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THE PICTORIAL LANGUAGE OF HIERONYMUS BOSCH |
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PART II: THE TEMPTATIONS OF ST. ANTHONY
Plate B. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: Triptych, the three inner panels, The Temptations of St. Anthony. Oil on panel, wings 51-5/8" x 20-7/8" each, central panel 51-5/8" x 46-7/8". Courtesy of the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon.
Plate C. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: Detail from the left inner wing, The Temptations of St. Anthony, lower group. See sections 4 and 5 of the relevant text.
Plate D. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: Detail from the left inner wing, The Temptations of St. Anthony, middle group. See section 6.
Plate E. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: Detail from the right inner wing. The Temptations of St. Anthony, middle group. See sections 9-12, 15, 16, 18 and 20.
Plate F. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: Detail from the right inner wing, The Temptations of St. Anthony, the lower group. See sections 13 and 17.
Plate G. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: Detail from the central panel, The Temptations of St. Anthony. See sections 23 and 28.
Plate H. Detail from the central panel, The Temptations of St. Anthony. See sections 24, 25, 26 and 27.
Plate I. Detail from the central panel, The Temptations of St. Anthony. See sections 27, 28, 29, 30 and 31.
Plate J. Detail from the central panel, The Temptations of St. Anthony. See sections 32 and 33.
Plate K. Detail from the central panel, The Temptations of St. Anthony. See section 31.
Plate L. Detail from the central panel, The Temptations of St. Anthony. See sections 34 and 35. The Temptations of St. Anthony There can be little doubt that Bosch identified with St. Anthony. This is very plainly shown by the fact that the figures, events and buildings shown on the central panel of the altarpiece, all belong to Bosch's own time. [?!] He painted several temptations of the saint. The most beautiful complete and mature version is to be found in the so-called Lisbon altarpiece. The inner panels of the triptych are filled to overflowing with demons. [!] At first it seems hopeless to an observer to try and discover any purpose, let alone a consistent thread, in the turbulent scenes which are so strangely linked with each other. In contrast with the inside. the outer aspects of the wings seem to be very simply, colourlessly, even primitively executed: their deeply Christian content is easily deciphered. These outer pictures provide the key to what is shown within. The same plan is found in the triptych of The Garden of Heavenly Delights [i] [65], whose outer aspect provides a prelude to what is offered within. Bosch has not presented us with mere inventions in this mighty work any more than he did in the other. As we can see in The Garden of Heavenly Delights, so here too in The Temptations of St. Anthony he systematically places one imagination against the next. All the three inner panels of the Lisbon altarpiece, as the picture is also known, show a supersensible panorama. They represent what St. Anthony perceives in the landscape of the soul during his periods of meditation. St. Anthony himself in his physical guise appears twice on the left inner wing, once as he is borne off like one dead, and once in mid-air. On the right inner wing he is also shown, meditating and holding a book, and in the middle picture he kneels before the altar-rail. Let us first study the outer aspects of the two wings. The left side shows the scene which is described in the Gospel of St. John, 18/1-11, and of St. Luke, 22/49-51 (see Fig. 56).
Fig. 56. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: The capture of Christ. The left outer wing, The Temptations of St. Anthony, Lisbon, National Museum.
