Jenner's Stages of Sin, 1635

These admonitory images are from Thomas Jenner's The ages of sin, or Sinnes birth & groweth With the stepps, and degrees of sin, from thought to finall impenitencie.  

The book appeared in 1635, and seems to have been popular enough for two further editions to appear in 1655, and what appears on EEBO to be a single sheet version in 1675, suitable for pasting up to edify the godly members of your godly household while they are in your godly privy.

It looks as if the woodcuts were local versions of a continental emblem book. The final image is signed with 'Ja. v. L. fecit'. Jan van Leyden came to mind, though 1635 seems to be rather early for the marine artist. A Dutch name anyway.

The book takes a seven ages of man format, and re-applies it to illustrate seven ages, or rather steps of sin, progressing from sinful thoughts to the sinful act, and so onwards to the latter stages of decline into a permanent sinful state.

My interest was fired by a student, who is going to be working on personifications of Thought in Shakespeare. Taking the subject quite literally, I reflected that the poet often writes about his or her thoughts in Petrachistic poetry, thoughts being apostrophised as unquiet, restless, etc. Then Sidney's pastoral lyric "My sheep are thoughts, which I both guide and serve" came to mind, and so to this set of images, where sinful thoughts are personified, or embodied, as various kinds of animals.

1 Suggestion.

Original-Concupiscence doth make 

Our Nature like a foul great-Bellied Snake: 

For, were not Sathan apt to tempt to Sin; 

Yet, Lustful-Thoughts would breed & brood, within: 

But, happy he, that takes these Little-Ones, 

To dash their Brains (Soon) 'gainst repentant-Stones. 

So, in this cheering opening image and verse about 'Suggestion' (we'd use 'Temptation'), original sin makes us like a pregnant viper, a snake of the non-oviparous kind. We hardly need Satan tempting us,because we breed sins within, like baby snakes (not the tinned pasta kind). Well, we must dash their brains out, before they grow up to be dangerous.

2. Rumination.

When Lust hath (thus) conceived, it brings forth Sin, 

And ruminating-thoughts its Shape begin. 

Like as the Bears oft-licking of her whelps. 

That foul deformed Creatures shape much helps. 

The dangers great, our Sinful thoughts to Cherish, 

Stop their growth, or thy poor Soul will perish.

Here we are like mother bears,in the Plinian natural history of the day, licking our newly arrived sinful thought into shape, maybe planning how we will not just covet our neighbour's ass, or his wife, but actually carry out some theft or abduction.

Here's a picture of me in the former church at Castle Richard in Shropshire, thinking penitently about how often I have indeed coveted my neighbour's ass, and trying to resolve to do better:

DELECTATION. 3

If Sinful Thoughts (once) nestle in man’s heart, 

The Sluice is ope, Delight (then) plays its part: 

Then, like the old-Ape hugging in his arms, 

His apish-young-ones, sin the Soul becharms: 

And, when our apish impious-thoughts delight us, 

Oh, then, (alas) most mortally they bite us. 

Here we are, then, our sin resolved upon, our scheme to carry it out fully formed. Now we are like an old ape hugging its offspring, delighted with it. (But we will get bitten.)

CONSENT. 4

For, where Sin works Content, Consent will follow; 

And, this, the Soul, into Sin’s Gulf, doth swallow. 

For, as two rav'ning Wolves (for, tis their kind) 

To suck Lambs-blood, do hunt with equal-mind: 

Even so, the Soul & Sin Consent, in One, 

Till, Soul & Body be quite overthrown. 

Pleased with the sin we contemplate, we give in to it. Content and Consent are two wolves ravening a lamb. Jenner does concede that to do such a thing is only natural to wolves. This whole publication does quite ruthlessly treat animals as merely present to be moral examples to human beings, making them embody sinful human thoughts which of course, as Jenner concedes here, they simply do not have.

