon itself:

Anastasis (modern Greek Orthodox icon) | View larger image »

While Adam and Eve are clothed in this icon, they are often shown in the nude, as in this 15th-century wood carving, late 15th century by Veit Stoss from the Mariacki Altarpiece in Cracow, Poland. Notice also here the presence of demons, who are tormenting the dead:

Detail of the High Altar of St Mary, c. 1477-1489
Church of St. Mary, Cracow | View larger image »

To emphasize that he has only lately been crucified, some depictions emphasize Christ’s wounded hands and feet, as in this 16th-century painting now housed in the Museum of Lille:

16th-century painting (Musée des Beaux-Arts, Lille) | View larger image »

While Jesus is often shown trampling the doors to hell underfoot, sometimes he is trampling a demon underfoot, as in this early 14th-century sculpture. Notice also how the scene is paired with the entombment of Christ to the left:

14th-century sculpture (now in the Louvre Museum, Paris) | View larger image »

Some depictions combine both the door underfoot and the demon, as in this marvelous piece of 15th-century stained glass in the Church of St. Ethelbert, Hessett, Suffolk. Notice the flames licking out from under the door!

Stained glass from Church of St. Ethelbert, 15th-century
Hessett, Suffolk | View larger image »

In addition to the demons you might see trampled underfoot or harassing the dead souls, you can also find demons standing off to the side, observing the events, as here in Andrea da Firenze’s famous 14th-century fresco from Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Italy. Here you can see Jesus rescuing a whole crowd of souls from the underworld:

Fresco by Andrea da Firenze, 14th century
Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy | View larger image »

Here is a detailed view of those demons as they watch the proceedings:

Another character who often figures in representations of the harrowing of hell is the “good thief,” Saint Dismas, who was  crucified with Jesus. Jesus promises Dismas that “today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Not surprisingly, then, Dismas is also seen journeying with Jesus down into the underworld on their way to paradise. For example, you can see Dismas standing behind Jesus in this woodcut from 1510  by Albrecht Durer:

Woodcut Albrecht Durer, 1510 | View larger image »

If you look carefully behind Adam and Eve, you can see Dismas bearing the cross in this mosaic from the Church of San Marco in Venice:

Mosaic, Church of San Marco (15th-century)
Venice, Italy | View larger image »

Sometimes Jesus is also accompanied by angels who battle the demons as he leads the soul out from their captivity, as in this painting by Tintoretto from 1568:

Painting by Tintoretto, 1568 | View larger image »

As you can see from the quite attractive nude depiction of Eve in Tintoretto’s painting, the story of the Harrowing of Hell provided Renaissance artists a rare opportunity to paint female nudes in a work of religious art. This is carried to extremes, as you can see, in Bronzino’s elaborate crowd scene, painted in 1552 and found in the Refectory of Santa Croce in Florence:

Painting by Bronzino, 1552 | View larger image »
Refectory of Santa Croce, Florence, Italy (source)

You will observe a remarkable contrast if you compare Bronzino’s R-rated scene to the extremely modest Orthodox icon with which we began this survey, an admittedly brief survey which only begins to hint at the wide range of iconographic styles in which this story has been depicted. As Jesus makes this underworld journey in the imaginations of these many artists over the centuries, he joins the ranks of heroes such as Orpheus and Heracles who also journeyed into the realms of the dead, breaking down the doors between that world and this one in order to rescue the souls who have been imprisoned on the other side. Although this is a not a story about Jesus that you will read about in the Bible, it is nevertheless a very famous one, as told both in words and, even more importantly, in images.

Unlike other genres of ancient literature, Aesop’s fables were easy to assimilate into the European Christian tradition because of their resemblance to the parables of Jesus recorded in the Gospels. Like the parables of Jesus, Aesop’s fables are short, simple stories that teach a moral lesson. Moreover, the adventures of Aesop’s talking animals provided some welcome humor, being filled with comic elements that are lacking in the parables of Jesus. As they rewrote the fables, the Christian monks would freely elaborate on the morals of the stories, adding in Bible verses in order to bring the fables more fully into the Christian tradition. Sometimes they would allegorize the fables, looking for Christian symbols, such as the treacherous serpent or the peaceful dove. They sometimes supplemented the traditional fables of Aesop inherited from ancient Greece and Rome with similar animal fables, drawing on local storytelling traditions, or making up stories of their own. These fable books were used as reference materials for preachers as they crafted their sermons, much as in the ancient Greek world the first collections of Aesop’s fables had been created as a reference work for orators looking for anecdotes to use in a speech.

