CROQUET AND PARADISE THE (UNOFFICIAL) HISTORY OF CROQUET: PART 13
by David Graham
There are numerous examples of doom paintings surviving in churches from the early Medieval period, but many of them have been overpainted as the political and religious climate changed, so that it is only after careful restoration that the significance played by croquet in the afterlife has been revealed. However, more surprising is the game’s relationship to its more popular rival, bowls, and the part they played in scenes depicting purgatory. It was bowls that was played by the common populous, whereas croquet was the preserve of the priesthood and nobility, so doom paintings generally placed croquet on the side of good, whilst bowls was seen as an instrument of the Devil and consequently playing it was banned on Sundays, a concept that was reinforced by each game’s respective rules of play. In croquet, hoops are run in a sequence that requires several changes in direction, and in the long version the direction is repeated in reverse, which was seen as a means to outwit the Devil, who can only travel in straight lines. This concept is common in many cultures in connection with evil spirits and is the reason why maze patterns were a popular feature in Medieval churches. In bowls the balls, or woods, are rolled between parallel lines, and once that has been done, they are rolled back again, and so on, ad infinitum. There are no changes in direction to deter the Devil and the repetitive nature of the game was seen as representing a state of limbo similar to purgatory, which is why a weighted bias was introduced to make the balls travel in a curved path. The most striking representation of this concept can be seen in the recently restored painting by the Italian Baroque artist Ludovico Carracci (1555‐1619): An Angel Frees the Souls of Purgatory (Fig. 1), in which the angel can be seen lifting a croquet player towards heaven, while less fortunate souls clutching bowls are left behind, one of which discards his bowls into the flames in a desperate attempts to grab the mallet. A similar scene is played out in the Wenhaston Doom painted c.1480 (Fig. 2). The scales are held by an angel and weighted on one side with bowls placed there by a devil, while the penitents on the left who have been elevated to heaven are shown clutching croquet mallets. The term pegging out, a euphemism for dying, is also borrowed from croquet to signify reaching heaven. The practice of overpainting was common throughout Europe during the Reformation in the 16th century. One notable example is The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch (1450‐1516), in which the left hand panel originally depicted Adam and Eve playing croquet in the Garden of Eden (Fig. 3), with God giving his blessing to their union, which has also been interpreted as his acting as referee in matches played in the afterlife. The changes made to scenes originally depicting croquet players ascending to heaven, while bowls players descend into hell, was most prevalent in England during The Commonwealth, as it was the Parliamentarians who played bowls, whilst the influence of the priesthood and croquet playing Royalists was in decline. The relationship between croquet and the afterlife is further reinforced in the layout of gardens representing paradise, notably the Charbagh gardens that originated in Persia and the Paradise gardens that appeared throughout the Mughal Empire from the 16th Century onwards. Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi, built in 1558, was the first garden tomb on the Indian subcontinent and is notable for incorporating the pattern of a croquet court in its layout, with water channels connecting six fountains representing the hoop positions, arranged geometrically around the tomb in the position of the centre peg (Fig. 4). The orientation of the garden follows the compass points representing the boundaries in a croquet game, while the fountain at hoop one is enclosed in a pavilion, with the flow of the water channels following the order of the hoops. There is an ingenious mechanism whereby the flow can be reversed after the sixth hoop. In common with similar parterre gardens found throughout Medieval Europe, Paradise gardens replicated the sequence of hoops run in a game of croquet in order to throw off the Devil. Our beliefs in relation to the afterlife have changed dramatically since Doom paintings were a common feature in churches, but it still might be prudent for non‐players to take up croquet in order to err on the safe side.
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