5 Act.

Sin and the Soul (thus) having stricken Hands, 

The Sinner (now) for Action ready stands; 

And Tyger-like swallows-up, at one-bit, 

Whatever impious Prey his Heart doth fit: 

Committing Sin, with eager greediness, 

Selling his Soul to work all wickedness. 

Sin in action is this splendid 'Tyger' (I suppose Blake scholars might have put the point that Blake might have seen this engraving), gobbling down its prey, boots, spurs and all.

Iteration. 6

From eager-acting Sin, comes Iteration, 

Or, frequent Custom of Sins perpetration; 

Which, like great Flesh-Flies' lighting on raw-Flesh, 

Though oft beat-off, (if not killed) come afresh: 

Hence, Be'lzebub is termed Prince of flesh-flies, 

'Cause Sin, still Acts, until (by Grace) It Dies. 

This unsavoury image of a menace to public health is a butcher trying to keep flies off his meat with a fly-flap. Our sins are now like flies, they will not go away, but, chased off, come buzzing right back.

GLORIATION. 7

Custom in Sin takes Sense of Sin away, 

This makes All-Sin seem but a Sport, a play: 

Yea, like a rampant-Lyon, proud and Stout, 

Insulting  o're his Prey, stalking about, 

The Saucy-Sinner boasts & brags of Sin. 

As One (oh woe) that doth a City win. 

'Gloriation', rare or obsolete says the OED, a splendid word meaning, or course, boasting of our actions, proud as a lion over what we have done.

8 Obduration.

When Sin brings Sinners to this fearful pass, 

What follows, but a hard heart, brow of brass· 

A Heart (I say) more hard then Tortoise-back; 

Which, nether Sword nor Axe can hew or hack; 

Judgements nor mercies, treats nor threats can cause 

To leave-off Sin, to love or fear Gods Laws. 

Oh dear, now we are hardened in sin. Like a tortoise, nothing can get through to us, we are obdurated in it (OED says 'obdurate' was a word to express hardening of the soul before it had anything to do with anything merely material in nature simply being made harder).

9 FINAL IMPENITENCY.

And (now, alas) what is Sins last Extent? 

A hard-Heart makes a Heart impenitent. 

For, can a Leopard change his Spotted Skin? 

No, nor a Heart accustomed (thus), his Sin. 

Then, Conscience, headlong, casts impenitence, 

With horrid frights of Hellish Recompense.

Can a leopard change his spots? Neither can a sinner. The leopard/sinner is I think meant to be committing suicide, driven by conscience into a final sin.

Setting off with original sin, and ending with conscience leading us to kill ourselves, 'The stages of sin' has little space for positives (but it does manage to mention repentance and grace). The animals are, however, quite jolly in some of the illustrations, and are generally doing what's natural to them

‘Their eyes were holden that they should not know him': J H Glaser's anamorphic Fall, 1638

This is Johann Heinrich Glaser’s anamorphic composition, ‘The Fall’, 1638, dedicated to the Rector of Basle University, a man called Remi Fasch.

I sourced the image in Jurgis Baltrušaitis’ Anamorphic Art (1977), following up a reference in Stuart Clark’s 2007 book, Vanities of the Eye. I post this because I tried to find the image somewhere on the web, but failed apart from a couple of impossibly small-sized reproductions in Google books. (I haven’t been able to source a copy of Fred Leeman’s Hidden Images book of 1976, which may have a better version.)

So, this is two scans merged together of one A3 sized photocopy of a double page reproduction in a book. I then fastened my long strip to a piece of plywood with blu-tack, and tried taking oblique photographs from the principal point of view you must use if the anamorphic face of Christ crowned with thorns is to appear.

 

Well, much has been lost in this series of reproductions. I did my best; it conveys the idea. There’s no angle that gives a better view of the image of Christ, without those alarmingly dissimilar sized eyes that is. Baltrušaitis does not give the original dimensions of the 1638 print. Judging by the size of the letters in the dedicatory inscription that runs along the bottom, I’d guess at twice the size of the reproduction, which is 40cm across in the book. The real thing must work far better than the reproduced version. Clarity in this case is everything, if the eye is to be deceived.