It is evening, the moon is half hidden behind a cloud, and the whole scene is composed in two great groups. Above, Jesus, surrounded by His captors, has fallen to His knees; His calm self-possession is sharply contrasted with the excited tumult of those who have captured Him. The humble posture, the crossed hands submissively folded, all express His readiness to be bound, and to accept the burden of the cross. The scene shown in the lower half of this picture presents a complete contrast to that described above. St. Peter is brandishing his sword, in order to hack off the ear of Malchus. Above, the yoke is accepted -- here there is resistance to it. There, there is love, patience, devotion, here there is violence. It is significant that a brook separates the two scenes. It is the Cedron, but it represents the boundary between two worlds. We hear the first, and particularly well articulated sentence of the fundamental theme of this triptych: What position do I take up when I confront the forces of opposition in a moral situation? The second sentence: How can I place myself at the service of what is good? a question which inevitably now arises within the beholder, Bosch deals with much less obviously in the inner pictures. A chalice is shown at the top of a steep mountain in the background -- the vessel of salvation. The body of Jesus, whose Passion has begun, is the holy chalice, in which Christ will go through death and resurrection: this vessel has also been called the Holy Grail. On the left a bowed figure is creeping away, hands folded in prayer, and carrying a money bag over its back: it is Judas. This small detail points to a specific conception of the painter, deviating from the idea, which is commonly held, that in Judas we see only an ordinary betrayer. Judas expected that Jesus would prove Himself to be the Messiah who had been announced to the Jewish People, and who should re-establish its dominance and found a new terrestrial kingdom. He felt that he must accelerate events, and betrayed the Saviour in order that he might the sooner become a witness to His triumph. He was unable to imagine a suffering God, only a triumphant one. Now he prays that the heavenly hosts should come to the rescue (Note 1). Beneath the scene with St. Peter there appear two "butcher birds" or red-backed shrikes, as we might expect. [ii] For Bosch this bird is the bird of death. Between them lie parts of a skeleton. These symbols tell us that where there is violence, and the use of the sword the butcher bird, violent death, is king. At the same time the two shrikes make the point that the events portrayed are taking place on the anniversary night of that event in Egypt when the Angel of Death, also known as the Destroying Angel, went abroad [ii]. The lantern that Malchus had held has fallen to the ground; the small flame is flickering: the spiritual light of Judaism is about to go out. (See Note 2.) At the side we see the Book of Life, in which all deeds on earth are written down. Below this stands a duck; it is the symbol of education (see Note 2 Prodigal Son and section 25). Its introduction here signifies that wherever men are educated the story of events of this night will be taught. The garment of a youth who has fled naked, is lying on the shore of the brook, and hangs in the water. The main theme of this panel is, as already mentioned: How do I face up to what is good, and what is my attitude to what is evil? On the right hand side (Fig. 57), it is broad day, but the sun is hidden. Again the events are divided into two large groupings. Above, the captors, now in a procession, have arrived at the foot of Golgotha. In their midst, Jesus has sunk to His knees. He is holding the Tao-shaped cross. His attitude expresses the readiness and the will to suffer. Simon of Cyrene goes to help carry the cross; Veronica is kneeling before Him, and offers the cloth to wipe the sweat from His brow. Below we can recognise two groups of three; the groups of the thieves. The theme first mooted in the left wing: How do I face up to what is good, and what is my attitude to what is evil? is continued here; both of the thieves give an answer to it. The one on the left turns from evil, repents his sins, and looks to the Saviour. This is expressed in the picture by his listening to the priest. The Book of Life in which everything that is done by men is written (Liber Mundi), lies close to him. The thief on the right has his eyes bound; he cannot "see" anything, he is tapping about in the dark, and is spiritually blind. Both have their garments loosened at the neck and shoulders, and only held together by a string: a picture which shows that their physical bodies will soon be shed, as also shown in The Prodigal Son. A fat woman with two children is standing with the captors above the thief on the right. She represents stupidity or illusion with her two offspring, naivety and lack of ability to discriminate, figures which can be found in the pictures of Bosch in various forms (see Note 3). They are witnesses of the carrying of the Cross, but it all passes them by without their comprehension and without leaving any effect. The small child on the shoulders of stupidity even reaches out in his naivete and offers his treasured apple to a soldier, who, as his gesture shows, has no idea what to do with it. In our view the painter wishes to show by this that many souls prefer to retain a naive posture with regard to the mighty events that took place upon Golgotha, and by their childishness entrust their treasured fruits to wrong hands. Immediately above this group there is a withered tree-trunk which divides into two branches; on one branch there sits another shrike, from the other there hangs a dead pig. Vertically below this we find in the lowest corner a broken gallows, with an executed criminal, and here too sits a shrike. The blind thief stands between these two motifs; above his head there is a broken post, which gives a vertical direction through the right-hand side of the picture. The pig is the symbol of all that is shown here; it represents the lower sense-dependent nature of man. The pig has become a banner. Where the forces of the pig alone hold sway, man falls prey to stupidity and illusion; his spiritual cognition becomes blind, for he lacks any ability to discriminate, and this finally leads him to transgression and the death of the soul.