One of the most famous of these medieval fable collections was written by Odo of Cheriton, a 13th-century English preacher and scholar. Odo’s Latin fables were well-known and circulated widely, as evidenced by numerous manuscript copies as well as translations into Spanish, French, and Welsh. Odo was a very learned man for his time, having studied in the schools of Paris, but he was not a high-brow scholar. Instead, he intended for his writings to appeal to a general audience, embracing both the clergy and lay people. Many of the fables evince a strong sympathy for the poor and oppressed, with often sharp criticisms of high-ranking church officials. At the same time, Odo also looked for theological messages in the fables, interpreting the stories of the animals as a symbolic code for the workings of God in the world. Odo’s fables thus provide evidence of both the “humanistic” and “religious” types of storytelling which Randy introduced in an article from a previous issue, God And Man: Two Themes.

For an example of Odo’s humanistic social satire, let’s look at the little story of the rat, the cheese and the cat. The story is a simple one: There was a certain man who had some cheese in his pantry, and a rat came and gnawed on the cheese. The man decided that the best thing to do would be to get a cat to guard the cheese — but the results were not what the man expected: the cat ate the rat, and then ate up all the cheese, too. In the moral to the story, Odo explains:

So likewise many bishops put a parish into the hands of a chaplain who devours the parish. Finally the bishop puts an archdeacon in charge, and the archdeacon devours both the chaplain and the parish, just like the rat and the cheese.

Odo thus uses the story of the greedy cat to criticize the greedy church officials of his time.

Odo is also one of our earliest recorded sources for the story of belling the cat, and this story, too, he turns into a criticism of corrupt church officials. Here is the story: the mice held a council to decide how to protect themselves from the cat. A wise mouse said that they should tie a bell around the cat’s neck so that they could hear when he was coming. All the mice like this idea, and then one of the mice said asked who was going to tie the bell around the cat’s neck, whereupon each of the mice squeaked, “Not me! Not me!” Here is the moral that Odo gives to the story:

So it often happens when preachers and monks rise up against a bishop or a prior or an abbot, saying, “If only so-and-so could be removed so that we could have another bishop or abbot.” Everybody likes the idea, but finally they ask: “Who will stand up against the bishop? Who will accuse him?” Everybody is afraid and says, “Not me! Not me!” So in this way the less powerful people allow the more powerful people to exist and dominate them.

In this story, Odo again interprets the predatory cat in terms of a powerful church official, with the mice being too timid to defend themselves.

Yet while Odo is not afraid to criticize the authority of the church, his humanistic impulses extend only so far. When it comes to the question of God himself and obedience to divine authority, Odo was no rebel. We can see this very clearly in the way that he interprets the fable of the lion’s share. In this story, a lion goes hunting with a fox and a wolf as partners. The lion catches a fat ram, the wolf a skinny cow, and the fox a goose. The lion tells the wolf to divide the spoils. The wolf says each animal should take what he caught, whereupon the lion flays the wolf’s head, leaving it bloody. Then the lion tells the fox to divide things up. The fox tells the lion to take the fat ram and the goose because they are good to eat; he tells the lion to leave the skinny cow for the lion’s followers, since it is not very good to eat to begin with. The lion praises the fox and asks how she learned to do division so well. The fox replies: “The red cap of my colleague taught me, his flayed head providing the lesson.”

When Odo interprets this story, the predatory lion is not seem as the emblem of a dangerous and greedy church official. Instead, this lion is a symbol of God, and his actions are interpreted as a perfect expression of divine justice. Odo explains that the lion punished the wolf just as God punished Adam for the sin of disobedience. The moral of the story is to learn from Adam’s punishment to show reverence to God, just as the fox reverenced the lion after seeing the wolf’s punishment.

Odo’s approval of the lion’s actions as an emblem of divine authority is something quite different from what we find in traditional interpretations of the fable of the lion’s share. The usual moral of the story is that the lion is a very greedy and dangerous beast; the best solution is simply not to make a partnership with the lion to begin with! If an animal is foolish enough to become partners with a lion, that animal should be prepared to pay the consequences. Leonina societa periculorum plena, as the old Latin saying reminds us: Keeping company with a lion is full of danger. For Odo, however, the lion is not just another animal; the lion is a symbol of God, and as such his authority is to be obeyed without question. (The Islamic poet Rumi took exactly the same approach to the fable of the lion’s share, interpreting it as a lesson in religions obedience; I have discussed this in a previous article, Rumi: The Fable of the Lion’s Share.)