So, within these limitations, I think we can see, reading across from the right, Adam and Eve at the forbidden tree, with a large and properly serpentine (rather than Lamia-like) serpent coiled round the tree trunk, while an owl sits on a branch, and a peacock stands at their feet. Between them, Death rises up as they disobey God.

The animals: an ape gazes at the lake, but it is viewing the ‘vexierbild’, the puzzle-picture from the wrong side: the ape will not see Christ (as if the picture demonstrates that it lacks a soul). On this side of the lake, and nearest the act of transgression, foxes, a bear, a cow, rabbit, a cat and a dog sparring. Behind these animals, a half-hidden row of birds: what might be a toucan (known from the mid 16^th century), two ibises, a cockerel with two rather exotic hens, a bird with a crest, a pheasant, a turkey, and a sprawling alligator. Then at the far left, the angel or cherubim chases Adam and Eve out of Paradise, the serpent wriggles at their feet, ready to start receiving its curse, and Death encourages their flight from Eden into his realm.

The lobe-like shores of the lake are of course where the anamorphic, hidden Christ begins. As a lake in Eden, He enlarges the usual four source streams of Paradise, usually depicted as clear rivulets stemming from a fountain, and usually allegorised as God’s grace flowing out to the whole world (the Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel and Euphrates, as Scafi’s book on Medieval maps explains, being taken to water all countries). Man’s sin has the reservoir of grace ready, the redeemer will not be revealed for millennia, but His mission, for which He is ready, has started.

Glaser has found a new way to put the two Adams into one picture (“First, wee see the difference between the two Adams: the first made sin, and infected all the world with it: The other made no sin, but redeemed all the world from it”, wrote Nicholas Byfield in 1623, it was a favourite thought of Donne’s – and of course many others).

There must be a larger study of unrevealed or half-revealed Christs. That Christ’s divine nature was hidden during His incarnation is one regular idea. But Christ is repeatedly not seen, or unrecognized. My title for this post comes from Luke 24, verse 16, non-recognition on the road to Emmaus; Mary Magdalene does not know him at John 20 14-16. At the start of His mission, in Like 4, 28-30, in one verse, Jesus is about to be cast down from the top of the hill by those angered by His calm self-announcement (after He has read from Isaiah in the synagogue, ‘This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears’), and His apparent refusal to show His ministry in Nazareth: the next verse, He has somehow slipped away through the angry mob: Jesus autem transiens in medio illorum, the line medieval travellers liked to have on their good luck charms.

There ought, really, to be more early modern pictures like this. The Reformation’s iconoclasm made depictions of the godhead controversial. This was a perfect way to compromise (you’d have thought): Puritans, all you see is a landscape, Anglicans, squint in from the left frame. But I guess they were so much one or the other, compromise never appealed that much.

‘And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.’ (Luke 24, 31)

Meetings with remarkable early modern trees

I recently bought a copy of Gillian Tindall’s The Man Who Drew London: Wenceslaus Hollar in reality and imagination (2002). An odd book, a composite of a biography and a Tracey Chevalier style narrative. In many of Tindall’s fictionalised passages, she tries to give a voice to the women in Hollar’s life. I suppose that one could agree that women were an important subject for Hollar, and that he treats them with great sympathy, never pruriently (not even when illustrating Juvenal). The author must have been tempted to try to bring to life the women Hollar knew.

But I was most interested by her small illustration (on p.124) of the Hollow Tree on Hampstead Heath. It took me a while to find it, as it doesn’t seem to be in the apparently comprehensive (and undeniably excellent) University of Toronto Hollar Digital Collection:

http://link.library.utoronto.ca/hollar/browse.cfm?Main=All

I traced it finally in Robert Codrington’s single sheet (double-sided), The dimension of the hollow tree of Hampsted (1653). EEBO does us proud here, with a transcript of the text, the page images, and all the minor contributors to the publication indexed.

