SIGNS of the END of the WORLD



Emile Mâle:

[In the late Middle Ages] it was an accepted belief that the end of the world would be announced by three great phenomena of the world of the spirit and fifteen cosmic signs.

We must read the account of the last days of the world in L'Art de bien vivre et bien mourir, published by [Antoine] Vérard; nothing could be more somber. The Middle Ages, just then drawing to a close, gazed disconsolately upon the universe. There was no faith in the earthly destiny of humanity, and no idea of what was later to be called "progress"; far from becoming better, men would become worse, and this would be the sign that time was up.

First of all, and this is the initial sign, charity will turn cold in men's heats. The author compares humanity to an aging man whose vital heat diminishes; the human soul will pass through a kind of glacial period; the flame of love that had so long warmed men's hearts will burn low, and then be extinguished.

Consequently, and this is the second sign, selfishness will reign supreme in the world: dedication, self-sacrifice, such words will no longer have meaning; self-interest, that is, immediate self-interest, will become the universal law.

Finally, and this is the third sign, out of selfishness man will break all his ancient ties with the past. There will be no more nations, no more families; the son will rise up against his father; the husband will abstain from his own wife who sleeps in his arms...

When harmony is destroyed in the soul of man, it will also be destroyed in the entire universe, for the same law that rules the human soul rules the earth and the stars. Fifteen cosmic catastrophes will announce the final day. These are... as follows:

I. In certain places the sea will rise above the mountains.
II. It will then subside and sink into the depths of the earth.
III. Sea monsters will appear and make frightening sounds.
IV. The sea and all the rivers will burn.
V. Trees and plants will produce a vermillion sweat, like blood.
VI. All the Buildings of earth will crumble.
VII. Stones will collide and break against each other.
VIII. The earth will shake and open.
IX. Mountains will be leveled to the ground.
X. The living who have hidden themselves in underground shelters will rush out.
XI. The earth will vomit up the dead and their bones will come out of their tombs.
XII. The stars will fall from the heavens and the beasts will have nothing to eat.
XIII. All that is living on earth will die.
XIV. Fire will burn sky and earth.
XV. The dead will rise to be judged by God.

In the fifteenth century there was more widespread belief in this somber picture than there is today in the speculations of scientists on the end of our planet. The fifteen signs were presented on the authority of the great St. Jerome, so no questions were raised. The Venerable Bede, who first enumerated the fifteen signs, traced them back to this Church Father: St. Jerome found them in the Annals of the Hebrews, he said. Today, there is nothing like this to be found in the works of Jerome. Unless Bede was mistaken, then he must have seen a book that has long since disappeared...

Although such a theme seems ill suited to art, artists took it up at the beginning of the fifteenth century. In the inventory of the Dukes of Burgindy, under the date 1413, we find listed a tapestry of the fifteen signs. How did the designer of the cartoon manage to express all these great cosmic catastrophes? No one knows...

The woodcuts in Vérard's L'Art de bien vivre et bien mourir, although they date from the late fifteenth century, give some idea of the tapestry. There ingenuousness makes one smile; once or twice, however, the extreme simplicity of the drawing almost attains grandeur.

The effects of the first sign are represented in a surprisingly bizarre way. To convey the idea of the sea rising above the mountains, the artist has drawn a sort of fountain of petrified water: the sea is congealed against the sky in the form of a basaltlike rock; fish arranged in tiers on this reef indicate that the rock is supposed to be made of water.

The third sign is the appearance of sea monster. Now what sort of monsters are they? A mermaid and a triton, who express the mystery of unknown oceans where a man might encounter anything...

The fourteenth sign is a fine hieroglyphic. Sky and earth and being consumed. All we see is two likes of fire, one above and the other below: that is the entire universe.

[Religious Art in France: the Late Middle Ages by Emile Mâle, translated by Marthiel Matthews. Princeton University Press, 1986]