HIERONYMUS BOSCH AND THE ESOTERIC TRADITION.

摘要

Hieronymus Bosch should be placed in the syncretist tradition, that lineage which attempts to fuse elements of Gnosticism, Kabbalah, and Alchemy with Christianity. To support this thesis, the dissertation analyzes Bosch's The Temptation of Saint Anthony, summoning three kinds of evidence: historical, iconographical, and archetypal.;Bosch's imagery, on the other hand, supplies more convincing evidence. The artist employs what seem to be specific references to the metaphoric language of Kabbalah, Gnosticism, and Alchemy, those traditions converging in Syncretism. The triptych's multiple shell-like forms suggest both the kelippot of Kabbalah, as well as the "shell" symbol from Gnosticism. Bosch's female figures call to mind various aspects of the mystical Sophia, the feminine half of God exiled from her masculine counterpart and encased in a shell-like outer garment, symbolic of the world's evil. And the triptych's myriad sparks and pearls resemble images which appear in each of the mystical traditions and which always refer to "bits" of divinity "strewn" in matter.;Finally, analyzing the work archetypically serves to corroborate these iconographical findings. By throwing into relief the interconnections among the work's various elements, the archetypal reading allows us to understand them more clearly as parts of a whole. Bosch's symbols, the "shell," Sophia, and sparks and pearls, are integral to what Carl Jung terms "individuation," a process which, he says, is the same for the medieval alchemist as for the twentieth-century man in search of psychic wholeness.;Historical evidence linking Bosch with occult thought is indeed tenuous. It centers on Bosch's possible acquaintance with the Jew Almaengien, who converted to Christianity and who was for a time allied to the Lieve Vrouwe Broederschap, the confraternity to which Bosch belonged. It is feasible to assume that Bosch and Almaengien met; but beyond that narrow assumption, speculation is riskier.