The Ten Virgins
The Ten Virgins is a Parable told by Jesus in the New Testament (Matthew 25:1-13).
The parable
In the parable, ten virgins are given the honour of attending on the bridegroom at a wedding, each carrying a lamp. Five are wise and bring spare oil. Five are foolish and do not. The bridegroom is late in coming; the foolish virgins ask the wise ones for spare oil, but they refuse, saying that they might then not have enough. While the foolish virgins are away buying more oil, the bridegroom arrives, welcoming the wise virgins and excluding the foolish ones who were not there to greet him.
It was one of the most popular parables in the Middle Ages with ennormous influence on Gothic art, sculpture and the architecture of German and French cathedrals.
The virgins in sculptures
There are sculptures of the ten virgins in:
- France
- in Amiens, Auxerre, Bourges, Laon, at Notre Dame de Paris, Notre-Dame de Reims, in Sens and at Notre-Dame de Strasbourg
- Germany
- in Erfurt, Freiburg, Lübeck and at the Cathedral of Magdeburg
- Switzerland
- in Basel
The virgins in paintings
- The ten virgins also occur in paintings in Northern Europe, as in churches on the Swedish Isle of Gotland.
- In the 19th Century the religious movement of artists of the Nazarene Art took up this theme.
The parable in worship and music
The parable is the gospel reading for the 27th Sunday after Trinity in the traditional Lutheran lectionary. In the Revised Common Lectionary, the parable is read in Proper 27 (32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time).
Its message was formed into a Chorale by Philipp Nicolai, which Johann Sebastian Bach used for his cantata of the same name (BWV 140): Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme.
See also
