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THE GROTESQUE IN CHURCH ART.
Only 400 copies of this Book published
for Sale, and this is No. 315
[Illustration: THE STORY OF JONAH, RIPON.]
The Grotesque
in Church Art
By T. Tindall Wildridge
[Illustration]
LONDON:
WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO., 5, FARRINGDON AVENUE, E.C.
1899.
Preface.
The designs of which this book treats have vast fields outside the English
church works to which it has been thought good to limit it. Books and
buildings undoubtedly mutually interchanged some forms of their ornaments,
yet the temple was the earlier repository of man's ideas expressed in art,
and the proper home of the religious symbolism which forms so large a
proportion of my subject. In view also of the ground I have ventured to
hint may be taken up as to the derivation, of a larger number than is
generally supposed, of church designs from heathen prototypes by the hands
of apprenticed masons, it is fitting that the evidences should be from
their chisels. The only exceptions are a few wall-paintings, which serve
to point a difference in style and origin.
In every case the examples are from churches in our own land. The
conclusions do not nearly approach a complete study of the questions, the
research to the present, great as it is, chiefly shewing how much has yet
to be learned in order to accurately compare the extant with the
long-forgotten. The endeavour has been to present sufficient to enable
general inferences to be drawn in the right direction.
Of the numerous works consulted in the course of this essay, the most
useful has been "Choir Stalls and their Carvings," sketched by Miss Emma
Phipson. While tendering my acknowledgments for much assistance obtained
from that lady's book, I would add that the 'second series' suggested
cannot but equal the first as a service to the cause of comparative
mythology and folk-lore.
This place may be taken to dispose of two kinds of grotesques in church
art which belong to my title, though not to my intention.
The memorial erections put into so many churches after the middle of the
sixteenth century are to be placed in the same category as the less often
ludicrous effigies of earlier times, and may be dismissed as "ugly
monumental vanities, miscalled sculpture." The grotesqueness of some of
these sepulchral excrescences may in future centuries be still more
apparent, though to many even time cannot supply interest. Not all are
like the imposing monument to a doctor in Southwark Cathedral, on which,
by the way, the epitaph is mainly devoted to laudation of his _pills_.
Yet, though the grotesque is not entirely wanting in even these monuments,
it is chiefly through errors of taste. The worst of them are more pathetic
than anything else. The grotesque proper implies a proportion of levity,
whereas the earnestness evinced by these effigies are more in keeping with
the solemnity of the church's purpose than the infinitely more artistic
and unobtrusive ornament of the fabric. The other class of grotesque is
the modern imitation of mediaeval carving, with original design. Luckily,
it is somewhat rare to find the spirit of the old sculptors animating a
modern chisel. One of the best series of modern antiques of this kind is a
set of gargoyles at St. Nicholas's, Abingdon, executed about 1881, of
which I think it worth while to append a warning sample.
These two classes are left out of account in the following pages.
[Illustration: MODERN GARGOYLE, ABINGDON, 1881.]
Contents.
PAGE
PREFACE v
INTRODUCTION 1
DEFINITIONS OF THE GROTESQUE 5
THE CARVERS 9
THE ARTISTIC QUALITIES OF CHURCH GROTESQUES 19
GOTHIC ORNAMENT NOT DIDACTIC 24
INGRAINED PAGANISM 27
MYTHIC ORIGIN 34
HELL'S MOUTH 60
SATANIC REPRESENTATIONS 64
THE DEVIL AND THE VICES 78
ALE AND THE ALEWIFE 99
SATIRES WITHOUT SATAN 106
SCRIPTURAL ILLUSTRATIONS 112
MASKS AND FACES 121
THE DOMESTIC AND POPULAR 134
THE PIG AND OTHER ANIMAL MUSICIANS 152
COMPOUND FORMS 157
NONDESCRIPTS 169
REBUSES 173
TRINITIES 175
THE FOX IN CHURCH ART 184
SITUATIONS OF GROTESQUE ORNAMENT IN CHURCH ART 213
INDEX 219
[Illustration: A ROOF SUPPORTER, EWELME, OXON.]
The Grotesque in Church Art.
Introduction.
[Illustration: GORGONIC MASK, EWELME.]
The more lofty the earlier manifestations of man's intellect, the more
complete and immediate seems to have been their advancement. That is to
say, where the products of genius depend mainly upon the recognition of
great principles and deliberate adherence to them, they are more
satisfying than when success depends upon dexterous manipulation of
material. What I have in view in this respect in connection with
architecture has its co-relative in language. The subtlety and poetic
force of Ayran roots shew a refined application of principle--that of
imagery--in far advance of the languages rising from them. The successive
growths of the detail of language, for use or ornament,--and the useful of
one age would seem to become the ornamental of another--necessarily often
forsake the high purity of the primeval standard, and give rise, not only
to the commonplace, but, by misconception or wantonness, to perversion of
taste. So in architecture. Temples were noble before their ornaments. The
grotesque is the slang of architecture. Nowhere so much as in Gothic
architecture has the grotesque been fostered and developed, for, except
for a blind adherence to ancient designs, due to something like gild
continuity, the whole detail was introduced apropos of nothing. The
assisting circumstance would appear to have been the indifference of the
architects to the precise significance of the detail ornaments of their
buildings. Gothic, or in fact any architecture admitting ornament, calls
for crisp sub-regular projections, which shall, by their prominence and
broken surface, attract the eye, but by the vagueness of their general
form attract it so slightly as to lose individuality in a general view.
