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Medieval Images of Judgment
John X, 9: I [Christ] am the door. By me, if any man enters in, he shall be saved; and he shall go in and go out, and shall find pastures.
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Tympanum with the Last Judgment from the Church of St. Lazare at Autun, c. 1140, French Romanesque. |
Tympanum with the Last Judgment from the central doorway of the South Transepts portals of Chartres Cathedral |
The idea of a universal judgment at the end of time when Christ will come and divide the elect from the damned played a central role in the Medieval imagination. This subject matter appeared regularly at the entrances of Medieval churches. Echoing the famous passage from the Gospel of John quoted above in which Christ likens Himself to the door to Salvation, the image of Christ as Judge marks the boundary between the sacred and profane worlds. In entering the Church, the Christian entered the earthly equivalent of the heavenly realm. The fear and terrror of Judgment when the Christian soul encounters awful image of Christ the Judge was a frequent theme in Medieval spiritual texts as exemplified by the following excerpt from the Meditation to Stir up Fear written by Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109):
| Barren soul, what are you doing? Sinful soul, why are you lying still? The day of judgment is coming, 'that great day of the Lord is nigh, it is near and comes quickly, day of wrath and day of mourning, day of tribulation and anguish, day of calamity and misery, day of darkness and shadows, day of clouds and eddies, day of trumpets and noises.' O bitter voice of the day of the Lord. O man, luke-warm and worthy to be spewed out, why are you sleeping? He who does not rouse himself and tremble before such thunder, is not asleep but dead. |