DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.48092#0167
IX.]
THE APOCALYPSE.
147
had always much thought for our Souls’ health....She feared
Death much, but she said that to come before God she feared
not.” She passed away “ absolved by papal power from pain
and sin” and found comfort in her last agony from the sprinklings
of holy water. A beautiful soul, happy in her simple old-
fashioned faith. The father too was a religious man, “ very
careful with his children to bring them up in the fear of God,...
his highest wish to train them up to be pleasing to God,...his
daily speech to us that we should love God.” He was a “ God-
fearing man,” one “very thankful towards God.” From such
parents, if there be aught in heredity and education, a religious
child might well be born.
We know that Diirer in his childhood was dutiful, faithful,
obedient, and loving. The solemnity of his expression is notable
in his earliest portrait. Religiosity was always strong in him.
He was full of reverence, of high desires and yearnings towards
the great Unknown. But his Religiosity clothed itself in various
garments at different times. It is doubtful if he ever possessed
any hard and fast creed. Ceaseless work was his only unfailing
expression of faith. Such a man living in such a day cannot but
have felt again and again the gnawing misery of doubt. More
than once Diirer alludes to ‘ great tribulations ’ which he had
experienced at different times.
Dtirer’s first utterance, bearing definitely on the religious
question, was the volume of Apocalypse illustrations. It was
published in 1497 when the artist was 26 years old. The fifth of
the folio prints, representing the opening of the Fifth and Sixth
seals, may be taken as Diirer’s commentary on his day. There
is an altar set in heaven, and around and below it are the “souls
of them that were slain for the Word of God.” “ How long,”
they cry, “oh Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and
avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth ? ” and the
angels give them white stoles, and bid them rest a little while.
And even while they bid them, the curtain of the sky, with all its
pageantry of Sun and Moon, rolls back, as a scroll is rolled,
and opens up the inmost heavens to the sight; and the flaming
stars fall from the altar’s foot on the unhappy peoples of the
earth, in vengeance for the blood of the saints upon the men who
had set up iniquity for a law. These wicked ones, singled out
10—2
THE APOCALYPSE.
147
had always much thought for our Souls’ health....She feared
Death much, but she said that to come before God she feared
not.” She passed away “ absolved by papal power from pain
and sin” and found comfort in her last agony from the sprinklings
of holy water. A beautiful soul, happy in her simple old-
fashioned faith. The father too was a religious man, “ very
careful with his children to bring them up in the fear of God,...
his highest wish to train them up to be pleasing to God,...his
daily speech to us that we should love God.” He was a “ God-
fearing man,” one “very thankful towards God.” From such
parents, if there be aught in heredity and education, a religious
child might well be born.
We know that Diirer in his childhood was dutiful, faithful,
obedient, and loving. The solemnity of his expression is notable
in his earliest portrait. Religiosity was always strong in him.
He was full of reverence, of high desires and yearnings towards
the great Unknown. But his Religiosity clothed itself in various
garments at different times. It is doubtful if he ever possessed
any hard and fast creed. Ceaseless work was his only unfailing
expression of faith. Such a man living in such a day cannot but
have felt again and again the gnawing misery of doubt. More
than once Diirer alludes to ‘ great tribulations ’ which he had
experienced at different times.
Dtirer’s first utterance, bearing definitely on the religious
question, was the volume of Apocalypse illustrations. It was
published in 1497 when the artist was 26 years old. The fifth of
the folio prints, representing the opening of the Fifth and Sixth
seals, may be taken as Diirer’s commentary on his day. There
is an altar set in heaven, and around and below it are the “souls
of them that were slain for the Word of God.” “ How long,”
they cry, “oh Lord, holy and true, dost Thou not judge and
avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth ? ” and the
angels give them white stoles, and bid them rest a little while.
And even while they bid them, the curtain of the sky, with all its
pageantry of Sun and Moon, rolls back, as a scroll is rolled,
and opens up the inmost heavens to the sight; and the flaming
stars fall from the altar’s foot on the unhappy peoples of the
earth, in vengeance for the blood of the saints upon the men who
had set up iniquity for a law. These wicked ones, singled out
10—2