Creative History

  A few weeks before Easter in the year 1512 alarming reports began to reach Pope Julius II in Rome.  Reports of a strange and monstrous creature--a true demon (it was said) brought to life--near the Adriatic coast in the historic and holy city of Ravenna, only about two-hundred miles as the crow flies, north of the Vatican. This creature, what Vatican officials labelled as the spawn of Satan, was said to have been the illicit offspring of a secret sexual liaison between a nun and a monk.  In reality, if that was the case, then the so-called “Monster of Ravenna” never stood a chance of acceptance into Renaissance Italian society no matter what it looked like from the moment that it was born. This “monstrous” being would have been banished to the wilderness from infancy, shunned and pushed away to the margins of Renaissance society, only able to sustain a subsistence life if it were lucky, merely for having been the product of such a sinful sexual encounter. When Pop...

It is the middle of the fifteenth century and Catholic pilgrims from all across Europe are flocking to the County of Kent near the town of Maidstone in the southeast of England. These devout pilgrims journey by the thousands, twice each year on Easter Sunday and on the day of the Ascension, to witness one of the most holy miracles of the Middle Ages in action--the Rood of Grace. The Rood of Grace is located among lush green rolling fields and hills in the center of the church at Boxley Abbey.  Boxley Abbey was founded in the year 1148 by a Flemish mercenary turned scholastic monk named William of Ypres and in the middle of the 15th century it is home to a flourishing order of Cistercian monks. Boxley Abbey as Depicted Before it Fell into Ruins Sometimes referred to as the Rood of Boxley Abbey, the Rood of Grace, is a representation of a crucified Jesus on a wooden cross that is said to move and to even speak to worthy pilgrims as if it is alive. To journey to Boxley Abbey a...

  It is the year 1474 in Basel, Switzerland. Basel is a city that lies along the banks of the Rhine River near the Swiss border with both France and Germany.  It is a picturesque and cosmopolitan city that today is famous for its many art museums.  For centuries Basel has been considered one of the cultural capitals of Europe. However, on this day in August of 1474, the city of Basel is about to be the site of an execution witnessed by a large, blood thirsty and fearful crowd of rural peasants and urban townspeople alike.   They have come to see an accused witch burned alive at the stake. The execution is conducted with, “great solemnity as would have been observed in the consigning of a heretic to the flames.”  (Evans 1906)   Only days before, at the trial of the condemned, the prosecutor in Basel had asserted that, “it was not a case of (the defendant) making a compact with the devil, but that Satan had actually entered into them.” The pub...