Citation

Davy C. Revue de l'Art 2017; 195(1): 41-51.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The historian Flavius Joscphus narrated King Herod's atrocious end of life. Very early on, Christians considered it as the divine punishment for the massacre of the innocents that they attributed to this king. This point of view remained dominant throughout the Middle Ages despite the apparition of another interpretation, with its origins in the Catolingian Auxerois seat, which transformed the death resulting from illness into suicide. This minority current of thought, which reports the refusal of grace had some success in England before developing on the continent. A representation of the suicide of Herod has recently been identified in the decoration of the church of the priory- of I-A Poraire, belonging to the Order of Fontcvraud. The study seeks to clarify the place of this new image of the suicide of Herod painted around 1200 in an original vision of hell.

Language: fr