Fig. 57. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: Christ bearing the Cross. The right outer wing The Temptations of St. Anthony. Lisbon, National Museum.
Above the dead criminal in the right lower corner of the picture hangs his sword; by this the painter would indicate: "All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword". (Matthew 26/52.) The theme of St. Peter and Malchus is here continued. The question: How do I confront what is good, and what is my attitude to what is evil? finds its strongest expression in the upper group. The central figure of Jesus is kneeling in the middle. It is His third fall beneath the cross, and yet with what activity He is holding the cross while kneeling upright. An important trio is formed here including Simon and Veronica; they represent those who would follow the Christ. We see that in relation to the other wing there are decisions made here, and conclusions drawn. Simon is standing here as the archetypal man who is prepared to help carry the cross, to take upon himself the suffering of the world; Veronica here represents the soul of man, offering itself to Jesus Christ, to receive Him into herself. Between this group and that of the good thief below, there is yet another at the extreme left-hand side of the picture, again of three people. These accept the whole event as a side-show. To sum up: at the top there begins the following of the Christ; below on the left the impulse of the Christ is beginning its healing influence on the converted, on the right in the centre it is totally rejected. Besides this there are those who pass everything by out of their habit of merely observing events, they are those who always remain indifferent. 4. THE INNER PANEL PICTURES AND The Golden Legend As Bosch shows it was the essential pattern of the life of St. Anthony to have to be able to recognise and overcome demons. The Golden Legend [64], written in the 13th century tells of St. Anthony, how the hermit was beset again and again by hordes of demons, and plagued almost to death. The battle of St. Anthony to assert his ego is very reminiscent of the striving of Faust. We can elaborate this parallel by a scene from the life of Anthony: "When on another occasion he lay hidden in a coffin, an army of demons brought him to such a pass that his servant bore him off upon his shoulders for dead. As all who had gathered to mourn wept, Anthony returned to life before their eyes and bade his servant to return him to his coffin. Although he lay there stretched in pain, he demanded in the courage of his spirit that the demons should come forth and do battle with him. They appeared to him in the guise of various wild animals, and cruelly tore him with their teeth, horns and claws. Suddenly Anthony saw a wonderful light that drove the demons away, and he was immediately well. He recognised the presence of the Christ, and said: Where were you, dear Jesus? Where were you? Why were you not here from the beginning to help me and to heal my wounds? The Lord answered him: Anthony, I was here, but I waited to see you fight. Now, as you have fought so bravely I will make you known over the whole earth".
Fig. 58. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: General view of the three inner panels of
the altar-piece. The Temptations of St. Anthony. Lisbon,
Thus according to the legend, it is by divine will that man confronts with his ego-forces those demons that are within each of us. One can put it more concretely and say: Anthony -- to borrow an expression of Lessing's -- felt himself to be especially responsible for the education of the human race, for he was aware that once an ordinary human being had succeeded in accomplishing some thing, others would find it easier to follow him. We are convinced that Bosch not only wished to portray St. Anthony, but also to express himself through the image of the Saint. One notices throughout how he uses the figure of the Saint as a pretext, to show his own convictions and the situation in his own time. He kept to the Golden Legend however, which was well known to everyone, and used this as a disguise for his own world philosophy. Bosch, as we shall see, tells the story as follows: St. Anthony's resolve to become a contemplative hermit was aroused in him through the word of Christ to the rich youth: "If you would be perfect go and sell all you possess and give it to the poor". The young Anthony had first, out of the strength of his own soul, to part with all earthly riches, in order to be able to free his inner gaze for the perception of the realities of the spiritual world. 5. UPON AND BENEATH THE BRIDGE The large main group in the centre of the picture show the theme with which it is concerned. Anthony is being carried across the bridge by three brothers (see Note 5) He had been hidden in the coffin, he was in the death-like sleep of a state of trance, as told in the Golden Legend. It is clear that Bosch knew this legend, and took it as his main theme. This is the scene that shows how the brothers have fetched Anthony out of his grave where he had experienced his initiation. A bridge signifies a transition: here it is the transition from the land of death back into the land of the living. Beneath the bridge there are those who can understand nothing of this way, who never in their life strove within their souls to attain the yonder from this side of life. Anthony can see how these would have behaved had he really died. In the Golden Legend is the sentence: "As all who