In my medieval literature course we read a text called Cursor Mundi which is an account of Adam’s death. He asks his son Seth to go to the Garden of Eden and speak to the angel, Cherubim who guarded the gate. Seth was to tell the angel that Adam was ready to die (After living 900 years) and that he was curious as to if he would be receiving the “oil of mercy” that was promised to him while he was living in Paradise. Cherubim made Seth look into the gates three separate times, each time he saw a new vision of a tree growing. The final image there was a child weeping in the limbs of the tree. Cherubim told Seth that the baby was Jesus and that the tears were Adam’s promised oil of mercy. He then gave Seth three seeds from the tree and told him that Adam should put those on his tongue when he died. These three seeds fertilized in Adam’s head and from it sprang the tree from which the cross that Jesus was crucified on was made. The main reason for mentioning this story is that in Florence I noticed that a lot of the artwork of the crucifixion had skulls underneath the rocks at the base of the cross. I asked our tour guide if that is what it was a symbol of. She informed me that it was not what I thought it was. Instead the skull under the rock is symbolic of Golgotha. I had never heard of this term before so when we were back at the institute I looked up the meaning of it. Turns out I was half right. The tour guide said that I was thinking of the legend of the True Cross, which is also connected to Golgotha. There is no mention of why the place of the crucifixion is called Golgotha (place of the skull) in the Bible. However, there are three theories that I have come across. One is the one that I have previously mentioned. The other is that the shape of Calvary was that of a skull. The final theory is that Golgotha was a common place for public execution therefore it would be riddled with skulls. One source that I found cited The Complete Dictionary of Symbols by Jack Tresidder. This source says that “Tresidder notes that Christian monks used the symbol of the skull to remind them of their own mortality and to meditate upon their own death. Medieval and Renaissance artists, Tredisser states, used the skull to call ‘attention to the vanity of earthly things or the passing of time...’” This would make sense in relationship to the concepts of the Renaissance that we have been studying in class. For me, this does not counter the argument of the shift of influence to secularism. Instead it seems to me that the addition of the skull shows the recognition that because Jesus died for the sins of Adam you now have the capacity to live life morally for the sake of doing so not because it is the decree of the church. It is up to the viewer to find the meaning of this symbol and then apply it to their life. I think that it is very similar to Dante. Despite its religious focus, it is a renaissance piece because of its emphasis on the individual interpretation and application. It also shows me that there is the continuation of the use of Christian symbols in the art for educational purposes. The fact that most of the art has the blood from Jesus dripping onto the skull of Adam is a summation of the Bible. Adam sinned and Jesus was sent to null and void those sins.
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