Hélène SUZANNE
Amici Thomae Mori -France
Prof. Dr. Polonia University -Poland
In this paper we shall present two key-men in the arts and in humanism: the former is Hieronymus Bosch (1455-1516), an exceptional Dutch painter, and the latter is Thomas More (1478-1535) an attorney who became Chancellor of England under Henry VIII, and has been canonized Saint by the Catholic Church in 1935. We shall focus on their view on the society of their time as Catholic believers, and see how this understanding reflected and built their faith in front of death. We shall first briefly present the society in which they lived, then who they were as exceptional men, through their work -for Bosch- and through their attitude in life, especially for More.
A. The period in the Low Countries and in England:
Both Hieronymus Bosch and Thomas More were born and lived in a period of very important changes in Europe. Bosch was in The Low Countries, while More was in England, and in these two places there was a political stability, but not necessarily social peace in spiritual life and economic development. Indeed, England acceded to a civil peace with the victory of the Tudors which brought to the throne Henry VII enabling him to bring stability to his country, while The Low Countries accepted Maximilian I as a ruler. There, too, the atmosphere was rather peaceful at least up to Philip II of Spain.
Although Hertogenbosch, from which the painter drew his « pen name », is a rather sleeping city now it was then a very busy one with well frequented canals, and a large community of Catholic monks and nuns. Bosch himself became a member of the Brethren of the Common Life up to his death.
Society there was slowly going out of feudalism with a developing merchant class eager to show their new wealth. This society was nonetheless becoming critical of the Church’s excessive wealth and moral abuses well evidenced within the upper classes. Luther’s or Calvin’s doctrines strongly spread after the painter’s death in 1516, but the ideas of the Italian Renaissance were traveling freely across the Continent and Bosch was most probably acquainted with them.
In the Low countries as in other countries in Europe, the Roman Church was structuring everyone’s daily life and morals. So Bosch witnessed and maybe participated in the nine annual feasts in the city during which processions would not only display images of the Virgin Mary, but also attended plays featuring little devils. The Brethren of the Common Life, to whom Bosch was a member, were very well known not only in town but well over Germany, for instance, for their excellent teaching and rules for a simple life according to the dogma of the Catholic Church, and in which Charity was definitely a priority. Therefore, in this environment, the painter had a clear knowledge of the social problems in a country still under two strict rules: the Habsburgs’ s and the Church’s.
Apparently at least, the English society in which Thomas More was born in 1478 seems to show more disturbances because of the political unrest up to 1482. Henry VII accessed then to the throne and started to establish peace through stability of power over his kingdom. His grip was strong and he could master those of the noblemen still again the Tudors, while extinguishing, at times violently, the revolts of the peasantry. He also understood that his power could be best settled through the wealth of the crown, and worked at accelerating the replacement of the feudal society with a capitalist system based on money at all levels. He created thus, or he contributed to create, a sense of individual responsibility for one’s standing in life. Henry VII knew also, and his son Henry VIII probably even better after him, to choose the best man for the circumstances, independently of their social rank, in order to serve him. So we observe here an economic society under a revolutionary movement, but this was not to the satisfaction of everyone concerned, and it indeed created, or at least did not alleviate, poverty in small villages and even among the landed families. Moreover, the social situation was worsened by the rampant and permanent robberies and crimes against impoverished people who had to go on the roads to find a precarious living as beggars, in the country side and in the city of London. One must say that during the Medieval Ages, the Church was certainly an efficient tool to limit crimes. Indeed, its teaching brandished some tools which seem to have been efficient somehow: the fear of going to Hell if one committed crimes of any sort, the acceptation of one’s fate with the hope that Eternal Life will be happiness forever, the obligation for well-to-do people to be charitable, and finally the perspective of very harsh punishments for the guilty ones. But this moral power of the church was being weakened with the disappearance of feudalism and the coming to the fore of new ideas regarding religious teaching and the spread of humanism. This apparently moral weakness of the Church was not synonymous of straight denial by people though: the long lived traditions and faith was still deeply present in people’s life.
To sum it up, up to the slow but sure spread of Luther’s ideas and Henry VIII ‘s schism with Rome, and beyond, the Church in England had still a great influence on people although some heresies like the Lollards were still rampant, which indicated a permanent possibility of unrest. Indeed, London’ s population was showing a very critical attitude in regard to the Church, more than elsewhere in the country due probably to the cosmopolitanism of the city and their closeness to major happenings or incidents. And More was a Londoner.