had gathered bewailed the dead ..." Above all there would have been much gossip, but none would understand what kind of death he had died. "Stupidity", the figure on the left in the centre of the picture in a vertical line with the heron on the egg, is blowing at full strength on her bagpipes. (In Bosch's pictures bagpipes can be taken to signify meaningless gossip.) Without any reticence she allows everything to run on like the silly cow attached to her, that is being generated by her imagination. Her grey sparrow-soul has sat itself upon the cow's tail, like a flag. Bosch has often used the sparrow as such a symbol, as it is the commonest bird there is (see Note 6). The group beneath the bridge sees a dead sparrow before it, and would have regarded the death of St. Anthony in exactly the same way, as a common event, the death of Everyman. The dead sparrow under the bridge denotes this (see Plate C). Here a monk with an obviously stupid face is reading out the news of Anthony's death. The devil and the nightjar are talking at the same time. The nightjar (caprimulgus) as his name indicates, is a bird that sleeps by day, and wakes and finds its food at night. As a "soul-bird" it is the symbol of a dreamy state of consciousness, which lacks the clear wakefulness of the day. Monks easily fell into such a state of consciousness, indeed their life demanded it; so we need not be surprised that this monk can only understand the letter in this sense. A strange messenger bears the envelope of this letter that has just been delivered in his beak. On the shoulder of his coat he has the sign of a builder's hut, not that of the Freemasons which is different. The envelope probably bears the name "Bosco" but Bosch himself was called Bosso, or Bosco in Spain. This shows how Bosch identifies himself with Anthony, for it was Bosch himself who belonged to the guild of building-workers, certainly not Anthony. Master-builders, sculptors, masons and painters were combined in one guild. We can therefore regard this being that brings the "Bosso-deathletter" as the representative of the fellow guild members of the painter. The inner nature of this colleague is as usual shown in the form of a bird, in this case a crossbill. (Loxia curvirostra). The funnel which is upside down on his head shows that no water of heaven, no wisdom from above, can flow into him, and he is quite cut off. The tiny opening is even blocked by a dead twig, a sign of complete sterility. From it, and of course to the rear, there dangles a red ball. Bosch would say here: this type of fellow-guildsman behaves in very Christian fashion, he also occupies himself in his work with religious buildings and pictures, and chatters all day about the cross, but in fact he is without any true religion. Such artists pretend that they have received teaching, which however they do not take seriously or understand. Hence their art cannot be alive or inspired from above.
Fig. 59. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: The left inner wing. The Temptations of St. Anthony.
We have often found a red ball in Bosch's pictures. In The Garden of Heavenly Delights (middle panel) it is clearly representative of the "causal body" [65]. We must briefly describe its significance in connection with what is shown here: Individuals who are gifted have not gained their talents only through inheritance -- how frequently a genius stands at the beginning of a dynasty. Nor have they won their gifts out of nothing. The fruits of former earth-lives slumber within them as the potential of genius. They carry these fruits with them as their "causal body". These are the abilities and strengths which have been brought out of one earthly life into cosmic existence, and are then brought back as compressed activity -- hence the red "ball of causation". If such gifted people fall into a dead rut in life, they carry their abilities with them, but fail to develop them further. They become mere technicians in their art, and so, as artists, misuse their talents. They carry nothing forward into the future, but live on their past. Thus in the picture the ball is appropriately carried behind the bird's head (see Note 7). The crossbill moves like a being wafted by satanic forces, gliding on skates over the ice. This means: Guild members of this sort no longer stand within life filled with the spirit; they no longer make progress by their own efforts, rather they slip and slide along on frozen traditions. One could say: the water of life has been frozen over by the inner coldness of their souls. Such a spirit then resembles the beings of an ahrimanic nature [iii] such as we find in the "purgatorium". (Fig. 60 and Fig. 61.) At the same time the beholder can see what an early death would have meant for him. The young heron on the left is the representative of death. The great destroyer of life on earth would have swallowed him up, together with the old toad, i.e. with everything that still lived within him that belongs to the sexual life, and had not yet been purified and transformed (see Note 9). The young birds that are coming out of the egg on which the heron of death is standing, would have been killed, as also the little one near the egg. The "young ibis in the egg" too, the symbol of the possibility of deep spiritual development -- even this would have been destroyed. Why a young heron? Because here we are dealing with the death of a young person. Above in the picture a young heron with a sickle appears again as the symbol of death.