As you can see from the range of Odo’s interpretations of the fables, there are no objective or absolute rules for interpreting a given fable. Sometimes a predatory animal is a symbol of a greedy bishop or deacon, as in the story of the cat, the rat, and the cheese, or in the story of belling the cat, prompting a humanistic message that defies false claims to divine authority. Yet a predatory animal can also be a symbol of divine authority which must be obeyed without question, as in the story of the lion’s share. Even if the ancient Romans did not interpret the lion’s share as a story of divine authority, there is nothing to stop Odo from taking that approach to the story, fitting the story firmly into a Christian framework. The adaptability of the fable genre allows Odo to use the old fables to express a wide range of meanings, from social satire to theology, with morals that suit his life and time.

References

• Hervieux, Léopold. Les fabulistes latins. Vol. IV: Études de Cheriton et ses dérivés. Paris: 1896. (Online at GoogleBooks; the Latin texts of the fables are also available at the Aesopus Wiki.)

The strangeness of this adventure is something the Murry twins are not prepared for at all. They are self-described skeptics, “not believing in anything that can’t be seen and touched and proved one hundred percent” (105). Unlike Meg and Charles Wallace, the twins are very down-to-earth, practical problem-solvers, without an interest in theoretical physics or mystical runes. Yet, somehow, quite by accident, it happens: one moment they are standing in their father’s laboratory, and the next moment they find themselves in a burning desert, being rescued by someone named Japheth, a name they do not recognize at first as belonging to one of the sons of Noah. Later, when Sandy and Dennys finally hear the name “Noah,” they remember the basic outlines of the story from Sunday School. “I wish I had a Bible” (105) one of boys remarks — but a Bible would just be the beginning of what they need to understand the world that L’Engle has created, which draws on a wide range of extra-Biblical sources, including the Jewish and Christian apocrypha, the Kabbalah, and Milton’s Paradise Lost, to name just a few.

Most notably, this Biblical world is populated not just by humans and animals, but also by celestial beings, the seraphim and the nephilim. The seraphim are those celestial beings who are still in touch with the god El, and who are living on Earth by choice. They have the ability to transform from the state of matter into energy, and they are also able to travel through time. The nephilim, on the other hand, have turned away from El, and are condemned to remain on the Earth, having lost many powers which the seraphim still possess. The nephilim are led by Eblis, and unlike the seraphim, they consort with mortal women, who bear their children, a strange intermingling which is mentioned in the Book of Genesis (6:1-4). For the conflation of the nephilim and the fallen angels, however, L’Engle has drawn upon the Book of Enoch and other apocryphal texts.

In addition to going beyond the bounds of the Bible, L’Engle has also probed the gaps in the Biblical text itself. For example, one of the most important questions she asks is about the daughters of Noah. We know that the sons of Noah and their wives were saved in the Ark with Noah and his wife, but does that mean that the daughters of Noah — for surely, he must have had daughters — were drowned in the flood? Both Sandy and Dennys fall in love with Yalith, one of the daughters of Noah, and her fate provides one of the most important dramatic subplots of the novel. Noah has been told by God that he cannot take Yalith or any of his other daughters on the Ark, nor can he take Sandy and Dennys, who have become like members of the family. So, not only do the boys need to find a way to return home, they must do so before the floods begin.

To devise a way to return home, the boys rack their brains to understand something of their parents’ experiments in theoretical physics, a topic that had not been of any special interest to them before. From sharing their memories of those experiments and from talking with the seraphim (who have some knowledge of theoretical physics themselves), the boys realize they need to make a quantum leap, crossing from existence into non-existence and back into existence again by means of virtual particles. In Noah’s world, these virtual particles exist in the shape of unicorns, mythological creatures inspired by quantum theory, beasts which “have to be believed to be seen” (290). Thus building on the notion of the implied observer in quantum physics, L’Engle turns the twins not just into observers but into believers, which allows them to harness the paradox of the virtual particles in order to return at last to their own world.

By using theoretical physics to provide access to this Biblical world, L’Engle manages to reinvigorate the Noah story, which had meant little to the boys previously. Hearing the story in Sunday School had left them only with “vague memories,” something about “God being angry at the wickedness of the world, and sending a flood, but telling Noah to build an ark and bring the animals on. And then there were terrible rains, and finally a dove brought Noah a sprig of green, and the ark landed on Mount Ararat. Not much of a story unless you were part of it” (161). By stumbling into their father’s experiment in particle physics, the boys do get a chance to become part of that story, and to meet Yalith, one of the daughters of Noah. You will not find this remarkable virtual woman in the pages of Genesis, unless — like L’Engle — you have the wherewithal to read between the verses. As for the fate of Yalith when the flood waters came, I’m not going to give that away: you’ll have to read the book to find out.

