The End is Nigh. Judgement day is almost upon you. Sinners beware! Superstition everywhere.
All this terror dwelt within the mediaeval mind, how on earth did they cope? Spearheaded by the ever present earthly represented of Christ, the local priest, brought to standing attention within these brightly painted scenes of salvation and damnation. These swirling images would have been found in most churches in the land before the 16th century. To the illiterate majority they would cause a stir, as was just the intention.
Before the advent of the printing press, it was wall paintings which held sway and told it like it is. No-one could really understand the Latin spoken by the priest, another language altogether from the plough boys of England.
In this Doom painting in St. Thomas’s Church, Salisbury and dating at over six hundred years, Christ majestically sits above the many, judging souls which rise from their death pits, sending them to either Heaven or Hell. This image, enough to scare the bejesus out of most people, in there to make us think about being kinder to our fellow neighbour, or at least for the duration whilst inside the church.
If you wanted to know what was to come, what was really going on, then look to the walls. Although the congregation would have to wait another five hundred years to actually be able to read the writing sprayed on the wall, pictures would have to do and always spoke a thousand words. In effect, be nice to all, before it’s too late.
St. Thomas's Church, Salisbury