medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> One of the clearest eastern motifs that was actually Christianized,
however, was the
> weighing of souls in Last Judgement images. Even though one of the four
riders in
> Revelations holds a pair of scales, the weighing imagery itself can be
traced quite
> precisely back to New Kingdom Egypt, where books of the dead contained
> illustrations of Osiris (or Thoth?) weighing souls. According to Louis
Reau, it was
> Coptic Christians who first adapted this motif to a Christian context.
Is it not the Archangel St Michael who holds the scales (=Balance) in which
to weigh souls ? And doesn't Chaucer have a reference somewhere to "St
Michael's weigh"?
Brenda M.C.
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