Work Cited

• L’Engle, Madeleine. Many Waters. 1986. New York: Square Fish, 2007.

From the start, Aesop is presented as a kind of anti-philosopher, the opposite of the Greek philosophical idea. The name itself, Aesop, means “burnt-face,” in contrast to the the name of the philosopher Xanthus, which means “yellow, blond.” Here is how the first sentence of the novel describes our hero: “Aesop was of loathsome aspect, worthless as a servant, potbellied, misshapen of head, snub-nosed, swarthy, dwarfish, bandy-legged, short-armed, squint-eyed, liver-lipped — a portentous monstrosity.” Worst of all, Aesop was  “voiceless,” unable to speak.  Aesop is like an animal, ἄλογον ζῷον (alogon zoion) in Greek philosophical terminology, a “living thing without logos,” a brute beast, a dumb animal. Later on, Aesop will gain the power of speech, but as the novel begins, Aesop is mute.

Seeing his unfortunate condition, Aesop’s fellow slaves decide to take advantage of him. In one incident, some slaves eat the master’s figs, and try to blame Aesop for it. Although he cannot speak, Aesop nevertheless finds a way to prove his innocence. He calls for a basin of warm water, drinks it down, and then makes himself vomit, showing he had had nothing to eat. His master then commands the slaves who accused Aesop of eating the figs to do the same, and all the figs came forth, as you can see here:

Aesop and the Figs, by Francis Barlow.
Life of Aesop, 1687. More information »

Even though Aesop is mute, he can tell a story without words, mounting a logical defense of his innocence: Figs, when eaten, go to the stomach; Aesop’s stomach contains no figs; ergo, Aesop did not eat the figs!

When Aesop later does get the gift of speech (a divine reward for kindness that he shows to a priestess of Isis), his master decides to get rid of him, fearing trouble. Aesop is then purchased by the philosopher Xanthus, an extremely pretentious know-it-all who is the perfect target for Aesop’s wit.

One day, for example, when Xanthus and Aesop are out walking together, a gardener asks Xanthus just why it is that no matter how careful he is when he plants his crops, the weeds always grow up faster and stronger and overwhelm his fruits and vegetables. Xanthus is baffled by the paradox and can only reply that Divine Providence governs all things. When he hears this useless answer, Aesop bursts out laughing. Xanthus is insulted, and challenges Aesop to provide a better explanation.

Aesop does so, supplying his answer in the form of a story. The gardener’s situation, explains Aesop, is like a woman who has children from a first marriage who gets married again, and her second husband has children by a former wife. She is the mother to her own children, lavishing attention on them and helping them to thrive, while she is the stepmother to her husband’s children, shortchanging them on their food and caring nothing for their survival. This is just what Mother Earth does to the gardener’s crops. She is the mother to the weeds, but only the stepmother to the crops which the gardener has burdened her with. The gardener finds this explanation deeply satisfying. He praises Aesop, thanks him for having alleviated his concerns, and offers him a basket of vegetables as his reward — which is more than he had offered to Xanthus, the philosopher!

Aesop and the Gardener, by Francis Barlow.
Life of Aesop, 1687. More information »

What Aesop has given the gardener is not a scientific explanation of how weeds survive and flourish, and Aesop’s answer does not really help the gardener to find a way to increase his harvest. Yet there is nevertheless something that the gardener finds satisfying in Aesop’s analogy. Analogies are an important part of how mythical thinking seeks to explain the world, and while the analogy does not here help the gardener to change his situation, it does help him to understand it. What Aesop has given the gardener is a form of wisdom. It is not science in the modern sense of the word, and it is not even knowledge, in a basic factual sense of knowing the world. Aesop’s story does, however, allow the gardener to look at his life and experience it as meaningful, as opposed to the sense of inexplicable randomness which had troubled him previously.

At the same time that Aesop is able to find meaning where the philosopher fails to do so, he does not fall into the trap of supposing that he has any real knowledge of his own. Consider, for example, what happens when his master sends him to inspect the baths. While Aesop is on his way there, he runs into a government official, who asks Aesop where he is going. Aesop says simply, “I don’t know.” This infuriates the official, who insists on knowing where Aeosp is going. Aesop still refuses to answer the question, saying only, “I don’t know.” The official, completely enraged, orders that Aesop be arrested and taken to jail. At this point, Aesop explains: “You see that my answer was correct; I did not know that I was going to jail!” The government official is so startled by Aesop’s display of wisdom that he lets him go.

