Here is another work by Bernardo Daddi, this one very unusual. It might help to know at the outset that it was intended to bring comfort to prisoners awaiting execution. On the recto side are the traditional images of the Virgin Mary, of Saint John the Evangelist and the Redeemer. So far so good -- but they are accompanied, at bottom, by a fleshless corpse dressed in the black tunic of execution.
On the verso side, it only gets worse. Or at least more strange. Three saints are shown immediately after their martyrdom by beheading. They still kneel with hands clasped in prayer. From the left are St. James the Greater, St. Paul, and St. John the Baptist. At the bottom are two Dominicans, St. Peter Martyr and St. Thomas Aquinas.
You know, there is something quite beautiful about this cross. And yet it must be admitted, on the basis of this evidence, that Catholicism has some very bizarre aspects!
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