As we are having a meeting with a remarkable early modern tree, let’s have the statistics of the tree itself first. It was an elm tree: “The Bottom above ground in Compass is 28 foot; The Breadth of the door is 2 foot; The Compass of the turret on the Top is 34 foot; The Door in Height to go in is 6 foot 2 Inches; The Height to the Turret is 33 foot; The Lights into the Tree is 16; The Steps to go up is 42; The Seat above the Steps, Six may Sit on, and round about room for fourteen more. All the way you go up within the Hollow Tree.”

This isn’t as hyperbolic in size as Codrington’s verses make it sound. The ‘lights into the tree’ are the windows for the spiral staircase cut inside the trunk.

Codrington’s poem is charmingly of its time. It’s cast, largely, in a vein of high compliment to the tree, treated as a ‘wooden majesty’. From the top of this quasi-royal tree he looks to the forlorn royal palaces, now uninhabited. It’s loco-descriptive, as Codrington enjoys the view from the top in the manner of Denham, especially the section about the distant Thames, and it makes one remember Marvell:

‘Of the height and hollowness of the great Elm at Hampstead.’

What shall I call thee who so great and high,
Present’st thy self unto my wondring eye?
Thou Travellers 'fence, and guide, the Enterlude
O’th ranting storms, and giant of the wood!
How in thy summer’s robes doest thou appear,
The Sylvans’ joy, and honour of the year?
How the bold winds play with thy lofty locks!
How doest thou scorn, and makest them but thy mocks,
Deaf to their sighs, and whispers! Let me here
(So please thy Wooden Majesty) draw near
To thy first door, and looking up discry
Where Hall, where Parlor, how thy Chambers lie.
Essex’ Broad-Oak (which twenty miles we see
And more) is but a twig compar’d to thee;
So vast a compass doth thy might command,
That a whole Grove within thy self might stand,
And spread and flourish, and may fruitful add
To thee a growing progeny: which had
No doubt been so, but that thou thought’st not good
To leave out Men, to entertain a Wood.
Art here, and Order do in one engage
To make this Round complete, their Equipage
Extols thy greatness, in less room I find
With all his trusty Knights King Arthur din’d.
As yet more high upon the stairs I rise,
What are these windows which enrich mine eyes?
Happy you lights, whose air so pure and thin
The morning courts to let the Sun come in,
And drink it, to refresh his heavy head
Sick with the vapours of moist Thetis’ Bed;
For which (not staying) he with all his wealth,
Gilds this blest place, and thanks it for his health.
Now is my progress finish’d, to the height
Of all thy Turret I am come, and straight
Here on the world’s Redeemer think, when he
(Set on the Temple’s Pinnacle) did see
All Kingdoms of the earth at once, so stand
The Towns now subject to my eyes command,
Which to repeat the Muse forbears, for why?
The Towns would often give the verse the lye,
Whose names as Churlish as themselves are known,
And will endure no Numbers but their own.
Six neighbouring Counties do on tip-toe all
Gaze on thy mighty limbs, and seem to call
Unto thy patient Greatness, when to wait
To pay thee homage for thy nobler height,
But only Harrow on the Hill plays Rex,
And will have none more high in Middlesex.
And yonder the familiar Thames (the more
To grace thy prospect) rolls along the shore
Her Crystal treasures, and doth seem to me
Softly to murmur 'cause so far from thee.
See how the Ships in numerous array.
Dance on her waves, and their proud wings display
More white then Snow, as now the Thames did carry
A moving wood i’th’midst of January.
Not all Meander’s Swans, nor those on Po,
Join’d with her own, make half so fair a show:
Nor all the beauteous Ladies that have been
These twice three summers on thy Turrets seen.
But what amongst these various objects, what
Is that which so much takes my eyes? 'tis not
Thy leavy Antlers, nor thy shoulders, high,
Though one would brush, and th’other bore the sky;
Nor thy five hundred Arms by which we see
Briareus only was a type of thee,
Arms which vain winds doe twist in every storm
And fain would put them in akimbo form.
Tis not thy ample body, though it be
So full of pleasure, and humanity,
That as to the quick a Palace would be found,
So to the dead their Coffins, and surround
Their loose and crumbling dusts. Tis not thy feet,
To cover which so many Acres meet:
Tis not those stately structures where the Court
Had late their mansions, when our Kings would sport;
Of whom depriv’d they mourn, and desolate
Like Widows look on their forlorn estate.
Tis not smooth Richmond’s streams, nor Acton’s Mill,
Nor Windsor’s Castle, nor yet Shooters hill.
Nor groves nor plains which further off do stand,
Like Landskips portray’d by some happy hand:
But a swift view which most delightful shows,
And doth them all, and all at once enclose.