Fig. 60. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: The crossbill on skates (see Plate C) (detail, The Temptations of St. Anthony).
6. ANTHONY LOOKS BACK INTO HIS YOUTH Above the three brothers who are carrying Anthony in their arms we can see a young man lying upon his knees, bowed down under the burden of lands and estates. With his body he covers a small house, which has a woman looking out of its window. Beside this there stands a lance or spear, and a cask with a white jug upon it (see Fig. 62 and Plate D). An arrow is protruding from the forehead of the man, which has probably been shot at him by a satanic archer. We will show later where this archer is concealed. If we look up the Golden Legend we shall soon understand what is shown here:
Fig. 61. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: purgatorium. The devil presented as a spoonbill on skates detail. The Garden of Heavenly Delights. Madrid, Prado Museum.
"When Anthony was twenty years old, he heard it read in church: 'If you would be perfect, go and sell all that you possess, and give it to the poor.' So he went and sold all he had, divided it among the poor and led the life of an hermit." Anthony sees himself in retrospect in this panorama; his past rises before him; he sees himself as a youth; in other words, he recognises the spirit of his youth. His goods have brought him down. He can no longer progress, because the weight of his riches is pressing on him. His thinking has been poisoned; he stares out into the world dumbly and without comprehension. Because of this his legs have become wooden, so that he no longer stands within life in an active way, his way of life is sterile and unfruitful, he makes no progress in his own development (the feet are missing). His striving and his will have become stiff and wooden. In the words of an idiom, he has strayed onto a wooden path. Just as thinking is attributed to the head, and feeling to the mid-region of the body, with the heart and lungs, so the will is associated in man with the metabolic and limb-system in common parlance. In German it is said idiomatically that the will goes to the legs. A man's resolution, his force of will shows in his step. Here, however the inner force of uprightness is lacking, hence also the symbol of individuality, the spear, is leaning sideways.
Fig 62. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: The young Anthony bowed down under the weight of his lands (see Plate D) (detail, The Temptations of St. Anthony).
We can assume that the painter is alluding to the words of Jesus Christ about the rich young man from the Gospel of St. Luke, 18/18-30, since he shows a woman looking out of the little house. In that case Anthony may have been carrying the image of a woman in his innermost heart. This woman must have played an important part in the life of Anthony, for she also appears twice on the other inner wing, and once on the middle picture of the triptych. If we assume that Anthony had left her in order to take up the life of an hermit, as is also mentioned in chapter 14 verse 26-7 and verse 33 of the Gospel of St. Luke the relevant passages become clear in an outer worldly sense. However it is also perfectly possible that Bosch here represents the soul of Anthony himself as a woman, for to imaginative experience the soul appears in feminine guise (and the spirit appears as masculine). In that event the woman in the house could have the same significance here as in The Prodigal Son, she would represent the soul of the individual concerned. Thus the woman here is the representation of the soul of St. Anthony which is watching in the house of his body for the outcome of events, while the ego of Anthony has not yet resolved upon his course. She sits and waits for what is to come. We are often met with dual meanings in the work of Bosch, but his dual explanations are never irreconcilable. The woman is looking towards the empty cask and the leaning spear; both are motifs which we have already met combined together in a similar way in The Prodigal Son. The soul of Anthony knows that at the present time she is unable to draw new impressions from her surroundings, but that the inner possibility is there for her to receive new spiritual content through a new white vessel. St. Anthony can also see what is positive in all this negative landscape. This