Aesop and the Baths, by Francis Barlow.
Life of Aesop, 1687. More information »

In this incident, Aesop is to all outward appearances a fool. He seems to be stupid and unintelligent, in addition to being rude and obstinate. Yet it turns out that his words contained a truth that eluded his interrogator, and it is a truth that perhaps we can all learn from. For all our plans and purposes, do we really know where we are going…? While Aesop refuses to accept “Divine Providence” as an explanation for why the weeds grow, he also does not make a godlike idol of human knowledge, making the mistake that many philosophers do, of assuming that we can aspire to perfect knowledge. There is a famous motto of the Greek philosophers, attributed variously to Socrates, Pythagoras, and Thales (among others): “Know thyself.” Aesop, however, cackles a different motto of knowledge: “I don’t know!”

With his provocative wit, Aesop is not a philosopher in the traditional sense of the word, but is instead one of the world’s great “wise fools,” someone whose jokes and pranks are also instruments of wisdom. He has kin in many countries, such as the Middle Eastern jokester Nasruddin so beloved of the Sufis, or the cinematic “Little Tramp” of Charlie Chaplin who was also able to speak without words. Like a court jester, Aesop is always lurking in the halls of seriousness and self-importance, ready to provide not just comic relief but surprising insight into the ways of the world as well.

Works Consulted

• Daly, Lloyd W., translator. “The Aesop Romance.” Anthology of Greek Popular Literature. William Hansen, editor. Indiana University Press, Bloomington: 1998.
• Ferrari, Franco, editor. Romanzo di Esopo. Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, Milan: 1998.

Shiva, 12th century bronze. More information »

At the most fundamental level, the image tells the story of Shiva, the god who presides over the cosmic cycle of creation and destruction. The dancing Shiva is enclosed within a circular mandala of flames (prabhamandala) shown on a flat, two-dimensional plane, while the gestures of Shiva’s arms and legs describe a circle in space, in three dimensions. With your imagination, you need to supply the fourth dimension — time — which cannot be expressed in the static image: if you stare at the image and let the dancer begin to move, he will start to whirl in a circle, in the direction shone by his left leg which is lifted up and moving towards the right, as is his lower left arm. In addition to the whirling body of the god, you can also see his locks of matted hair whirling around, unbound; Shiva’s hair plays an important role in the god’s iconography and also in the stories told about him.

So what we see here is a cycle, a circle, a whirling dance in which opposed forces are in perfect balance. To read the story of the forces that are both unleashed here and held in check, we need to look at Shiva’s arms (four of them) and his legs. They tell the story of creation and destruction which has happened not just once but over and over again, and not just in the world outside, but in the world within, especially within the hearts of Shiva’s worshipers. Statues like this were of course not originally intended for museums, but instead were venerated in temples and carried in processions during holy days in honor of the god, inspiring dances performed by his followers.

In Shiva’s upper right hand, there is a small hourglass-shaped drum, called a damaru, which provides the music for the dance, and which also symbolizes the act of the creation of the world through sound. The role of sound is an essential force in Hindu cosmology: the Sanskrit language came into being, syllable by syllable, from the sound of Shiva’s drum beating.

Shiva’s drum (detail). More »

In Shiva’s upper left hand, there is a vessel of fire, which symbolizes destruction and dissolution.

Shiva’s fire (detail). More »

Yet while the upper hands hold the drum of creation and the fire of destruction, Shiva shows the gesture of fearlessness (the abhaya mudra) with his lower right hand. This gesture assures us of the stability of the world. There is a balance at work here, a profound one, and the dancing Shiva stands upright, even as the forces of creation and destruction are whirling around him.

Shiva’s hands (detail). More »

The lower left hand, meanwhile, turns our attention towards Shiva’s feet, where again we see the balance of two opposing forces. With his right foot, Shiva presses downward, expressing his veiled incarnation in the bodily world (tirobhava). Yet at the same time, with his left foot, Shiva is moving upwards as he bestows a blessing upon his followers, freeing them from the illusion of the world (maya) in an uplifting enlightenment.

Beneath the foot is a demon called Apasmara, who is simultaneously both an enemy of the god being crushed underfoot but also a worshipful devotee who gazes up reverently at the lord. On either side of the demon are two makaras, mythical river beasts like crocodiles. The circle of flames, which seems paradoxically to flow both into and out of their mouths, is another sign of the unbroken circularity of creation and destruction.