Actually, one could see then in London the rich and the poor, the power of the Church and the skeptic believers, together with the development of new ideas coming from the Continent and claimed by scholars like Colet at St. Paul’s. Therefore, the Catholic church was to be largely more discussed about with the still existing heresy of the Lollards, and analyzed with the spread of Luther’s ideas. This moral and spiritual precariousness was going to be topped by Henry VIII’ s « matter » of divorcing Catherine of Aragon -beloved by the populace – to marry Ann Boleyn, despised by them. All these factors underline the complexity and fragility of the situation of the Catholic church in the kingdom, unless one would be a strong faithful man like Thomas More was, faithful in the Church and in the Catholic doctrine. This does not mean that Thomas More lived happily in a blind confidence in the future of his society, indeed he did not, and this is the heart of his problem.
Thomas More was indeed in the mist of the many-fold social state of affairs, as a City-under-Sheriff, the Master of the Court of Requests -this Court was dealing with “poor man causes”, and Chancellor of England. Facing and assuming these different charges gave Thomas More many occasions to act as a Catholic Christian.
B. Bosch and of More as guides of their life :
Our knowledge about the painter Hieronymus Bosch is very limited as he left no detailed record after him, beside his dates of birth and death, and his membership in the Brethren of Common Life ,which confirms his living in his home town of Hertogenbosch in Dutch Brabant. Actually, his civil name was Jheronimus Anthonissen van Aken. He changed it to Bosch as a « pen name ». Indeed, the Dutch noun « bosch » means « forest, woods » in English. A place to hide, a place to dream among creatures and colors, a safe place to create fantastic stories and paintings. This part of the Flemish country was still – and is still – rich in woods. As a painter there is no critique from his time as art literature was not yet known in this northern part of Europe. Therefore, maybe one of the most important elements we have to understand his paintings is his natural and social circumstances, and his belonging to the Brethren.
We do know that he was from a family of artists and craftsmen, which can explain his refined drawings and overall technique. As a young man, he married the daughter of a wealthy merchant family, which explains his move to the residential part of the market square in the city. Although we know he was famous in his life time (he had powerful patrons like Henry II of Nassau), he did not initiate or suggest a school of painting or had disciples or apprentices, if we except his possible influence on Brueghel the Ancient. His apparent disinterest in records and public life that could have left traces after him, or in creating a workshop for apprentices, might be explained by his membership to the Brethren of Common Life. Indeed, this lay congregation was favoring a simple life, and a good education. Moreover they saw it at their duty to denounce the abuses and scandalous behavior of many priests, although they remained loyal to the pope. Needless to say that these observations are obvious in Bosch’ s satirical paintings and his society does reflect itself in the painter’s works.
One influence on Bosch we are mostly sure of is the so-called Tundale’s vision of Hell. Indeed this story had been well translated by the time of Bosch, in English, German, and French. The trip of Tundale guided by an Angel through Hell and Heaven – later versions will add Purgatory – was illustrated by some sort of vignettes, the oldest one showing the pains one would experience in Hell being the most pertinent for our remark. But besides the painting art of the initial anonymous illustrator and author of Tundale, the choice of this subject by Bosch shows that he was a true listener of the teaching of the Church, and from that an observer of the human society of his time. His eyes and his hands demonstrate not only an excellent knowledge of the ways of life of his contemporaries, but also an in-depth intuition of their desires. He only had to transform what could have been crude realism into a fantastic association of religious truth as he knew it with up-to-then unseen colors and drawings in order to make pure masterpieces, and make them accepted by rich and aristocratic buyers without getting into the dangerous troubles the Church could have brought to him, and probably also to the buyers without the creation of fantastic scenes.