is indicated by the bright white jug. On St. Anthony's right leg (the side of activity), a small white flag is waving hopefully, a sign that he will presently raise himself from his fallen posture; on his left leg (the side of the heart) we can even discern the glimmer of a white bandage, the first sign that he has become bound anew to God [iv] His conversion is also shown by the appearance of the real face of St. Anthony, his future adult man's face, which is looking out backwards from between the legs of the young Anthony. His matured face can be seen in the dark cavern shining through a cobweb-like structure which is hanging from the crotch of the young Anthony. Now we must study the middle portion of the picture. From the left a fish-like creature within a scorpion-shaped armour-plated vehicle is approaching. It moves upon wheels, has the legs of a locust to enable it to jump, and bears a church spire on its back. From its jaws protrudes the tail of a half-swallowed fish, which bears a nest containing an egg upon the tailfin. The driver of this vehicle must be the diabolic being who had shot the arrow into Anthony's forehead, for he carries a variety of weapons. This is a terrifying imaginative picture of the Church of that time, which appears before the spiritual eye of Anthony, alias Bosch. The dead shell of the scorpion carries inside it the Fish of Christianity. In Greek the word "fish" is "ICHTHYS". The single letters were taken as the symbols for the initials of the Christ, as follows: Iesus CHristos THeou Yios Soter, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, Redeemer (Saviour). During the times of the catacombs in early Christian centuries, the fish was used without hesitation as the symbol of Jesus Christ. In the picture of The Garden of Heavenly Delights Bosch used this symbol not only to indicate the Christ, but also Christianity as it existed upon the earth, in church and ritual. Here the fish of church-Christianity is stuck in the scorpion shell. The twelve apostles were each held to represent aspects of cosmic realities, to each was assigned one of the signs of the Zodiac. It is well known that St. Thomas, for example, expressed the picture of the Twins, Gemini. In esoteric knowledge Judas was regarded as the representative of those forces that inhabit the constellation of the Scorpion. In the circle of the apostles he was the "scorpion". Judas wished and strove, like Judas Maccabeus, for a renewal of Judaism, an outer kingdom, earthly power and might, in short, "a kingdom of this world" (see Note 1). To be stuck within the shell of the scorpion therefore may be taken as a wish to represent a terrestrial domain, a political power, instead of the kingdom of love. The Church had the sting of the scorpion, for it ruled through physical might. The immense dues and taxes which in the time of Bosch were being demanded by the clergy, caused this institution to resemble a locust, that eats the land bare. Therefore the fish of the Church is no longer swimming in the water of life, as Christ, the True Fish; it is propped up on dry land on two flippers, and the rest of its body is borne by an iron machine. A bureaucratic organisation had developed from the spiritual community of the priesthood, which ruled with iron discipline, even by violence. This had swallowed the fish of Christianity as far as the tail. But here there is still a nest, with a shining egg: the possibility of renewed development is given here in embryo, but the true fish is trapped by a catch-ball. This ball means that what was originally given to the young Christianity at its beginning as possibilities and potentialities, has been caught and confined. For example not long before Bosch's time there was a struggle raging between three Popes; indulgences in the time of Pope Leo were sold dearly for money, etc. There is no need here to go further into the aberrations of the Mother Church at that time. The driver of the Church-scorpion resembles the devil who looses forth his arrows -- i.e. men are not converted in a Christian way to new thinking, but aims and intentions are shot into their minds by force, so that they become muddled and entangled and true Christianity has been ensnared.
Fig. 63. HIERONYMUS BOSCH: The soul of Anthony becoming loosened from its physical bonds (detail, The Temptations of St. Anthony).
