This article is about the medieval image. For the punk band, see Hellmouth (band). For the 2014 horror film, see Hellmouth (film).
Miniature from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.945, f. 107r
A Hellmouth, or the jaws of Hell, is the entrance to Hell envisaged as the gaping mouth of a huge monster, an image which first appeared in Anglo-Saxon art, and then spread all over Europe. It remained very common in depictions of the Last Judgment and Harrowing of Hell until the end of the Middle Ages, and is still sometimes used during the Renaissance and after. It enjoyed something of a revival in polemical popular prints after the Protestant Reformation, when figures from the opposite side would be shown disappearing into the mouth.[1] A notable late appearance is in the two versions of a painting by El Greco of about 1578.[2]Political cartoons still showed Napoleon leading his troops into one.[3]
Nuremberg, Saint Lawrence parish church: Western portal, 1340s
Medieval theatre often had a hellmouth prop or mechanical device which was used to attempt to scare the audience by vividly dramatizing an entrance to Hell. These seem often to have featured a battlemented castle entrance, in painting usually associated with Heaven.[4]
The Hellmouth was intended to remind a Christian audience of the danger of damnation. Those shown entering, or already inside, are typically shown naked, their clothing not having survived the General Resurrection of the Dead that is often part of the same image. Some, even if naked, wear headgear indicating their rank at the top of society, with the papal tiara, king's crown and bishop's mitre the most common. Far rarer are indications of people being non-Christian, such as the Jewish hat.[5]
The oldest example of an animal Hellmouth known to Meyer Schapiro was an ivory carving of c. 800 in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and he says most examples before the 12th century are English. Many show the Harrowing of Hell, which appealed to Anglo-Saxon taste, as a successful military raid by Christ. Schapiro speculates that the image may have drawn from the pagan myth of the Crack of Doom, with the mouth that of the wolf-monster Fenrir, slain by Vidar, who is used as a symbol of Christ on the Gosforth Cross and other pieces of Anglo-Scandinavian art.[6] In the assimilation of Christianised Viking populations in northern England, the Church was surprisingly ready to allow the association of pagan mythological images with Christian ones, in hogback grave markers for example.[7]
Satan swalowing the damned
In the Anglo-Saxon Vercelli Homilies (4:46-8) Satan is likened to a dragon swallowing the damned:
... ne cumaþ þa næfre of þæra wyrma seaðe & of þæs dracan ceolan þe is Satan nemned. [they] never come out of the pit of snakes and of the throat of the dragon which is called Satan.[8]
Association with Leviathan
The whale-monster Leviathan (translated from Hebrew, Job 41:1, "wreathed animal") has been equated with this description, although this is hard to confirm in the earliest appearances. However, in The Whale, an Old English poem from the Exeter Book, the mouth of Hell is compared to a whale's mouth:
The whale has another trick: when he is hungry, he opens his mouth and a sweet smell comes out. The fish are tricked by the smell and they enter into his mouth. Suddenly the whale's jaws close. Likewise, any man who lets himself be tricked by a sweet smell and led to sin will go into hell, opened by the devil—if he has followed the pleasures of the body and not those of the spirit. When the devil has brought them to hell, he clashes together the jaws, the gates of hell. No one can get out from them, just as no fish can escape from the mouth of the whale.[9]
Association with Cerberus
Later in the Middle Ages, the classical Cerberus also became associated with the image, although it is hardly likely that the Anglo-Saxons had him in mind.[10]
Hellmouth as the mouth of Satan
Satan himself is often shown sitting in Hell eating the damned, but according to G.D. Schmidt this is a separate image, and the Hellmouth should not be considered to be the mouth of Satan, although Hofmann is inclined to disagree with this.[11] The Hellmouth never bites the damned, remaining wide open, ready for more.
Decline of the motif in the Late Middle Ages
In general the motif had fallen from favour in Italy and the Netherlands by the late 14th century, and is rarely seen in the many Last Judgements in Early Netherlandish painting, but in the late medieval works by Hieronymous Bosch and his followers, where the wide interior of Hell is shown, there is often a Hellmouth leading to some special compartment. It continued in use in Germany and France. The Hellmouth appears, swallowing a bishop, at bottom left in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, a famous woodcut by Albrecht Dürer (c. 1497–98).
