MISERICORDIA. – A moral virtue, a potential part of justice, which consists in feeling compassion for another’s misfortune and being moved to relieve II. The virtue of mercy has in common with charity that both aim at the good of one’s neighbor; yet the motivating cause is different, since in mercy it is compassion, aroused by the neighbor’s misery, that moves one to relieve the suffering he endures; in charity, on the other hand, it is the very benevolence toward the neighbor that induces one to desire and procure his good.
The same natural law teaches one to do unto others as one would have done unto oneself. The Divine Savior, during His mortal life, impressed upon His disciples the duty of being merciful “as your heavenly Father is merciful” (Lk 6:36). There is therefore a correlation between the mercy that man exercises toward his neighbor and that which God will show toward him (Mt 5:7; 18:21). He Himself first showed the deepest mercy toward even His disciples, often rough and ignorant, toward sinners and the sick, bringing forgiveness and comfort everywhere and performing miracles out of compassion for others’ suffering. His immeasurable mercy shines forth, though only thinly veiled, in the parables of the prodigal son, the lost sheep, and the good Samaritan (cf. also Mt 6:12; 23:35 ff.; Mk 4:24). Behind Christ’s teaching stands that of the Apostles (Col 3:12; Eph 4:32).
The misery that mercy seeks to relieve embraces any pain or evil afflicting one’s neighbor; hence works of mercy may be spiritual or corporal. By way of exemplification, the Catechism enumerates seven of each kind. The corporal works are: 1) to feed the hungry; 2) to give drink to the thirsty; 3) to clothe the naked; 4) to harbor pilgrims; 5) to visit the sick; 6) to ransom captives; 7) to bury the dead (Tob 6:12). The spiritual works are: 1) to teach the ignorant; 2) to counsel the doubtful; 3) to comfort the sorrowful; 4) to correct sinners; 5) to forgive offenses; 6) to bear with those who trouble us; 7) to pray for the living and the dead. Among the corporal works of mercy must be included almsgiving (v.), understood in the strict sense, namely, the giving of material aid out of compassion to the needy to relieve their distress. The greater the indigence, the more stringent the obligation to help one’s neighbor in need; the greater one’s personal ability to relieve the neighbor’s suffering, the graver the moral duty to render assistance.
In extreme necessity and grave need the obligation is undoubtedly grave; in common necessity, the obligation seems light.
THE WORKS OF MERCY IN ART. – Classified in this way in Catholic catechisms into two distinct groups—seven spiritual works of mercy and seven corporal works of mercy—only the second group received wide pictorial representation, and the first six, which derive from Mt 25:34-36, appear in art several centuries before the seventh, “bury the dead,” which is first mentioned in G. Durand (Rationale divin. officii, VI, cap. 19) but does not appear in artistic representations until the fourteenth century.
The first six corporal works of mercy, in the characterization of the individual Gospel precepts, enter the iconographic repertoire of Christian art around the year 1000. Their earliest depiction is found on an Ottonian ivory in the British Museum: the cover of the Psalter known as the Melisende Psalter (1050), in which King David performs the six works of mercy in the order given by St. Matthew. A more complete illustration of the Gospel passage appears in Parma on the exterior decoration of the Baptistery, a work by B. Antelami (12th century), on the portal called the Redeemer’s. Here, for the first time, the six works of mercy form part of a grand moral allegory, as in the Gospel of St. Matthew they are related to the Last Judgment depicted in the lunette and architrave. Opposite the works of mercy is the Gospel parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Mt 20:1-18) interpreted in an Augustinian sense as the six ages of man, which in theological writings are often made to correspond to the six works of mercy. The moral instruction is completed by figures of the Virtues. The works of mercy are performed by a figure in tunic and mantle in whom some have wished to see Christ, but this cannot be sustained in the absence of traditional symbols. Each scene bears admonitory inscriptions. At other times, especially beyond the Alps, the works of mercy are simply related to the Last Judgment. Thus in the cathedral of Basel (St. Gall portal, 12th century), in the church of Petershausen in Constance, in a rose window of the cathedral of Freiburg, and in a stained-glass window in the south tower of the cathedral of Strasbourg, where Christ appears as a beggar and says: “For I was hungry and you gave me to eat…,” etc. Even after the Middle Ages the works of mercy retain their character as moral instruction indicated by their relation to the Last Judgment, as in a stained-glass window of the church of St. Florent in Niederhaslach in Alsace, in the fifteenth-century