The Seventh Seal Flashcards
The Seventh Seal
Historical Medieval Events Spirit of the Black Death Visual Culture of the MA Literary & Material Culture of the MA 20th C Meaning
Historical Medieval Events
The Crusades Fall of Acre 1291 Failure of Subsequent Crusades Contemporary Fighting? Meaninglessness Witch-burning 1480s-1750s
Spirit of the Black Death
Black Death (1349-50) in Sweden Horror of Black Death Two Strands of Plague Judgement Day Fears Flagellants
Visual Culture of the MA
Albertus Pictor (1445-1509) Visual imagery from church paintings Dances of Death Vado Mori & equalising Scenery
Literary & Material Culture of the MA
Everyman (15th century) Morality play Ars moriendi Chess James of Cessole
20th Century Meaning
The Knight's Quest Existentialism Bergman's fear of death Magnus Ericsson's Letter ME: Fear of Unprepared Death Transactional Death Culture ME: Divine punishment John Arnold
HISTORICAL MEDIEVAL EVENTS 1
The Crusades
The Crusades
- Title card: “long years of Crusades in the Holy Land”
Fall of Acre 1291
Failure of subsequent crusades
- Could not co-ordinate
- Popular crusades?
Contemporary Fighting?
- 1340s: wars in eastern Mediterranean
- Aberth: conflict in Novgorod, ends July 1348
Meaninglessness:
- Run into Raval, the man who convinced them to go on crusade - “You sent your heavenly venom to poison the knight.”
HISTORICAL MEDIEVAL EVENTS 2
Witch-burning
Authorised end of 15th century
1478: Heinrich Kramer, Jacob Sprenger, Malleus Maleficarum
1480s-1750
SPIRIT OF THE BLACK DEATH 1
Black Death in Sweden
Horror of the BD
Black Death (1349-50) in Sweden - Title card "in the middle of the 14th century"
Horror of the Black Death
- Deserted villages; almost-abandoned castle, fear, death
- 40% of the people
- Raval’s death - half-seen, stumbling, begging for water, can’t be helped/touched
SPIRIT OF THE BLACK DEATH 2
Two strands of plague
Strand 1: more common: high fevers, severe headaches, immense pain - victim lives several days - buboes and necrosis of the skin
Strand 2: less common strain: death in shorter time - attacking lungs, breathing difficulties, vomiting blood.
SPIRIT OF THE BLACK DEATH 3
Judgement day fears
Revelation of St John the Divine - The Seventh Seal - opening pages.
Chorus singing “Dies Irae”
John Clynn, Kilkenny - chronicle w/ blank pages in case “anyone should still be alive in the future”
Chronicles of Padua - more devastating and more final than Noah’s flood - some people still alive at the end of that
Popular preacher
Supernatural signs: conjoined twins, shooting stars, monster births. Film - Jons - four sons in the sky; two horses at each other.
SPIRIT OF THE BLACK DEATH 4
Flagellants
Chronicon Henrici de Hervodia: “using these whips they beat and whipped their bare skin until their bodies were bruised and swollen and blood rained down, splattering the walls nearby”
Hysterical emotionalism of the crowd watching and flagellants themselves (woman kneeling); all the people in the village praying, begging, crying etc. Audience given distance by mid-length shots of impassive faces of Knight / Jons / mute girl / Jof / Mia
Does not give context of framework that makes sense. Acknowledged by AP that “they think the plague is God’s punishment”, but said skeptically. But taking seriously penance for sins / BD etc (the fact that it was banned, Clement VI 1849).
VISUAL CULTURE IN MA 1
Albertus Pictor
Visual imagery from church paintings
Scenery
Albertus Pictor (1445-1509)
- Death playing chess with a knight - roof of the Taby kyrka, Stockholm
- In the film, painting a mural in the church
Visual images seen int he film which were in church paintings he saw as a child:
- “The Knight playing chess with Death. Death sawing down the Tree of Life, a terrified wretch wringing his hands in the top of it. Death leading the dance of the Land of Shadows, wielding his scythe like a flag.”
Grainy black and white filming. “Realistic sets”
VISUAL CULTURE IN MA 2
Dances of Death
Commonly depicted in MA
First surviving copy from a mural in the cemetery of Les Innocents in Paris (1424-1425).
INEVITABILITY
- Recognised in film: Albertus Pictor: “to remind people that they must die.”
- But Death is clown/monk and not skull.
EQUALISING
- Les Innocents: thirty figures dance, alternating clergyman and laymen, beginning w/ the most powerful at the front.
