• This painting could be called By Fire and Sword.

• Ancient ailments and wounds often were treated by removal with a knife or searing with fire or a hot iron.

• Hippocrates said, “Those diseases which medicines do not cure, iron cures; those which iron cannot cure, fire cures.”

• Later, Roman poets Ovid, Propertius, and others, gave the phrase fire and sword the connotation of destroying one’s enemy by use of these weapons.

The light of truth is presented by the artist in the form of a sword. This metaphorical weapon cuts through the darkness of ignorance. It was indeed the gloom of unenlightened existence and arbitrariness that ruled in Medieval Europe, when the fires were set to devour the works of educators, scientists, and humanists.

Today, in our “enlightened age,” roll playing action games that put the player into the game creator’s vision of Medieval times are very popular. Most rely on the weapons of fire and sword.