Diametrically opposite the armoured fish, at the edge of the bare grazed field, we can recognise a dignitary of the Church, whose hand is pointing impressively to the church-fish. He is accompanied by three figures; who are these three companions? One is the fiend with the spoonbill, who is already known to us from the round picture in the Rotterdam Museum (Fig. 91, Note 20), and the purgatorium, and whom we often meet in Bosch's pictures. He is the spirit of the forces of rigidity in thinking and the forces of darkness, Satanas, or Ahriman, also known as the Mephistopheles of lies, because be pretends to man that the material world is the only one that is true and worth striving for. Beside this figure there walks a hart clad in the purple of a prelate. The inner striving after divine goals, which is given to man as the companion of his soul, as psychopompos, (the hart with his antlers, which continually strive upwards, and are always renewed and enlarged), has dressed himself up as a priest (see also Note 8, Tabula Smaragdina). He operates under the cover of the purple of the Church; that is to say that man has not learned independent direction of his soul, nor has he practised the discipline of his inner being, but that the Church directs birth and death as it does the conduct of daily life. This leader of the soul does not lead to Christ, but to that caricature of the true Church of Christ. For this reason both fiends are advancing under the outstretched mantle of the dignitary. He however, carries a half-moon [and star] upon his bishop's crook, the symbol of unbelief, one that at that time was well known, and much feared. It was not only the emblem of the Turks who had invaded Europe but also the symbol of that spiritual stream of Arabism against which Thomas Aquinas had already fought, under whose power however many clerics of that time had fallen.
The third figure with the white hat is turned outwards. All the same he belongs to the group. The white hat represents a form of thinking that is not concerned with what is of the material earth. If such non-materialistic thinking has such companions it will eventually serve the pseudo-christianity whose path all three are treading together. So the middle of the picture shows us the past of Anthony, alias Bosch, in the time before he had resolved to live the life of an hermit. He had received an arrow of Satan in his thinking; his desire was for earthly things; his possessions prevented him from making any advance spiritually. He recognises the church as a caricature of the true Church of Christ. 7. ANTHONY BEGINS TO TAKE UP THE BATTLE AGAINST THE DEMONS Though the lower portion of the picture shows us how earthly ideas are still mixed with death in his imaginative experience, we can recognise in the uppermost part of the panel that his soul has become further freed from his physical body, for Anthony feels himself to be airborne (see Fig. 63). In the Golden Legend this episode is described as follows: "Once when he was borne into the air by angels, the devils came, prevented his flight, and showed him all his sins that he had committed from the time of his birth" ... etc. One can see that Bosch has only used the Golden Legend to portray his own ideas. Anthony has not died, but has taken a further step "across the threshold". He is wafted on a toad, which signifies that he is still bound to a masculine body. He overcomes the devils by prayer. Such a degree of release from the body is not without danger; the scythe of death is near to him, held by a young heron, whom we have already met in the lower part of the picture, and bearing the same meaning. As the heron is upside down in this case, we can see that Anthony will not lose his life.
Fig. 64. From the studio of JAN BORMAN ± 1493. The figure of a knight with a fishtail on the chair of the church in Diest, Belgium. One must not mix up the two different symbols for death, the shrike, and the heron. The former symbolises violent death, the second death as such, that is rather, natural death. In this more intense spiritual vision Anthony can see the present state of his being. Although the two great opposing forces, the wolf-faced Satan-Ahriman, and the bat-winged Diabolos-Lucifer, as well as the toad of his sexuality are still active he is also a knight in armour, who fights with an iron will in the oceans of the spirit. In the Middle Ages men and women, even horses were often depicted with the tail of a fish. This was meant to show that they were not to be regarded as physical beings (see Fig. 64). We can see this in the second picture on the left in the air. He is seated upon the fish, which in his youth he only experienced as a caricature of a true Church within the scorpion's shell. Now he knows that a man can free himself from this fish. He must himself grasp the image, the symbol of the True Fish, Jesus Christ, and bear Him in his arms; but he can also see how far he still is from this ideal, once he studies his higher self. The third picture on the right in the air shows us this. Bosch always represents this "I" (ego) in spiritual-vision, as a naked human being. This ego which examines the world from below, as children like to do in their play, is travelling in a boat of life, which is being carried by the nightjar; i.e. it is sailing