frescoes of the church of St. Florent in Bastia in Piedmont, and in the late sixteenth century, in the reliefs of the pulpit of the cathedral of Trier (where there is also the rare depiction of the spiritual works of mercy). The vitality of this teaching is such that the theme even penetrates the East, which had never before accepted it, and with an almost unchanged iconography the works of mercy appear with the Last Judgment in a late eighteenth-century fresco in the church of Panaghia Phaneromeni on the island of Salamis. When not bound to the scene of the Last Judgment, they are often represented as issuing from the figure of Mercy itself. Thus in the bronze baptismal font of the cathedral of Hildesheim, where Mercy, depicted as a queen upon a throne, gives bread to an old man and pours water for a young man, and around her are a sick man, a prisoner, a pilgrim, and a poor man being clothed. An inscription reads: “Dati veniam sceleri per ope insopem misereri,” and the prophet Isaiah, completing the ensemble, holds a scroll on which is written: “Frange esurienti panem tuum et egenos vagosque induc in domum tuam.” A similar scene also appears on a tapestry (16th century) in the Musée de Cluny. In the miniatures of the fourteenth-century parchment codex containing the Tuscan version of the Pater Noster by ser Zucchero Bencivenni (Florence, Bibl. naz., cod. II-VI-16), Mercy
A young girl watering a tree (f. 47), and nearby is the scene of St Martin’s alms-giving, which often in France (cathedrals of Amiens, Reims, Auxerre, Chartres) symbolises charity. In the Florentine codex only the scenes of “welcoming pilgrims” (f. 43), “visiting the sick” (f. 48), “visiting prisoners” (f. 49) and “clothing the naked” (f. 52) survive. At other times the works of mercy symbolise the spirit of charity that distinguishes the life of some illustrious figure who is then shown performing acts of piety. Thus St Elizabeth, Queen of Germany, appears in scenes of works of mercy in two stained-glass windows in the church of St Elizabeth at Marburg and on the lid of the rich reliquary of the same church (a precious Franco-German goldsmith work of 1220), in which, as in the windows, the works of mercy are interspersed with episodes from the saint’s life.
The most complete catechetical teaching, however, is on the portal of the church of Santa Maria della Salute at Viterbo, built in 1330 as the oratory of the hospice for fallen women. Here for the first time the seven spiritual works of mercy and the seven corporal works of mercy are represented, the seventh being “bury the dead” (two monks lowering a corpse into a grave while an acolyte with a censer observes the scene). This entered moral instruction, perhaps for contingent reasons, well before the fourteenth century, since it was practised above all by those institutions (confraternities, hospices, hospitals) for which charity is a way of life. The theme of the works of mercy, thus completed, also served to illustrate such works of assistance (an example is offered by the precious illuminated codex of the Hospital of Santo Spirito in Rome, the Liber Regulae Sancti Spiritus of the fourteenth century, where the works of mercy are represented with greater iconographic freedom because they relate to scenes of hospital life), and as such it appears down to very late periods, keeping its moral language intact even when stylistic forms vary according to the individual fantasy of artists.
The same meaning attaches therefore to the six panels with works of mercy (including the scene of “burying the dead”) painted by Lorenzo Monaco (Pinacoteca Vaticana, nos. 196–201 Calataio Porcella) and to the Byzantine-style fresco in the Duomo of Bergamo with one of the charitable “visits of the Brothers of Mercy” (a gentleman and two servants bringing bread and drink to naked poor); to the large frescoes by Domenico di Bartolo in the Pellegriniano of the Hospital of Santa Maria della Scala in Siena, with scenes of assistance to the sick and indigent, and the seven works of mercy painted in the oratory of San Leonardo (called San Francesco) at Assisi, seat of a confraternity; to the fifteenth-century frescoes in San Martino dei Buonomini in Florence, where the scene of St Martin’s almsgiving is linked to the works of mercy, and to the terracotta frieze by the della Robbia workshop at the Hospital of the Ceppo in Pistoia, which, with a highly renewed iconography, Baglioni composed in popular taste while still maintaining the ancient evangelical tradition of depicting Christ in the poor and the pilgrim. Finally we come to Caravaggio’s great canvas of the Seven Works of Mercy for the church of the Pio Monte della Misericordia in Naples, in which the freedom of pictorial language and iconography (the unique idea of symbolising “visit the prisoners” and “feed the hungry” by the scene of the daughter who fed her aged father in prison with milk from her breast) does not detract from the theme any of that charitable impulse that the evangelical passage has maintained through the centuries. – See pl. LXXI.