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Chapter 11
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Monk, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Catholicism and Hypocrisy
The Folly of Pride
Morality
Appearance vs. Reality
Human Nature
Summary
Analysis
After Ambrosio’s capture, the entire city of Madrid is in shock, and everyone debates his guilt or innocence, though all the evidence points to him as Antonia’s murderer. Nobody can comprehend his rapid transformation from admired, pious monk to murderous villain in a matter of mere weeks. Ambrosio turns to religious texts for comfort, but they don’t speak to him as they once did.
Given the abundant evidence tying him to Antonia’s murder, it seems all but certain that Ambrosio will suffer the consequences for at least this one sin. Meanwhile, that his reputation has soured despite his efforts to preserve it makes Antonia’s death all the more tragic, senseless, and morally unjust.
Themes
Finally, the day arrives for Ambrosio and Matilda to face the Inquisition. Ambrosio is charged with murder, rape, and sorcery. Matilda is charged with sorcery. Matilda’s mirror, which she’d left in Antonio’s cell, is presented as proof. When the Grand Inquisitor places a cross on the mirror, a clap of thunder sounds, and the cross is destroyed. This proves Ambrosio’s crime of sorcery beyond a doubt, and some even wonder if his initial popularity among the people of Madrid was the product of witchcraft, too.
Ambrosio’s desperate attempts to preserve his reputation majorly backfire when the evidence confirming his crime of sorcery leads the public to question whether he was ever really pious at all.
Themes
The Inquisition subjects Ambrosio and Matilda to horrific torture in an effort to get them to confess. Matilda eventually confesses and tries to claim that Ambrosio is innocent and that she is solely to blame for all the crimes they’ve been charged with, but nobody buys her explanation. Matilda is sentenced to be burned at the stake. After this, the Inquisition resumes its torture of Ambrosio, dislocating his limbs, crushing his hands, and ripping nails from his flesh. But none of this hurts as much as his realization that his sins are too great for God’s mercy: he knows it’s too late for his soul to be saved.
Although Ambrosio suffers greatly as a result of the torture the Inquisition subjects him to, he finally realizes that his greatest source of anguish—his soul’s eternal suffering—is still to come. It seems that Ambrosio will finally get a taste of his own medicine, with God denying him the mercy that Ambrosio himself has repeatedly denied others.
Themes
The day before his second examination is set to begin, Ambrosio is shocked to find Matilda in his cell. She explains that she is free, having sold her soul to the devil in exchange for her liberty. She encourages Ambrosio to do the same. Ambrosio refuses, insisting that God will forgive him. Matilda throws a book at Ambrosio and tells him to read the first four lines of its seventh page backward, and he’ll see a spirit he has already met. Then she disappears in a cloud of fire.
Ambrosio’s refusal to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for his freedom suggests that, deep down, he still holds out hope that God will grant him the mercy that he has repeatedly denied others. Still, given Ambrosio’s track record of compromising his morals to go through with whatever scheme Matilda has presented him with, it’s more likely than not that he will renege on his one remaining moral and sell his soul to the devil after all.
Themes
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Later, the guards come to escort Ambrosio to his second examination. This time, he confesses to his sins in their entirety, though he contends that he never personally made any deal with the devil. The Inquisition sentences Ambrosio to be burned at the stake, then they escort him back to his cell to await his punishment.
Ambrosio confesses to his sins, seemingly to atone for his sins in God’s eyes even as he no longer has the opportunity to receive mercy on Earth. In other words, he finally has his moral priorities straight—or so it seems.
Themes
Alone in his cell, Ambrosio opens the book Matilda left him. He reads the lines she pointed out, and a demon appears before him. Ambrosio pleads with the demon to save him, and the demon responds that Ambrosio must pay with his soul. Ambrosio considers this a moment and then decides against it. But as the hour of his execution approaches, he changes his mind and summons the devil once more. Lucifer appears before him, and this time Ambrosio agrees to give him his soul, signing the contract just as the jailor arrives to escort him to the stake.
Despite Ambrosio’s seeming attempt to atone for his sins, he now backtracks. To avoid his punishment of being burned at the stake, he finally stoops to the most depraved act of them all (according to his own religious doctrine, at least): agreeing to damn his soul for all eternity in order to avoid facing the Earthly consequences of his mortal sins.
Themes
Lucifer sweeps Ambrosio up and carries him through the sky, dropping him atop the tallest mountain in Sierra Morena. Confused at why he’s been brought here, Ambrosio demands that Lucifer deliver him to Matilda. Lucifer laughs at Ambrosio’s confusion and reveals some disturbing truths to Ambrosio. The two innocent women he killed—Antonia and Elvira—were in fact his sister and mother. And it was Lucifer who had sent Matilda—a demon disguised as a mortal woman—Ambrosio’s way in the first place, in order to show how easily the devil can corrupt even a person as supposedly pious as Ambrosio. Finally, Lucifer reveals that, had Ambrosio resisted temptation just a minute longer, he would have been spared: the jailor had been about to announce Ambrosio’s pardon. But none of that matters now, Lucifer explains, because now Ambrosio’s soul belongs to him.
At long last, Matilda’s hidden motives for helping Ambrosio this entire time are revealed: she was a demon sent by Lucifer to prove how easily the devil can lead any mortal astray, even a mortal as pious and devout as Ambrosio once appeared to be. This reinforces the book’s broader point about human nature’s tendency to undermine abstract moral frameworks. Lucifer’s next shocking admission that Elvira is Ambrosio’s mother and Antonia is Ambrosio’s sister, in addition to resolving the question of Ambrosio’s mysterious origins, adds an extra layer of depravity to Ambrosio’s sin of murder: not only has he murdered two innocent women, but he has also committed incest. Lucifer’s final admission—that Ambrosio’s life would have been spared had he just waited a moment longer before selling his soul to the devil—drives home the book’s broader point about the folly of pride. In his vain efforts to avoid the mutilation of his flesh, he has doomed himself to a far worse fate: eternal damnation.
Themes
With that, Lucifer grabs Ambrosio, lifts him high into the air and then drops him. Ambrosio falls back toward earth, hitting a sharp rock before landing along the shore of a river. Unable to move his mangled body, he lies in agony as insects crawl over his flesh and drink his blood. Later, eagles arrive and peck out his eyes. He remains alive for six days. After he dies, his corpse is swept into the river.
Ambrosio’s agonizing death and the eternal damnation his soul is doomed to suffer afterward restores some sense of balance to a work that repeatedly challenges conventional understandings of moral justice.
Themes
