Sister Bertken

Why would a woman allow herself to voluntarily be walled up in a small cell with no way out, not for a fixed period of time, but for the rest of her life? In the 15th-century Sister Bertken of Utrecht did exactly this, and her story confronts us both with our own reactions to her extraordinary decision and ultimately with what faith actually is.

You can read more about Sister Bertken and her remarkable story on my post The Woman in the Wall. 

Mary of Egypt

Having run away from home at the tender age of twelve, Mary lived a dissolute life in the city of Alexandria for the next seventeen years. She then journeyed to Jerusalem, where a conversion experience led her to cross the River Jordan and live a life in the unforgiving wilderness of the Jordanian desert as a reclusive naked penitent, not for months, nor even for years, but for almost five decades. At the end of her life she was discovered by chance by the monk Zosimas, to whom she told her story. In conventional terms Mary’s life is a textbook example of redemption through faith, but in human terms her story is one of astonishing survival, and a life which brings us to the threshold of what faith is, and how as individuals we conduct ourselves in the light of that faith. But for me, Mary's story is not so much about the mysteries of faith, but the greater mysteries which the human heart contains. 

You can read more about Mary and her life on my post Mary of Egypt: A Heart in the Wilderness.

Out of Africa

Human fossil remains are always exceptional rarities. From such precious fragments we must attempt to glimpse our own human lineage as it stretches back beyond the borders of history into a past that, however distant it might seem from our own time, we nevertheless inhabited. This particular specimen, known at the time of its discovery almost a century ago as Homo rhodesiensis – Rhodesian man – is now considered to be an African version of the Neanderthal form, Homo heidelbergensis, although the scarcity of the remains makes any exact placement in the scheme of things tentative.

Even as science struggles to weigh and measure these questions, to classify and to define, we still are confronted with the remains of an individual human: someone who lived out his life, who in his existence was confronted with the daily issues of pain and loss and the small triumphs of simple survival. This particular individual knew physical suffering: his skull bears the signs of advanced tooth infection and decay which probably was the cause of death.

My photograph of the skull below was taken in the Naturalis museum in Leiden. The skull on display is a cast of the original: the actual fossil is simply too precious to be put on public display, and such casts are a means for museums to share knowledge. My life reconstruction above is a pencil drawing to which colour has been added digitally.

Behold This Woman

My painting has been adapted from Emilio Franceschi's poignant 19th-century bronze sculpture Eulalia Christiana, portraying the martyrdom of the young Eulalia in the 4th-century. Although Franceschi strayed from historical accuracy - Eulalia was no older than fourteen when she died - his portrayal of a mature woman did allow me to expand the theme to suggest through Eulalia's suffering a wronged Everywoman. It was the occupying Roman authorities of the time who tortured, staked and burned Eulalia for her refusal to sacrifice to their pagan gods. But in a tragic mirroring of history, almost exactly a century later, it was the pagan philosopher and mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, one of the most enlightened minds of her age, who was murdered with bestial cruelty, being [1]stripped and flayed alive with broken [2]roof tiles by zealous Christian monks at the altar of their own church.

Two women in history, both [3]martyred. But was it really for their different religious beliefs, or were they more the victims of a dark and frenzied misogyny? The cruelties perpetrated against these two women by sadistic and sanctimonious men leaves nothing to choose between either Roman governor or Christian monk.


Notes:
[1] To be historically accurate: I am aware that Eulalia also would have been stripped before her execution, as were all such condemned victims, both men and women. But I could not bring myself to portray her naked in such an in extremis situation. She already had been deprived of her dignity, and was being deprived of her very life, and I feel that my painting as it is still conveys what I wish it to.

[2] Some sources put broken abalone shells into the monks' hands. It's a question of translation, and the result is equally horrific.

[3] My post about the martyrdom of Eulalia can be read in The Sheltering Snow.

On a Mission from the Emperor

North Africa, sometime in the first half of the 6th-century. A contingent of horsemen clatters westward across the ochre wastes, the hooves of their mounts breaking the hard crust of surface sand. They approach an isolated oasis, a settlement nestling among a green sea of date palms overlooking a lake, and dominated by a single building on a rocky knoll: their intended destination. They dismount below the knoll, ascend the path to the building and stride inside, confident in the authority vested in them by their emperor. Those at worship inside are forced out, the building is annexed, and its votive fires are quenched forever.

This minor incident, one of many of its kind repeated across the empire, nevertheless resonates with a heavy significance. The building is the very last of the temples of Ammon: the only place where the gods of Dynastic Egypt are still actively worshipped. Its forced closure on the orders of Justinian, the Holy Roman Emperor, brings to a definitive end over 3,000 years of a religion which has been among the most enduring and stable of the Ancient World.

Originally painted to illustrate a post on my Shadows in Eden weblog. The challenge was to convey the time frame. We know very little about what sort of uniforms the Emperor's soldiery would have worn, but suggestions of plumed helmets and lances seemed appropriate. The wind blowing over the North African dunes did the rest.

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

On 26th of May, 1828, a boy appeared standing in the town square of Nuremberg. He was holding a note addressed to a cavalry officer in a local regiment, saying that his name was Kaspar Hauser, and stating the wish that he would like to become a cavalryman, 'like his father'. The boy's claim was that he had been kept locked up from the outside world until that day, but had been taught to read and write, and had been instructed in scripture by his unknown captor. For the following five years Hauser led a checkered existence, being passed from one situation to another, all the while without the facts of his prior life ever becoming known. In December of 1833 he was found with a grievous stab wound, and died on the 17th of that month. Various claims have been made for the truth behind Hauser's origins, all without firm evidence coming to light. His existence prior to his release and discovery remains an unsolved mystery, as does the identity both of his original captor and his assailant - if indeed they were two different people.

The early history of Kaspar Hauser remained known only to himself, and his later history was brief enough. His biographers struggle to wrestle details free from the cloud of unknowing which surrounds them, as we at times are driven to strive to make some sense, to find some common thread, in our own personal histories. Whether we feel that we can detect a coherence, or whether that thread seems a tangled chaos, is perhaps only dependent upon the distance in time from which it is seen.

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