Codrington dates his poem 24^th July 1653. Then there follows a set of distiches by four other visitors, who also date their poems to the same day. I just give the English version of each poem, but each one has a Latin version of itself (again, like Marvell sometimes does). English couplets, moralising and making religious reflections, mixed with Latinity takes us a bit closer to what was going on here among these early modern Hampstead intellectuals:

Upon Hampstead Elm.

Although the heart of this fair Tree be out,
Yet it doth spread its branches round about.

(Roger Coleman)

Upon Hampstead Elm.

As in this Tree we go through dark to light,
So Saints ascend through death to heaven bright.

(John Lee)

Upon Hampstead Elm. Psalm 52. 13. 14.

God’s Tree and this do differ in one thing,
That shall not, this will cease fruit forth to bring.

(Moses Browne)

In Ulmum Hampstedensem.

Here all may see this stately Elm to bear
An Apple strange, which it brings ev’ry year.

T. W.

These writers scarcely experience the tree directly: what they see and do is related to their religious inner life. John Lee finds a symbol, Moses Browne is reminded of the cross, T.W. somehow finds an apple (an elm rarely fruits, and the fruit body is small and papery). We had at the start of the ascent a set of ‘Verses on the DOOR.’ These are part-Herrick, part Herbert – or rather, Herbert will be clearer at the top. So it’s a climb from a sinful world to a greater proximity to heaven (and divine scrutiny):

Civil people, you welcome be,
That come to view this Hollow Tree.
Debaucht Drunkard, Ranting Whore,
Come no such within this Door:
Wanton Boys and ranting Rigs,
Cut no Bowes, break no Sprigs.

‘Verses on the Top of the TREE in the TURRET.’

Now you are ascended up on high,
Think here upon Eternity.
Take heed what you do morn or ev’n,
The Son will see’t and tell’t in Heaven:
What ever you think, or speak, or say,
You answer must at Judgement-Day.

I think that the ‘verses on’ simply meant, as usual, ‘verses on the subject of’. But it is also possible that the poems provided might have been transcribed on placards for visitors like the lady visitors Codrington’s verses mention. This whole production was ‘Printed by E. Cotes for M. S. at the Blue Bible in Green Arbour, and are to be given or sold on the Hollow Tree at Hampsted.’ ‘M.S.’ was Michael Sparke, the bookseller. So the work was a promotional flyer, but one that has, as we might say, its own agenda too.

Now hollow trees, if you trace them through early modern literature, are places in which people hide (after the model of Aeneas in his flight from Troy), or hide letters (in romances), and they were where early ornithologists and poets like Carew thought cuckoos over-wintered. But a large tree could shelter a religious meeting. Hollow trees are mentioned being used this way in satire (because of the ludicrous cuckoo associations, I think), as in the title Some small and simple reasons delivered in a hollow-tree in Waltham Forrest in a lecture on the 33. of March last by Aminadab Blower a devout bellowsmender of Pimlico; shewing the causes in generall and particular wherefore thay doe, might, would, should, or ought, except against and quite refuse the liturgy or Book of Common-Prayer (1643).