In the Garden of Earthly Delights (1480-90) Hieronymus Bosch offers a very personal vision of our origins and fate as human beings created by God. Indeed, all starts with closed doors, or a closed widow that the painter and the viewer sees from the outside. The sphere seems both out of reach and attractive. We feel that it is here to grasp, and to open like an exotic fruit or a mysterious ball of which content is to be touched and manipulated. Once the window is open, human beings and any sort of animals, objects, and constructions jump on the viewer. Their arrangement on each panel is an illustration of the fantastic as well as a symbol of the excesses of life on earth. Indeed, the painter started with what we could call a peaceful scene on the foreground of the panel called “Paradise”: God made Adam and Eve, naked in the middle of a serene garden with birds, water, and an exotic tree. This tree reminds a Joshua tree in the desert in the U. S. A., which has a long life indeed, and gives very tasty fruit. In the background, pace other strange animals, a pink fountain is trying to reach the sky, and a small range of blue mountains are closing the horizon, remnants of the beginning. The overall colors are rather gay and give one an idea of harmonious beauty. Why should not it last? Or why did it not last, asked the painter to himself? Because of what happened in the middle panel? In this panel, life is over abundant: human beings multiplied themselves according to the Word of God, animals became the objects of these beings and are used by them to fulfill all their desiderata, in order to help transgress all the boundaries of their moral and physical worlds. The painter is ironic, and maybe also playful if he plays a trick to the teaching of the Scriptures. The scenes depicted can be erotic or fantastic, or both, but certainly the reality depicted here is the fruit of the painter’s imagination based on the personal point of view of Bosch on his own time. One can feel in this panel the thorn in the heart of the painter, his pessimism, his disillusion. We feel him outside the window, extirpating from himself all these views of a world undergoing dangerous changes as expressed in the devils following the processions seen in his Hertogenbosch. A passing world, a dying world. What expect us then? Death. Bosch has no other option than Hell in the right and third panel, which finishes the triptych. In this panel, the fantastic vision of Bosch takes the spectator into a turmoil. The feast is over: musicians are crucified to their instruments, a scaring beast is seated on a throne under which lie injured people, and some human parts, nuns are hidden in pigs, or pigs, gamblers are nailed to their tables, while an oversized knife is cutting a head in two parts under a boiling sky. Bosch is here expressing his fear, or his conviction of where society will go, almost inevitably. In our century we can wonder about the apparent absence of hope in the painting, especially because of Bosch’ s belonging to the Brethren of Common Life, which would be a symbol of trust in God today. But at the time of the painter the way people lived their faith was structured by the rule of “yes” or “no”: either you did good deeds -and you will go to Paradise, or you did not, and you go to Hell. The problem resided in the definition of “good deeds”, clearly state by the Church, but often questioned or ignored by the society. Bosch seems to have been convinced that people around him were going to a terrible life afterward. Some critics claimed that his work was a kind of utopia: but it is rather an anti-utopia, as will be in the 18th century Swift’ s last travel of Gulliver.
We know much more about Thomas More as a private or public man than about Hieronymus Bosch. Indeed, More’s private and public life are well documented because he held a public career at a very high level, and he published with success books on different subjects.
Sent to Oxford by Archbishop Morton, he enjoyed there the study of theology for two years, until his father pushed him into Law studies at the new Inns in London. While a student at the Inns, he took lodging for some years at the nearby Charterhouse, which he left only to get married with Jane Colt in 1506. Consequently, one can say that as a youth Thomas More had already a very open many-fold personality: a high level formation in his adolescent years, followed by a very serious learning of theology, and a positive experience with a strict religious order while he was educated for a public position, which was going to put his two feet in the heart of a very complex society, as we saw it before.
We must say that this rich education followed the bent of his mind in many ways, even developed it: he was ready to follow the new ideas of the Renaissance in curriculum, for instance.
As a very able public man responsible for his family he accepted high positions near the king, like the dangerous Chancellorship. He was then in the middle of turning point in history, which brought complex influences on his questioning mind. Indeed, although the impulse the Renaissance gave to More’s open and creative intellect, from the ending 15th century, More received the melancholy typical of the moment – keeping in mind that « melancholy » is not folly or taste for suicide, but some sort of regret and sadness regarding the fading in the past of what looked as a safe and perennial order. He kept from this period a very strong Christian faith, both as an individual in relation with God, and as a follower of the Catholic Roman Church when questions about this faith were started to be asked around him. Indeed, as a deeply faithful man he raised his family accordingly and stood for his faith until his dramatic death. A melancholy man, he wrote poems and translated others from Latin which are often a meditation on death or the passing of time, and the true values of human life. A public man, he fulfilled with success his position as a city burgess, and his Mastership of the Court of Requests. A court man, he achieved royal missions as a diplomat, and became Chancellor of the Kingdom, although for a short time. A keen observer of his time, he wrote Utopia, the most well-known of his works up to today. But these different facettes of the same person have not necessarily been easy to combine for him in order to feel in tune with his surroundings.
Did all this make a solitary man, using his solitude to prepare himself to his probably only true objective: the encounter with his beloved God? Those are questions we will try to answer next.