Shiva’s foot (detail). More »

Shiva’s face, meanwhile, is peaceful and impassive, expressing the balance of the interplay of forces, up and down, left and right, in and out, which are set in motion during the dance.

This general sense of balance and motion is immediately clear to anyone who gazes at the image; I think it is the sheer beauty of that basic visual impression which captured my rapt attention when I first saw the statue. Then, in addition to the visual language of the statue’s form, there are also symbols (far more symbols than I could cover in this brief article) incorporated into the image which allude to other stories about the god Shiva. Just to take one example, if you look closely, you can find the river goddess Ganga in Shiva’s hair.

Shiva’s hair (detail). More »

This figure alludes to the descent of the goddess Ganga — the river Ganges — through the hair of Shiva. Here is a brief account of that story: The 60,000 sons of King Sagara were chasing a sacred horse which they discovered at the hermitage of the great sage Kapila. Angry at being disturbed in his meditation, Kapila burned them all to ashes. The only way to purify their ashes would be to wash them in the river Ganga, but at that time Ganga was nowhere to be found on the earth; she lived in heaven with the other gods. King Sagara’s pious grandson Bhagiratha prayed to the gods for a thousand years until finally the god Brahma agreed to send Ganga down to earth. Yet Brahma warned Bhagiratha that the force of Ganga’s descent would destroy the world, so Bhagiratha then begged the god Shiva to break the river’s fall. Moved by Bhagiratha’s extreme penances, Shiva agreed to do this, and the floodtide of the Ganga crashed into the locks of his hair, and then splashed safely onto the earth, purifying everything in her path.

The goddess Ganga is just one of the objects shown in the whirling locks of Shiva’s statue. There are other objects there in his hair, and many other stories that the statue tells in this way, calling those myths to mind  for audiences who are already familiar with the god and his stories. Yet even without knowing the symbols or the allusions, you can still be swept away by the visual story itself — at least I was, as I gazed for the first time upon the Nataraja in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Alciato’s Emblematum liber was the single most influential of the emblem books. First published in 1531, Alciato’s book gave rise to hundreds of imitations throughout continental Europe. As a general rule, the text remained stable while the images themselves were often significantly different from edition to edition. Alciato himself was not happy with the woodcut illustrations in the 1531 edition, nor with what he considered to be the careless layout of the pages, where sometimes the motto and the image appeared on separate pages as you can see here in the Prometheus emblem:

Emblematum liber (1531). View larger image »

The motto (on the lower left-hand page) reads Quae supra nos, nihil ad nos, “What (is) above us (is) nothing to us,” a saying attributed to Socrates. The motto is a warning that we should have nothing to do with things that are above and beyond us. Accordingly, the image shows Prometheus’s punishment, as a bird eats away at his liver.

Below the image is the verse commentary in elegiac couplets. Here is a literal English translation:

Prometheus hangs for all eternity on a rock in the Caucasus; his liver is shredded by the talon of the sacred winged one. He might rather not have created man — and, detesting the potters, he curses the torch lit from the stolen fire. The breasts of wise men are gnawed by diverse cares — those wise men who feign to know the ways of heaven and of the gods.

The text thus explains, albeit briefly, the events of the mythical story: how Prometheus created man (but now regrets it), and how he shaped the first men from clay (but now he hates the potters and their art), and how he now curses the fire which he stole from heaven to give life to his earthly creation. In some versions of the story Prometheus is viewed as a rebel (see Randy’s discussion of the myth to illustrate two themes concerning man’s relationship to the divine), but in this version, Prometheus is instead a bitter failure. The commentary explains that Prometheus thus symbolizes would-be wise men who seek to know the ways of the gods, and who end up feeling only an endless inner anguish as a result.

In 1534, a new edition of the book was published in France, with woodcuts by Mercure Jollat. In this edition, the presentation is much more systematic, with each emblem (motto and image and commentary) starting on its own page:

Emblematum Libellus (1534). View larger image »

The text is unchanged but the image is quite different, and much more detailed, than in the 1531 edition. There are four flaps of skin carefully peeled back to reveal the viscera on which the bird is gnawing, and Prometheus is now shown tied to a tree — a detail that is not part of the traditional myth, and which is not explained in the text.

Was the artist adapting the message of the suffering Prometheus to the symbolic “tree” on which the body of Jesus was crucified and pierced? Are there mystical echoes here of the iconography of the sacred heart of Jesus? Images, like texts, can be allusive, and the meaning of a visual emblem can certainly go beyond the accompanying text, resonating instead with a larger visual code.

