In “Attunement to the Damned of the Conques Tympanum,” Kirk Ambrose examines the Last Judgment tympanum of the Abby church of Saint Foy located in Conques, France. The church was raised approximately in the late 9th or 10th century; additions to the church were also made later. This tympanum has been dated to circa 1125. This year combined with its style places it in the Romanesque period. Much curiosity and debate surrounds the imagery and artists’ intentions because the gestures and facial expressions of the people depicted are not what most people would typically expect of people who ended up in heaven or hell with respect to the last judgement. Ambrose contends that “the designers of this tympanum… imagined the eternal suffering in terms
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One such source is the liber miraculorum Sancte Fidis. It is about a collection of miracles but also tends to have punishment for certain individuals in terms of the loss of control of the body, which is further loosely translatable to a form of paralysis. It’s understood that this was a recognized book for its time and points to the probability that paralysis was a feared form of torture by the people of this time period. Numerous other points are made to this end by examining other books or ideas on important peoples. Though, another aspect that Ambrose wishes us to consider borrows from a much more recent scientific observation. That is the existence of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are essentially the nerve cells that fire off in our brain in an empathetic response to stimuli. They result in the understanding of others’ though mimicking another’s internal experience. These mirror neurons fire off in a pattern nearly identical to if we were experiencing the stimuli your self. Ambrose believes that the attunement of the audience to the condemned souls manifests itself though understanding their paralysis through the use of these mirror neurons. To this end, I do agree. She’s basically stating that people of that time had the capacity for empathy and that people during their time were primed to fear or have anxiety at the thought of paralysis in its many
One such source is the liber miraculorum Sancte Fidis. It is about a collection of miracles but also tends to have punishment for certain individuals in terms of the loss of control of the body, which is further loosely translatable to a form of paralysis. It’s understood that this was a recognized book for its time and points to the probability that paralysis was a feared form of torture by the people of this time period. Numerous other points are made to this end by examining other books or ideas on important peoples. Though, another aspect that Ambrose wishes us to consider borrows from a much more recent scientific observation. That is the existence of mirror neurons. Mirror neurons are essentially the nerve cells that fire off in our brain in an empathetic response to stimuli. They result in the understanding of others’ though mimicking another’s internal experience. These mirror neurons fire off in a pattern nearly identical to if we were experiencing the stimuli your self. Ambrose believes that the attunement of the audience to the condemned souls manifests itself though understanding their paralysis through the use of these mirror neurons. To this end, I do agree. She’s basically stating that people of that time had the capacity for empathy and that people during their time were primed to fear or have anxiety at the thought of paralysis in its many