Medieval churches across Europe often displayed vivid “doom” paintings and stained glass, showing Christ enthroned at the Last Judgement, with angels weighing souls and demons dragging the damned into fiery pits. These images were not merely decorative: they were didactic, intended to terrify congregations into moral obedience. In the fifteenth century, English wall paintings and continental glass alike revelled in intricate depictions of devils, dragons, and the torments of hell.
By contrast, the early Reformation brought suspicion of such imagery. Reformers like John Wycliffe condemned stained glass as a distraction from true devotion, while Protestant theology increasingly emphasised the Word preached rather than images seen. The iconoclasm of the sixteenth century led to widespread destruction of medieval glass, especially those windows that depicted hell and judgement scenesThe Building Conservation Website. Where imagery survived, it was often stripped of lurid detail, focusing instead on biblical text or moral allegory rather than grotesque demons.
Protestant conceptions of hell also shifted. While medieval Catholic teaching stressed the sensory horrors of fire and torment, Reformation preachers often described hell more abstractly as eternal separation from God. The emphasis moved from visual spectacle to inward conviction, aligning with the Protestant distrust of “popish” imagery. Thus, depictions of hell in stained glass became vanishingly rare in post-Reformation England.
Against this backdrop, the Victorian window in Devon is extraordinary. It consciously revives medieval motifs — Christ in Majesty, flames of hell, devil and dragon consuming sinners — yet does so in the full colour brilliance of nineteenth-century stained glass. In an age when most ecclesiastical art leaned towards moral uplift or biblical narrative, this technicolour vision of damnation harks back to Gothic doom paintings, while standing almost alone among Victorian works. It is a rare moment where medieval terror and Victorian craftsmanship meet, startling in its survival and enthralling in its effect.