In later editions, the tree is replaced by a rocky promontory, more closely aligning the image and the traditional myth as recounted in the text. For example, in this French edition from 1584, you can see the rocky setting of the Caucasus mountains along with the chains which bind Prometheus in place:

Emblemata (1584). View larger image »

It is this image which finds its way into the first emblem book in the English language: Geffrey Whitney’s A choice of emblemes, published in 1586. Whitney created his book by borrowing from a variety of sources, including approximately 80 emblems from Alciato.

Geffrey Whitney: A choice of emblemes (1586). View larger image »

While Whitney borrows the image from Alciato, he uses a new motto and a new verse commentary. The new motto is adapted from the ancient Roman writer Publilius Syrus and reads: O vita, misero longa, “O life, which is long for the person who is wretched.” This new motto makes no mention of the specific reason why Prometheus is being punished, and the same is true of the commentary, where Whitney has shifted the focus exclusively to suffering, without any details of the myth. Here is Whitney’s poem, with modernized spelling:

To Caucasus, behold PROMETHEUS chained,
Whose liver still a greedy vulture does rend:
He never dies, and yet is always pained
With tortures dire, by which the Poets meant,
That he, who still amid misfortunes stands,
Is sorrow’s slave, and bound in lasting bands.

For when that grief does grate upon our gall
Or surging seas of sorrows most do swell,
That life is death, and is no life at all;
The liver, rent, does the conscience tell,
Which being lanced and pricked with inward care,
Although we live, yet still we dying are.

For Whitney, Prometheus is now a symbol of someone who is dying eternally, in a life made endless by perpetual suffering. Whitney’s Prometheus is not a divine rebel, nor even an emblem of the wise man’s curious and inquiring mind. Instead, Prometheus is simply “sorrow’s slave,” a character whose story consists entirely of “tortures dire,” but without explanation of these “misfortunes.” In Alciato’s emblem book, Prometheus was so consumed by his punishment that he regretted his earlier rebellion but now, in Whitney, there is not even a rebellion left for Prometheus to regret. This Prometheus anticipates a kind of existential angst, a cousin to the Sisyphus later made emblematic by Camus: we feel the torments of Prometheus with every care that gnaws our guts, not even knowing for what crime we have been punished, or what we stood to gain before we were condemned to this life that “is death, and is no life at all.”

Even without the emblem books, of course, we would know that the Prometheus myth has had many different meanings for its many different audiences over the past several thousand years. What is special about the emblem books, however, is the way that they combine both image and text in tandem to tell the story. There were works of art from the ancient world that depicted Prometheus in images, and there were also stories told about him recorded in words (see Theoi.com for an extensive survey). The emblem books of the Renaissance, made possible by the technology of printing, offered something new — the chance to combine text and image into a single multimedia experience, telling a story in words and “beyond words” at one and the same time.

Online Resources

If you are intrigued by the way the emblems work, both illustrating and symbolizing the ancient myths, you can find some wonderful resources online to explore them in detail:

• You can browse through Whitney at the English Emblem Book Project: http://emblem.libraries.psu.edu/whitntoc.htm
• You can browse 22 editions of Alciato at the Glasgow University Emblem web site: http://www.emblems.arts.gla.ac.uk/alciato/index.php
• And for a change of pace, you can browse 27 Dutch love emblem books at the Emblem Project Utrecht: http://emblems.let.uu.nl/

Let’s take, for example, this fresco by Maso di Banco (d. 1348), an  Italian painter of the early Renaissance who worked in Florence, Italy. His most important surviving frescoes are in the beautiful Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence. Those of you who are admirers of Italian painting might notice similarities in style here to the work of Giotto di Bondone (d. 1337), who was a great influence on Maso:

Miracle of the Dragon. By Maso di Banco. Circa 1340. View larger image »

Take a close look at the painting: do you recognize the story? It is the legend of Saint Sylvester and the Dragon. Saint Sylvester was one of the early popes of Rome, who lived at the same time as the Emperor Constantine, who famously converted to Christianity. The legends of Saint Sylvester are closely entwined with those of the Emperor Constantine. In addition to the story of Saint Sylvester and the Dragon depicted here, Maso’s cycle of frescoes in Santa Croce showing the life of Saint Sylvester includes paintings of the Baptism of Constantine by Saint Sylvester, Constantine and the Magicians, and the Dream of Constantine.