More was a man trying -consciously or not – to make sense of the changing of times: much from the ending 15th century and its certitude in the Roman church, while also engulfed in the storming Renaissance. From the finishing Medieval Age, he kept his unquestioning attitude in his Faith and its representatives in the world. Although he decidedly accepted the general rules of his society as a brilliant attorney and subject of the king, he kept giving a maybe regretful glance at what he renounced: the Contemplative Orders and a full dedication to his Faith. The only thing open to him to make his peace with himself was then to structure his life around his Faith, and to follow what he believed essential in the teaching of Christianity. If we accept that, we understand better his way of living completely and cleanly all the areas of his life: a family man, he loved his children deeply as a father and as an educator: He prepared their future in life with all the legal and accepted means of the moment like wardenships, and the dangerous social scale around the king. He did this with the help of his daily long prayers and meditation of the psalms, his wearing of a hair shirt, and cultivating long-lived friendship, and fairness. His objectives were beyond this society, of which ideas sometime he accepted, sometime he refused. He accepted the birth of individualism through the stress of the free-will granted by God to each one of us, he accepted the openness toward the right for everybody to receive a thorough education, he accepted and wished the search for knowledge beyond the limits established up to then, and favored dialogue. Perturbed by the problems of his society, he dreamed of another world in his Utopia where welfare based on everybody’s fulfilled needs would be the rule, a welfare including material, intellectual, and spiritual life. Contrary to Bosch, he did not paint in his writings all the deep and real social difficulties of his time, unless in writings targeting heresies. But Utopia was an answer behind a screen for his observation of his world, here and now. What he refused could be summarized in a couple of words, but heavy with meaning: deviation from the Catholic Church’s teachings, and, even more importantly, life after death, when one faces God… And the latter depended absolutely on the former. This extremely deep conviction explains his very harsh attitude toward any so-called heresy, his strong belief that one’s conscience had to be directed only by Christian Catholic rules of life concerning his relationships with others, and with himself. Death was for him a passage toward the contemplation of God, and in order to achieve that, one had to keep this prospect always present in one’s daily and exceptional moments. In a way, we can assume that his hard fights against heresies, including the in-coming Reform, were representing his hope to be with his Lord for ever. Therefore, his apparent strictness in all his aspects of life was a symbol of his belief that Eternal Life was going to be engulfed within God’ s love. Whatever we may suffer because of our faith, we must accept, as he says:
I verily suppose that the consideration of his incomparable kindness could not fail so to inflame our key-cold hearts, and set them on fire with his love, that we should find ourselves not only content but also glad and desirous to suffer death for his sake who so marvelously lovingly forbore not to sustain so far passing painful death for ours.
Thomas More standing up and fearlessly in front of death, and his own death is not only illustrated by his attitude when threatened by a trial for High Treason, but also by his writings when in jail during the last few days of his life. Indeed, he writes five days before his death:
Pour moi, vivre, c’est le Christ, et mourir est un gain. J’aspire à être dégagé des liens du corps pour être avec le Christ.
Fais-moi la grâce d’amender ma vie, et d’en regarder en face le terme, sans rechigner à la mort qui, pour ceux qui meurent en toi, Seigneur bon, est la porte d’une vie heureuse.
Et maintenant quelle est mon attente? N’est-ce pas le Seigneur? Tout mon trésor est en toi, mon Dieu.
C. Conclusion
These exceptional men, Hieronymus Bosch and Thomas More therefore were in their epoch to the full: for the former, the atmosphere might have been more determined than for the latter. Indeed, Bosch lived in a period hardly touched yet by the Renaissance, although somehow doubts were brought about by the overseas and intercontinental travels, which were starting to question the values of the Medieval society. Bosch’ s world as depicted in his Garden of Earthly Delights is one of transgressions, of breaking out all the boundaries set up by the rules of the Church and accepted by societies for centuries. Or was it Bosch’ s phantasms, limited when out of his workshop by his status on the right side of the market place of the town and his involvement within the Brethren of Common Life? Some sort of unreached desire: pleasure through the beautiful drawing, pleasure through the joyful and delicate colors to illustrate that delights could be (or should be ) here and now, delights are taking over all our senses, and nothing else. From this latter possibility, his vision of Hell is only for himself: the world he dreamed of was going to take him into a perpetual turmoil, crashing and destroying all the beauties he believed in: art, free relationships with others, all this making a magic world, but dangerous, hopeless for the After Life. Hell was for him then. Upon painting these three panels he wrote his life as he might have imagined it if there had not been the overtly accepted boundaries set by society. But be this painting an observation of his society or an expression of his in-depth desires, Bosch painted death as a fearful destiny beyond destiny. No hope left.
Thomas More instead seems to have been a deeply hopeful man because of his faith. One can suppose that he was more in the heart of his society than Bosch was according to the very few details we know of Bosch’ s private and public life. Nonetheless, More appears to have been trustful that his death would take him within God’s for ever after. We suggest that most of his life on earth was guided only by the conviction that at one point he was going to stand before his Judge and be the only and fully responsible one for his actions, concrete or desired. And he was certain that then there will be ineffable Happiness, the one he aspired to all along. As he concludes in Comfort against Tribulations: “… yet doth he much more for a man if, through right painful death, he deliver him from this wretched world into eternal bliss.”
We then saw two outstanding men at the hinges of the same two cultural and political periods, Hieronymus Bosch and Thomas More, fundamentally asking the same inevitable questions: What is going to happen after death? A perennial human question. There has been no definite answer either by the painter or by the humanist, but the former seems to have feared that death would be followed by an eternal life in Hell, while the second, Thomas More, was deeply convinced that God will forgive and welcome him in His endless love. The period does not seem to have had a great influence on their very intimate question, for the little we know about Bosch.