Hieronymus Bosch. Virginia Pitts Rembert
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is “himself (Christ) the image of God, he is the transmitter of this image to the two beings he has created, standing between them as their coeval”. This fact indicated to Fränger a positive and good estate, with no presentiment of the ultimate “fall”.
Continuing his line of defence, the historian suggested that since the children of Adam and Eve were born after the expulsion, it followed that the original pair were the only people in “Paradise”. Thus, the humans abounding there must represent their progeny, had Adam and Eve not fallen from grace.
Since the dogma of original sin and the Expulsion cannot be ignored if there were children, however, here is “a millennial condition that would arise if, after expiation of original sin, humanity were permitted to return to Paradise and to a state of tranquil harmony embracing all creation”.
Such a promise, Fränger believed, inhered in the symbolism contained on the outside of the triptych, seen when the panels are closed. This was his final argument, and to him, the most compelling. Almost covering the surface of both wings is the crystal sphere, containing a flat disk which cuts through its centre. (This idea of the aspect of the universe Bosch had taken from an ancient cosmology, said Fränger, not in currency in his time.
Even if this were too early for Columbus’ discovery to have penetrated iconography, the earth had been depicted as being round for some time, generally as a small sphere concentrically set inside several larger spheres on which the fixed stars and the zodiacal signs were distributed.)
This must be, Fränger believed, the third day of Creation, that “‘fruitful moment’ in the six days of Creation, the very moment when the first rain falls upon the yet barren earth, out of which the first trees and bushes are about to sprout”. Fränger believed that the awe-inspiring message of this Creation is made clear in the quotations from the Psalms, XXXIII and CXLVIII, placed along the upper edges of the panels and also, by God’s image, which appears above and to the left of the sphere: “For he spake and it was done,” and “He commanded and it stood fast.” The Lord, seated as on a heavenly throne, holds on His lap a book, symbolic of the “Word” which is becoming incarnate below. Fränger saw the throne as a prefiguration of the great world globe, for it seems to repeat the shape of the large crystal globe by being a miniature crystal enclosure. In reverse, God’s throne is repeated and realised in the larger cosmological symbol, which finds its fulfilment when the wings of the altarpiece are thrown open. “The great ball divides, and its ordered realms represented by the zones of heaven, earth, sea, and the underworld, are repeated in the corresponding zones of the Garden of Eden, the Millennial Paradise, and hell.”
Therefore, the scholar’s conclusion must be that the central section of the interior is an earthly paradise – the fulfilment of the Word of God with implicit positive, rather than negative intent. “After that solemn prelude in the crystal globe, the history of the world could not possibly gravitate towards a stew of defilement and hence into Hell.” Bosch has in this painting, Fränger said, sought to deny the dualism that was seen as existing between things of the flesh and things of God. In other words, he has tried to raise fleshly delights out of the realm of shame into which they had been deposed in traditional theology.
Fränger answered his own question as to the specific nature of a cult for which this altarpiece could have been painted by reasoning that, since Adam and Eve figure strongly in other prominent Netherlandish paintings – by Jan van Eyck, Hugo van der Goes, and Hans Memling – it must have been an Adamite cult. This cult is known to have advocated the practice on earth of sinless perfection – a practice that could incorporate man’s physical desires by outlining an ideal physical relationship between the sexes – so attained, man could then return to the state of bliss which our progenitors had lost by their sin.
To Fränger, this explanation of a heretical cult resolved all conflicting elements. Even “the high pitched boundless frenzy” of the Earthly Delights hell scene would be explicable. Because a secret society must risk possible discovery and persecution, it would tend toward self-justification and would direct the terrors of hell toward others, not its own members. Because the members must flout established tradition, deep-rooted even in themselves, they would defend their society’s precepts all the more intensely. Obversely, they would deny its privileges to the uninitiated and would place the outsiders, not themselves, in hell.
For incontrovertible evidence of his theory, Fränger offered the record of a trial in the Episcopal court at Cambrai in 1411, which charged the Carmelite friar, Willem van Hildernissen, with heresy. This man was one of the leaders of the Homines Intelligentiae of Brussels, a radical branch of a religious movement active in the territory from the Rhineland to the Netherlands. Because of inferences, which Fränger made from certain statements in the trial record, he assured himself that this was the group for which Bosch produced his altarpiece. Its members called themselves “Brothers and Sisters of the Free (or High) Spirit” in the belief that they were the incarnation of the Holy Ghost and through its power exalted to a state of spirituality that was immune from sin even in the flesh, with its subjection to lusts, so that on earth they lived in a state of paradisiacal innocence”.
Christ Carrying the Cross (detail).
Oil on panel, 150 × 94 cm.
Palacio Real, Madrid.
Child with a Walking Frame (reverse of Christ Carrying the Cross), c. 1480–1490.
Oil on panel, diameter: 28 cm.
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
Christ Carrying the Cross, c. 1510–1516.
Oil on panel, 76.7 × 83.5 cm.
Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent.
Ecce Homo, 1475–1480.
Tempera and oil on oak, 71 × 61 cm.
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main.
He suggested first, however, that the group’s constitution rested upon a tenet of equality of the sexes that is implicit in its very name. Since “the word homines means ‘men’ in the general sense of ‘human beings’, which amounts to claiming for man a dignity that – since it is based on the fact that Adam was made in the image of God – admits no modification on the score of birth or class, rank or possessions… then the distinction between man and woman was also sublimated in the loftier concept of homo.”
This must mean, Fränger thought, that the female enjoyed equal status with man in this society, and if she were thus exalted in position over the inferiority accorded her by the church, she must have lost her denigration as the “sinful vessel”. As to what this implies of the beliefs or activities of these men and women within the society, the writer answered by turning to the Cambrai record. One of the points of indictment stated:
Likewise they created among themselves a peculiar mode of discourse which they call the act of sexual union ‘the joy of Paradise’ or, by another name, ‘the way to the heights’ (acclivitas). And in this manner they speak of such a lustful act to others, who do not understand it, in a favourable sense.
From this statement, Fränger surmised that the cult’s second principle was that its members lived together according to high moral values. To these brethren, “the strictest sanctification of love” was the way by which they could reach human perfection; this estate they saw embodied in Adam and Eve, who were themselves made in the image of God’s divine perfection. The converse became the second principle; that because man is made in the image of God, he can only endure in this highest of all estates by the practice of a sublimated act of love. As to the nature of this act, Fränger saw in the court record two possible answers. To indicate one of them, he quoted the following portion: “Secondly, that the natural sexual act could take place in such a manner that it was equal in value to a prayer in the sight of God.”
In other words, it could mean the natural act so purified in the mind “that it should no longer be felt as a humiliating animal act, but as