To discover just what story Maso tells us in this painting, we can turn to the life of Saint Sylvester as recorded in the famous Legenda Aurea (“Golden Legends”), a massive collection of the lives of the saints compiled by Jacobus de Voragine around the year 1260. The Legenda Aurea was translated into the vernacular languages of Europe starting already in the fourteenth century, and the advent of printing in the fifteenth century allowed the book to become even more widely known. The pioneering English printer William Caxton published his first edition of the Golden Legend in 1483. Here is an excerpt of Caxton’s version of the story:

In this time it happed that there was at Rome a dragon in a pit, which every day slew with his breath more than three hundred men. Then came the bishops of the idols unto the emperor [Constantine] and said unto him: O thou most holy emperor, sith the time that thou hast received Christian faith the dragon which is in yonder fosse or pit slayeth every day with his breath more than three hundred men. Then sent the emperor for S. Silvester and asked counsel of him of this matter. S. Silvester answered that by the might of God he promised to make him cease of his hurt and blessure of this people. Then S. Silvester put himself to prayer, and S. Peter appeared to him.

Peter gives instructions for how Silvester can subdue the dragon, which Silvester follows. Here is what happens next:

When [S. Silvester] came to the pit, he descended down one hundred and fifty steps, bearing with him two lanterns, and found the dragon, and said the words that S. Peter had said to him, and bound his mouth with the thread, and sealed it, and after returned, and as he came upward again he met with two enchanters which followed him for to see if he descended, which were almost dead of the stench of the dragon, whom he brought with him whole and sound, which anon were baptized, with a great multitude of people with them. Thus was the city of Rome delivered from double death, that was from the culture and worshipping of false idols, and from the venom of the dragon. (Read a full version online.)

This is the story Maso has told in his painting. As often in medieval and early Renaissance work, the artist depicts multiple events of the story in a single panel (see my earlier article on Aesop’s fables for more examples of this style of “simultaneous narration,” as art historians call it). So, to read this story, let’s begin from the far right. Here you can see the Emperor Constantine with whom the story opens and closes. The pagan priests have come to Constantine to tell him about the angry dragon, and the story concludes with their conversion, impressed as they are by Sylvester’s miraculous deeds.

Meanwhile, on the far left, you can see Sylvester taming the dragon. Notice how one of his assistants is holding his nose. The dragon’s stink is a key motif in the story, and Maso di Branco has managed to convey that olfactory motif in visual form.

Then, in the center, is the second miracle: Sylvester finds the two “enchanters,” or pagan magicians (Latin magi) lying unconscious on the ground, struck nearly dead by the stench of the dragon. By the power of God, Sylvester is able to raise the men up. As you read from the foreground to the background, you see the two magicians at first lying down, then rising up to receive the saint’s blessing. By juxtaposing the two narrative moments in this way (a marvelous example of simultaneous narration), Maso di Banco dynamically illustrates the resurrection of the stricken men.

Although you might be surprised to see a historical pope depicted as a heroic tamer of dragons, Saint Sylvester’s exploit here is a typical Christian story of how God’s hero — or heroine — is able to defeat the monstrous serpent; similar stories are told in the Legenda Aurea of Saint Philip, Saints Simon and Jude, Saint Matthew, Saint George, Saint Margaret, and Saint Martha. The basic story of the “dragon-slayer” is one that Christianity shares with many other traditions as well, such as the Greek god Apollo slaying the Python, the Hindu god Indra slaying the serpent Vritra, or the Polish hero Skuba the cobbler slaying Smok Wawelski (“the dragon of Wawel Hill”), among many others.

It is fitting that we take a moment to recall the legend of Sylvester at this time (in Issue 7 on January 1) because this saint has a special meaning for the New Year and our New Year’s celebrations. Historical accounts tell us that Sylvester died on December 31 in the year 335, and his “saint’s day” is thus celebrated on December 31. In many Catholic countries, New Year’s Eve is referred to as “Sylvester,” much as the name of Saint Valentine has become attached to the holiday of “Valentine’s Day” on February 14. In Poland, for example, on New Year’s Eve you celebrate “Sylwester” and the greetings that you exchange for the New Year are called “Sylvester Wishes,” Życzenia Sylwestrowe. In Italy, New Year’s Eve is called “La Notte di San Silvestro” (“The Night of Saint Sylvester”). So you may have already celebrated Saint Sylvester on New Year’s Eve — but if not, then remember to take a moment when the next New Year’s Eve rolls around and celebrate the heroic deeds of the dragon-taming saint when you pop the cork of your champagne!

Happy New Year from Journey to the Sea !