Gallery
Hellmouth, locked by an archangel, from the Winchester Psalter of about 1150
↑ DeVun, Leah (2021). The Shape of Sex: Nonbinary Gender from Genesis to the Renaissance. Columbia University Press. pp.93–94. ISBN9780231195515.
↑ Meyer Schapiro, "Cain's Jaw-Bone that Did the First Murder", Selected Papers, volume 3, Late Antique, Early Christian and Mediaeval Art, 1980, pp. 257-9 and notes, Chatto & Windus, London, ISBN0-7011-2514-4JSTOR
Schmidt, G. D. The Iconography of the Mouth of Hell: Eighth-Century Britain to the Fifteenth Century, 1995, Selinsgrove, PA, Susquehanna University Press, 1995, ISBN0-945636-69-5
Beowulf is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating is for the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025 AD. Scholars call the anonymous author the "Beowulf poet". The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel for twelve years. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother takes revenge and is in turn defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a barrow on a headland in his memory.
Christian mythology is the body of myths associated with Christianity. The term encompasses a broad variety of legends and narratives, especially those considered sacred narratives. Mythological themes and elements occur throughout Christian literature, including recurring myths such as ascending a mountain, the axis mundi, myths of combat, descent into the Underworld, accounts of a dying-and-rising god, a flood myth, stories about the founding of a tribe or city, and myths about great heroes of the past, paradises, and self-sacrifice.
Fenrir or Fenrisúlfr, also referred to as Hróðvitnir and Vánagandr, is a monstrous wolf in Norse mythology. In Old Norse texts, Fenrir plays a key role during the events of Ragnarök, where he is foretold to assist in setting the world aflame, resulting in the collapse of humanity and society, and kill the god Odin.
The European dragon is a legendary creature in folklore and mythology among the overlapping cultures of Europe.
The Leviathan is a sea serpent noted in theology and mythology. It is referenced in several books of the Hebrew Bible, including Psalms, the Book of Job, the Book of Isaiah, and the pseudepigraphical Book of Enoch. The Leviathan is often an embodiment of chaos, threatening to eat the damned when their lives are over. In the end, it is annihilated. Christian theologians identified Leviathan with the demon of the deadly sin envy. According to Ophite diagrams, the Leviathan encapsulates the space of the material world.
In Christian theology, the Harrowing of Hell is the period of time between the Crucifixion of Jesus and his resurrection. In triumphant descent, Christ brought salvation to the souls held captive there since the beginning of the world.
The medieval art of the Western world covers a vast scope of time and place, with over 1000 years of art in Europe, and at certain periods in Western Asia and Northern Africa. It includes major art movements and periods, national and regional art, genres, revivals, the artists' crafts, and the artists themselves.
The Junius manuscript is one of the four major codices of Old English literature. Written in the 10th century, it contains poetry dealing with Biblical subjects in Old English, the vernacular language of Anglo-Saxon England. Modern editors have determined that the manuscript is made of four poems, to which they have given the titles Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. The identity of their author is unknown. For a long time, scholars believed them to be the work of Cædmon, accordingly calling the book the Cædmon manuscript. This theory has been discarded due to the significant differences between the poems.
G-8 was a heroic aviator and spy during World War I in pulp fiction. He starred in his own title G-8 and His Battle Aces, published by Popular Publications. All stories were written by Robert J. Hogan, under his own name. The title lasted 110 issues, from October 1933 to June 1944. Many of the novels have been reprinted by a wide range of publishers including comic books.
Hogbacks are stone carved Anglo-Scandinavian sculptures from 10th- to 12th-century northern England and south-west Scotland. Singular hogbacks were found in Ireland and Wales. Hogbacks fell out of fashion by the beginning of the 11th century. Their function is generally accepted as grave markers. Similar later grave markers have been found in Scandinavia. In Cornwall similar stones are known as coped stones.
