Bosch Famous Quotes

Even so, little separation between the soteriological and the humanitarian motifs was in evidence during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The missionaries persisted in the pre-Enlightenment tradition of the indissoluble unity of “evangelization” and “humanization” (cf van der Linde 1973), of “service to the soul” and “service to the body” (Nergaard 1988:34–40), of proclaiming the gospel and spreading a “beneficent civilization” (Rennstich 1982a, 1982b). For Blumhardt of the Basel Mission this clearly included “reparation for injustice committed by Europeans, so that to some extent the thousand bleeding wounds could be healed which were caused by the Europeans since centuries through their most dirty greediness and most cruel deceitfulness” (quoted by Rennstich 1982a:95; cf 1982b:546). And Henry Venn, famous General Secretary of the British CMS, urged missionaries to take their stand between the oppressor and the oppressed, between the tyranny of the system and the morally and physically threatened masses of the people to whom they went (cf Rennstich 1982b:545).

Then he came to a work by an anonymous artist of the late nineteenth century—it was a Last Judgment. He could not understand why he had not heard of the painting before, for it was clearly a masterpiece. The image was not so complex or populated with grotesque characters as Bosch’s famous painting of the same title. No, its power was magnified through simplicity. The artist had portrayed the second coming of Christ as the return of the Lord to a world devoured by evil. In the upper half a luminous divine order descended into a field of demonic energy and universal abomination. People staggered about the desolate landscape, unable to look up to the light. They could no longer see; they could no longer believe. They thought that ruin was the sum total of reality. He could see it in their faces, their despair, their fear, their terrible loneliness. The loneliness of the apocalypse. And in those faces he saw his own face. Pawel burst into tears and wept openly in front of the painting. It seemed to him that the artist had captured his experience perfectly. How had he done that? Had he, too, felt what Pawel had felt, had he once been where Pawel now was?

famous cases like the Black Dahlia, Charles Manson, and the Dollmaker crimes.

One rainy day in 1979 or 1980 I was eating lunch at the legendary sandwich shop of Sal Meijer on the Niewmarkt in Amsterdam. In what was once one of the most famous Jewish neighborhoods in Europe, the owner, a Holocaust survivor, stood at the door gazing sadly at the downpour that was keeping his customers away. Speaking to no one in particular, he said, 'Forty days and forty nights. All the wicked people were killed and only the righteous survived. And that is us.' No more than Sal Meijer was Jheronimus Bosch impressed by the descendants of Noah.