along in a dream. A shark-like preying fish has sprung into the boat: the wild unbridled greed for possessions. The rope that leads up to the crow's nest, is tied to the tail of the monster. This shows that the everyday ego, the little man, still holds on to the desires of the sense-world. No wonder that he cannot reach the lookout. Bosch has painted it dark, because as it lives in the body it is still in the dark, like the helmsman in the bows of the ship, which is another aspect of the individual. The rescue boat carries a frog upside down; the man can save himself from the shark through the transformation of his procreative forces, but the boat is tied to the tail of the nightjar. So even this transformation is more connected with the dreaming Anthony who has turned from the world, instead of overcoming it. But the rescue boat is surrounded by birds by which Bosch indicates a host of thoughts or attitudes of soul. If we add that the knight on the fish has no feet we can take the basic theme of this whole vision of himself to be the following: Anthony can see that his battling and efforts still mean little for the world around him. He does not yet stand upon the earth as a knight of the spirit. He is an ascetic and a dreamer, and still travels, as the little boat shows, with a broken mast. 8. THE LANDSCAPE IN THE BACKGROUND On studying the landscape, which forms a background for these events, we notice two ships in the bay. (Plate D and Fig. 59.) One has been shipwrecked, because it had been steered towards a false beacon but the other is sailing with full sails towards the torch and the cross painted below it, which is the beacon in the harbour. The theme of the old and new beacons will recur twice more and we will only touch on it here. Anthony had to choose between two direction-giving points; if he had not altered his thinking at a certain point, he would have suffered shipwreck from a spiritual point of view. We found on the left inner wing the temptation to become too attached to all that the earth offers, to the satisfaction of the senses, and the longing for power and riches. For this reason we find portrayed there all that is connected with the physical body. On the right side other temptations are shown, and particularly the temptation to lose courage, because the soul, too weak before the challenge of mighty tasks, threatens to break down. A possible consequence of such a breakdown is the false and unchristian idea: flee the world, for anyway you can achieve nothing. This is the second temptation; it can be seen in many oriental paths of spiritual thought. To arrive at a proper explanation it is necessary, when dealing with such a wealth of pictorial motifs, also mixed with lesser temptations from earlier life, to analyse one image at a time, and then to follow the ideas which connect these images together. 9. ANTHONY SURROUNDED BY SOUL-PICTURES Let us begin with Anthony himself, who sits in the centre, painted as a large figure, immersed in thought. (See Plate E and Fig. 65.) He still holds in his hand the book of his own life that he has just been reading, and in his vision he views his past and a possible future. In his hand he holds his staff, which indicates that he will continue upon his earthly path awake in himself, like a Christophorus. Bosch has again put the T sign on the garment of Anthony, as in the left panel. Looking at the flat landscape that surrounds Anthony we can see a mill in the upper left corner. If we hark back to the motif of the thought-mill in the purgatorium scene, which is on the right inner wing of the Hortus Deliciarum [v] in the Prado, Madrid, and in which Bosch painted a mill directly over the head of the tree-man, we can find the beginning of the train of thought that the painter has spun here in his own rather concealed manner. Had we not clearly recognised what is happening in the purgatory scene, and particularly within the tree-man [65], the connecting links here would necessarily remain obscure. (Fig. 66.) There, on the mill-stone of thought, we find apart from the bagpipes, (the symbol of gossip), the symbols of money (a purse of the time of Bosch), mockery (the mocking-bird, which had just been imported from Brazil), a woman, and wrath (an upright bear). Anthony has already trained himself out of gossiping. But still we find here the thought-mill, woman, mockery, wrath, and even the opposite of gold and riches, poverty. In the purgatory scene there is shown the picture of the soul of a man who has passed through the gates of death. Here is shown the picture of the soul of Anthony who has attained a point in his own development that is so advanced that he can in his soul pass freely across the threshold of death as is otherwise only possible after death. _______________ Notes: i. Trans. Note: This is the author's translation of the title of the altarpiece "Hortus Deliciarum", which is usually called "The Garden of Delights" by English Bosch scholars. See Prodigal Son, note 1. ii. Trans. Note: Butcher bird = der Wurger in German Destroying Angel = der Wurge Engel iii. See translator's preface. iv. Translator's Note. See comment on the significance of the leg-bandage in section 16 of "The Prodigal Son". v. The Garden of Heavenly Delights.
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