Anglo-Saxon art covers art produced within the Anglo-Saxon period of English history, beginning with the Migration period style that the Anglo-Saxons brought with them from the continent in the 5th century, and ending in 1066 with the Norman Conquest of England, whose sophisticated art was influential in much of northern Europe. The two periods of outstanding achievement were the 7th and 8th centuries, with the metalwork and jewellery from Sutton Hoo and a series of magnificent illuminated manuscripts, and the final period after about 950, when there was a revival of English culture after the end of the Viking invasions. By the time of the Conquest the move to the Romanesque style is nearly complete. The important artistic centres, in so far as these can be established, were concentrated in the extremities of England, in Northumbria, especially in the early period, and Wessex and Kent near the south coast.
The Ruthwell Cross is a stone Anglo-Saxon cross probably dating from the 8th century, when the village of Ruthwell, now in Scotland, was part of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria.
The Franks Casket is a small Anglo-Saxon whale's bone chest from the early 8th century, now in the British Museum. The casket is densely decorated with knife-cut narrative scenes in flat two-dimensional low-relief and with inscriptions mostly in Anglo-Saxon runes. Generally thought to be of Northumbrian origin, it is of unique importance for the insight it gives into early Anglo-Saxon art and culture. Both identifying the images and interpreting the runic inscriptions has generated a considerable amount of scholarship.
The Gosforth Cross is a large stone monument in St Mary's churchyard at Gosforth in the English county of Cumbria, dating to the first half of the 10th century AD. Formerly part of the kingdom of Northumbria, the area was settled by Scandinavians some time in either the 9th or 10th century. It has gained reputation for its combination of Christian symbols with Nordic symbols, being a tangible piece of evidence of the impact of the Christianization of Scandinavia.
Insular art, also known as Hiberno-Saxon art, was produced in the post-Roman era of Great Britain and Ireland. The term derives from insula, the Latin term for "island"; in this period Britain and Ireland shared a largely common style different from that of the rest of Europe. Art historians usually group Insular art as part of the Migration Period art movement as well as Early Medieval Western art, and it is the combination of these two traditions that gives the style its special character.
According to the tradition of the Physiologus and medieval bestiaries, the aspidochelone is a fabled sea creature, variously described as a large whale or vast sea turtle, and a giant sea monster with huge spines on the ridge of its back. No matter what form it is, it is always described as being so huge that it is often mistaken for a rocky island covered with sand dunes and vegetation. The name aspidochelone appears to be a compound word combining Greek aspis, and chelone, the turtle. It rises to the surface from the depths of the sea, and entices unwitting sailors with its island appearance to make landfall on its huge shell and then the whale is able to pull them under the ocean, ship and all the people, drowning them. It also emits a sweet smell that lures fish into its trap where it then devours them. In the moralistic allegory of the Physiologus and bestiary tradition, the aspidochelone represents Satan, who deceives those whom he seeks to devour.
Christ and Satan is an anonymous Old English religious poem consisting of 729 lines of alliterative verse, contained in the Junius Manuscript.
The Harrowing of Hell is an eighth-century Latin work in fifty-five lines found in the Anglo-Saxon Book of Cerne. It is probably a Northumbrian work, written in prose and verse, where the former serves either as a set of stage directions for a dramatic portrayal or as a series of narrations for explaining the poetry.
The life of Christ as a narrative cycle in Christian art comprises a number of different subjects showing events from the life of Jesus on Earth. They are distinguished from the many other subjects in art showing the eternal life of Christ, such as Christ in Majesty, and also many types of portrait or devotional subjects without a narrative element.
Christ treading on the beasts is a subject found in Late Antique and Early Medieval art, though it is never common. It is a variant of the "Christ in Triumph" subject of the resurrected Christ, and shows a standing Christ with his feet on animals, often holding a cross-staff which may have a spear-head at the bottom of its shaft, or a staff or spear with a cross-motif on a pennon. Some art historians argue that the subject exists in an even rarer pacific form as "Christ recognised by the beasts".
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