Cf. Vado Mori poems.
LITERARY & MATERIAL CULTURE OF MA 1
Everyman
Everyman (15th century)
Morality play
Everyman confronted w/ Death, given brief reprieve in order for him to find a companion to go with him on his journey to the afterlife.
Dialogue similar, but numerous differences.
IN ORIGINAL:
- God sent Death, no doubt over God’s existence
- Everyman: “Full unredy I am suche rekenynae to gyve” - preparation for reckoning before God
- Trying to find accompaniment to the afterlife - does penance so his good Deeds can come with him
IN REMAKE:
- “I want knowledge.” “You want gurantees?” “Call it what you like.”
- Block - fear “outrageous horror” - there may not be an afterlife - “no one can live in the face of death, knowing all is nothingness”
LITERARY & MATERIAL CULTURE 2
Morality play
Ars moriendi
Chess
James of Cessole
Morality play - esp. popular 15th or 16th centuries - characters represent vices / virtues, “Mankind” - allegorical.
Ars moriendi: practical handbook on best way to die: most important - dying in a state of preparedness.
Chess:
- modern intellectual game; questioning character
- medieval game - mental exercise, skill
Allegory
> 2nd half of 13th c - ecclesiastical - black & white squares - death & life; sin & mercy.
> Equality in death - life itself - before & after all the pieces are equal.
James of Cessole - last third of 13th c - Italiy - book on nobility & chess. Ideal society based on description of chess pieces.
- Caxton printed it immediately after the Bible, 1479.
20th C 1
The Knight’s Quest
Knight’s Quest searching for faith in God (& afterlife) he cannot find
Wild strawberries & milk w/ Jof & Mia - “will be enough” - a sign of God’s presence (closest he achieves to salvation; not in the afterlife)
Final moments: praying: “God, you who are somewhere, who must be somewhere, have mercy upon us.”
20th C 2
Existentialism
Every character has a different answer to B’s intellectual crisis?
B & J as agnosticism, atheism; semi-modern, modern man.
Block - life no meaning:
- To Death, disguised as a confessor: “My life has been a futile pursuit, a wandering, a great deal of talk without meaning… the lives of most people are very much like this. But I will use my reprieve for one meaningful deed.”
- Finds identity of the seeker through chess game.
20th C 3
Bergman’s personal fear of death
Fear of nothingness of death & meaninglessness of life.
Noted in interviews: “Carried a grim fear of death… [which] accelerated into something unbearable”.
Witch-burning: Block & Jons watch over 14-year-old girl Tyan: “Who watches over that child? Is it angels, or God, or the Devil, or only emptiness? Empitness, my lord!… Look at her eyes, my lord. Her poor brain has just made the discovery. Emptiness under the moon.” (“That poor child, I can’t stand it!”).
Jons: certainty in lack of an afterlife, Block: uncertainty. Wood Painting (1955) - Knight does not speak.
Youthful Bergman in optimism and creativity of Jof & Mia - childish piety - replicating holy family.
20th C 4
Magnus Ericsson’s Letter
Magnus Ericsson, king of Sweden & Norway - dangers of dying unprepared “without the sacraments” which would ensure salvation.
“Every Christian man and woman must sorely fear, for God, because of the sins of men, has sent a great plague.”
20th C 5
ME: Fear of Unprepared Death
Danger of unprepared death - “without the sacraments”.
Shortage of priests at black death to hear confession.
Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1349 - ordering them to publicise the fact that an emergency confession can be made to a layman.
Penance would shorten one’s stay in purgatory. Doctrine of purgatory - slowly evolving from 4-5th centuries - until 13th fully formed.
20th C 6
Transactional Death Culture
John Arnold
Binski: “transactional” death culture.
Early, small scale, tied to penance done on earth.
15th c the recital of 5 Creeds, 5 Ave Marias, 5 Our Fathers in front of a Pieta: 33,000 years
Indulgences and intercession would win “credit” for yourself or others. Achieve salvation.
John Arnold - examples of blasphemy / disbelief / active supsicion. Sources written by ecclesiastical. Peasant belief grounded in common sense / visual observation.
20th C: 7
ME: Divine Punishment
ME Letter: “Every Christian man and woman must sorely fear, for God, because of the sins of men, has sent a great plague.”
Plague punishment brought down by God for sins of mankind. Divine punishment, Day of judgement - Second life.
But: apocalypse in SS: pointless universal destruction & horrific personality that such destruction would be meaningless; fears of post atomic age (1952 and 1953, US & SU tested hydrogen bomb).
