“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here” - Dante's Inferno, Canto III.

Across Christian art, the entrance to Hell is depicted as a giant mouth. A gaping set of jaws that devours the souls of the damned. These Hellmouths are everywhere, cropping up in manuscripts, prayer books, and paintings. Even in early theatre productions, where giant mechanical mouths were constructed in medieval town squares. The Christian Hellmouth is a disturbing image and a useful deterrent against wrongdoing. It appeals to a very basic human instinct: don’t get eaten. In this life, or the next.

But where did this frightening image come from? Many believe that the Hellmouth has its roots in Norse mythology, With its hellish ideas of man-eating wolves and devouring dragons. It seems like Viking beliefs about the afterlife seemed to have made their way into Saxon Christianity, as seen in examples like the Gosforth Cross, and in parallels between Satan and the dragon Nidhogg.

I'm thrilled that so many of you enjoyed my last video, so I am hoping to make this into a little series. Before then, I'll be taking a small Spring break next week, but it shouldn't disrupt my upload schedule. Thank you all for 579k subscribers!

H.

P.S. This video isn't an April fool's joke!

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Sources & Further Reading:

Infernal Imagery in Anglo-Saxon Charters by Petra Hoffman (PhD Thesis)
research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/…

Examples of Hellmouths
jessehurlbut.net/wp/mssart/?tag=hellmouth

Welcome to the Medieval Hellmouth: Hellmouth Illuminations and their Correlation to Fantasy and Pop Culture
ctlsites.uga.edu/hargretthoursproject/welcome-to-t…

The Bad Place: a Visual History of Hell
artuk.org/discover/stories/the-bad-place-a-visual-…

Adapting the Hellmouth in the Office of the Dead from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves: An Experiment in Using a Dramaturgical Approach to Medieval Studies by Tatiana A. Godfrey
scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article…

Medieval Special Effects
www.medievalists.net/2018/08/medieval-special-effe…

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Music:

Intro - Epic of Gilgamesh in Sumerian by Peter Pringle
youtube.com/watch?v=QUcTs...

The Inspector by David Celeste
Via Epidemic Sound

Erudition by Ambre Jaune
Via Epidemic Sound

Wandering Soul by Gabriel Lewis
Via Epidemic Sound

Outro - Peaceful Ambient Music by CO.AG
youtube.com/channel/UCcav...
License: creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

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