Did The Medieval Man Distinguish Between The Earthly And The Divine?

How did the Medieval man distinguish between the earthly and the divine? Maybe it was distinguished by what he felt was real and not real, or maybe what he understood and what he did not understand? This was differentiated by many aspects of art as well as literature. They may be immense differences or compact differences. I will examine Medieval art, Inferno, and The Canterbury Tales to discuss all the pieces that come together to make someone earthly or divine. In Medieval art there are considerable differences between the earthly and divine characters in them. One of the first things I noticed was the halos on the divine figures heads. They were on all the people of the churches heads, but they were almost more polished on a higher up divine figure like jesus. Another thing I noticed was the proportions of the art. The divine figures were almost always either larger or looked like they were superior to the others in the art, which as we all know, they were. The earthly people were just normal people with no halos or superior to anybody, but more like inferior to the divine figures. In Inferno by Dante Alighieri there is a single very distinct variation between earthly and divine. Dante shows the earthly as the sinners and Beatrice as the divine. While all the sinners clearly did all types of wrongdoings, …show more content…
My character was the Nun and I definitely feel like she was looked at as more of a divine figure than a earthly figure. If you look at the Monk though you can definitely tell the distaste Chaucer has for him and most of the other members of the church. The reason he sees the Nun as divine is because he honestly believes in her tender heart and how she's cares for others whether they are people from the church, peasants, or animals. With the Monk instead of worshipping God he is hunting and riding horses, that does not sounds very holy to me like a Monk should