Hell is a subject that has long fascinated artists and writers. It inspired Dante's Inferno, a literary journey through Hell which has fired the imagination of generations from the 14th century down to contemporary thriller writer Dan Brown.
Now research on the Mediterranean island of Crete is throwing new light on how Hell was imagined in the past and how it was used to maintain social order, and to prevent crime and antisocial behaviour.
Graphic visions of hellish torture gave a clear warning to villagers across Crete not to sin or break the law.
Hell frescoes popular
Crete was under Venetian domination between 1211 and 1669. Over 800 decorated churches date from this period and display remarkable wall frescoes.
Around 100 of these churches, dated predominantly to the 14th and 15th centuries, include Hell and its sinful inhabitants among their iconographic programmes – making Hell a very popular Cretan subject.
Most of the frescoes have never been properly analysed or even recorded until now.
In 2010 The Leverhulme Trust awarded £176,600 for an International Networks project to Dr Angeliki Lymberopoulou of The Open University, and Professor Dr Vasiliki Tsamakda of the University of Mainz, to photograph, catalogue, examine and publish all the Cretan Hell frescoes for first time.
Religion was a major cause of friction between the island's native Greek Orthodox population and the Roman Catholic Venetian colonists.
The Cretan frescoes are Byzantine in character but they also demonstrate influences from the western Catholic tradition – influences that seeped through owing to the cross-cultural interaction between the two sets of inhabitants.
From the early 14th century Dante’s Divine Comedy was one of the most popular literary works of the pre-print era, and its first part, Hell (Inferno), was often read out publicly in Italian cities.
“We do not know how well Dante was known on Crete, or even if he was known at all," says Angeliki Lymberopoulou.
“But the images from Venetian Crete, like Dante, demonstrate a common concern about the afterlife, and also act as a reminder what happens to bad people – helping to ensure behaviour within the limits of the law, of social parameters and of religion.
“Both take pretty much the same line on what happens to sinners – the punishment in the afterlife fits the crime.
’The images (…) act as a reminder what happens to bad people – helping to ensure behaviour within the limits of the law, of social parameters and of religion’
“Interestingly, in the Cretan frescoes it is those who have committed sins in their profession – such the dishonest miller or tailor – who are punished the most.
Cultural harmony
During its Venetian domination Crete became a unique melting pot of cultures, she says.
“Venetian Crete is probably one of the best examples of a society where we can see people trying to rise about political and religious differences, find common ground and live peacefully together.
"Effectively, whatever differences they had in this life, when it comes to the afterlife, the frescoes show the good people go to paradise and the bad people go to hell, and there is no other way.”
The Leverhulme Trust funded research project Damned in Hell in the Frescoes of Venetian-Dominated Crete (13th-17th centuries) runs until end September 2013.
An associated series of conferences brings together experts to discuss different aspects of Hell. The final conference in the series, The Road to Hell: Sins and their after-life Punishments in the Mediterranean, takes places in Mainz, Germany on 4 and 5 October 2013. The team members of this project will present their preliminary research results during this conference. Find out more here.
Angeliki Lymberopoulou is a specialist in Byzantine art. She chairs AA315 Renaissance Art Reconsidered.
Find out more
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Posted on 3 July 2013.