Codrington has another set of verses, in a Procul, O procul este profane mode: we learn in them that this is ‘an elm that’s orthodox’:

‘The Elm it self, to some of the new Religion that would make a Preachment under his reverend shade.’

How numerous and extravagant are these
Thus buzz about me like a swarm of Bees?
Remove your station friends, I’m not so fickle,
To cast a shade for such a Conventicle:
You talk to me of Slaney, How, and Cox,
Why do you vex an Elm that’s Orthodox?
To sort with your complexions, I profess
There are no Elms in all my Diocese;
If only such are for your purpose, know,
You must as far as unto Bordeaux go.

‘How’ would be Samuel How, author of The sufficiencie of the spirits teaching, without humane-learning (1640 and eds.) - the title alone says enough. Now if it’s a surprise to see the old radical bookseller Michael Sparke mixed in with such men as Codrington busily praising orthodoxy, perhaps the connection is respect for learning. For besides orthodoxy in religion at this elm, there’s a lot of instruction going on. In the next verses, Michael Sparke himself, signing his piece as ‘Scintilla’, praises ‘Domino Auriga’ (the name means charioteer), who has delivered a cartload of books to this place. Sparke himself (who would die in December of 1653) lived in Hampstead, and here he seems to be proprietorial, writing about ‘my arbour’:

‘Amico meo fidelissimo Domino Auriga.’

Welcome most learned Waggoner, welcome to me,
That bring’st such loading, to this hollow Tree;
What is thy carriage? Learning, Virtue, Wit.
Here then unlade, this Elm for thee is fit.
This is the Tree, on which such fruit doth spring,
Which made the Muses dance, to laugh and sing:
Such carriage, thou hast brought to this my Arbour,
As never richer Ship came loaden into Harbour.
Twelve virtuous Plants, this exile tutor’d so
Upon this Tree, the like let England show.
Drive on see the youngest Branch so flourish,
That Air, and Hill, and Well, and School may cherish:
And when thy wheels do off thy Wagon go,
In spite of death, thy Plants will fairly grow;
And though by him thou wrapped art in Lead,
Yet Time in spight of Death thy seeds will spread.

Sparke also contributes ‘The Close’:

Blush England, blush, a shame it is to see
An Exile here, to teach civility,
More then some Natives, and for pious care
To train up youth, his pains he doth not spare;
For he on top of all (this Tree) above the shade,
His Scholars taught, where they such Verses made
As spread his honour, and do blaze the fame
Of Hampstead Schoole, I’ll trumpet up the same:
Johannes A Comenius thy Countryman so rare,
For Arts and Parts thou mayst with him compare.
Exile drive on thy Wagon, here take rest,
And all thy carriage be for ever blest.

I think we finally get some chance to understand the set up at the Hampstead Elm. Michael Spark was probably its owner or keeper. Codrington’s verses seem to say that the elm had been equipped with its winding interior stair and platform for six years by 1653. In the very near vicinity, an exiled scholar kept a school, perhaps in the buildings seen behind the tree in Hollar’s etching, which the unworldly and over-worked Hollar perhaps contributed to assist a fellow exile. I think the teacher must have been a follower of the educationalist Johannes Comenius. Comenius gets mentioned by Sparke: he had been in England at Samuel Hartlib’s invitation in 1641, some of his educational writings had been published in England by Sparke, and the Moravian scholar might have established Chelsea College as a Baconian research institute, a ‘universal college of the learned’. The same ideals seem to inform the teaching of this unknown subsequent exile: the tree itself might have been carpentered to meet imagery derived from Comenius, to symbolise an instructive ascent via a Baconian winding stair through darkness to illumination, a Comenian Via Lucis. If the platform on top of the Hampstead Elm was designed as an arboreal classroom, this would have been an idea Comenius would have warmly endorsed, for instruction was in his pedagogic theory always meant to be enjoyed.

And who wouldn’t? Thomas Pakenham, 8^th Earl of Longford, a remarkable early modern tree for you!