These encrusting ornaments, by their opposition to the light of what the
carvers call a "busy" surface, increase and accentuate rather than detract
from the effect of the sweep of arches or dying vistas of recurring
pillars. They afford a sort of punctuation, or measurers of the rhythm of
the composition. Led from point to point, the eye gathers an impression of
rich elaboration that does not interfere with its appreciation of the
orderliness of the main design.
These objects gained, the architects did not, apparently, enquire what the
lesser minds, who carved the boss or dripstone, considered appropriate
ornament. Hence we have a thousand fancies, often beautifully worked out,
but often utterly incongruous with the intent of the edifice they are
intended to adorn, and unworthy of the architecture of which they are a
part.
As in language the grotesque is sometimes produced by inadvertency and
misconception, so in ornament not all the grotesque is of set purpose, and
here the consideration of the less development of the less idea has its
chief example. As original meaning became lost, the real merit of
earnestness decreased, and the grotesque became an art.
Moreover, the execution of Gothic ornament is excellent in proportion to
its artistic easiness. Thus the foliate and florate designs are better
carved than the animal forms, and both better than the human. With the
exception of little else besides the Angel Choir at Lincoln, and portions
of the Percy Shrine at Beverley, there is nothing in Gothic representation
of sentient form really worthy of the perfect conceptions of architecture
afforded by scores of English churches. It may, of course, be considered
that anything but conventional form is out of place as architectural
ornament; on the other hand, it must not be ignored that conventionality
is a growth. It is only to be expected, therefore, that where the artist
found character beyond his reach he fell readily into caricature, though
it is a matter for surprise to find such a high standard of ability in
that, and in the carved work generally. We find no instances of carving so
low in absolute merit as are the best of the wall-paintings of the same
periods.
The sources from which the artists obtained their material are as wide as
the air. A chief aim of this volume is to indicate those sources, and this
is done in some cases rather minutely, though not in any exhaustively. The
point of view from which the subject is surveyed is that the original
detail of the temples entirely consisted of symbols of worship and
attributes, founded chiefly upon astronomical phenomena: that owing to the
gild organization of the masons, the same forms were mechanically
perpetuated long after the worship of the heavenly bodies had given way to
Christianity, often with the thinnest veil of Christian symbolism thrown
over them. To this material, descended from remote antiquity, came
gradually to be added a multitude of designs from nature and from fancy.
[Illustration: HARPY, EXETER.]
[Illustration: RAGE AND TERROR, RIPON.]
Definitions of the Grotesque.
The term "Grotesque," which conveys to us an idea of humourous distortion
or exaggeration, is simply _grotto-esque_, being literally the style of
art found in the grottos or baths of the ancients. The term rose towards
the end of the fifteenth century, when exhumation brought to light the
fantastic decorations of the more private apartments of the licentious
Romans. The use at that period of a similar style for not unsimilar
purposes gave the word common currency, and it has spread to everything
which, combined with wit or not, provokes a smile by a real or pretended
violation of the laws of Nature and Beauty. In its later, and not in its
original, meaning is the word applied to the extraordinary productions of
church art. We may usefully inquire as to the causes of those remarkable
characteristics of Gothic art which have caused the word Grotesque to
fittingly describe so much of its detail.
The joke has a different meaning for every age. The capacity for
simultaneously recognizing likeness and contrast between things the most
incongruous and wide-sundered, which is at the root of our appreciation of
wit, humour, or the grotesque, is a quality of slow growth among nations.
No doubt early man enjoyed his laugh, but it was a different thing from
the laughter of our day. Many races have left no suspicion of their ever
having smiled; even where there are ample pictorial remains, humour is
generally unrepresented. The Assyrians have left us the smallest possible
grounds for crediting them with its possession. Instances have been
adduced of Egyptian humour, but some are doubtful, and in any case the
proportion of fun per acre of picture is infinitesimally small. The
Greeks, perhaps, came the nearest to what we consider the comic, but with
both Greek and Roman the humour has something of bitterness and sterility;
even in what was professedly comic we cannot always see any real fun.
Where it strikes out unexpectedly in brief flashes it is with a cold light
that leaves no impression of warmth behind. The mechanical character of
their languages, with a multitude of fixed formulae, is perhaps an index to
their mental development. The subtleties of wit ran in the direction of
gratifying established tastes and prejudices by satirical references, but
rarely condescending to amuse for mere humour's sake. Where is found the
nearest approach to merriness is in what now-a-days we regard as the least
interesting and meritorious grade of humour, the formal parody. The Greeks
had, outside their fun, let it be noted, something better than jococity,
and that was joyousness. The later Romans became humourous in a low way
which has had a permanent influence upon literature and art.
Sense of humour grew with the centuries, and by the time that the Gothic
style of architecture arose, appreciation of the ludicrous-in-general
(_i.e._ that which is without special reference to an established phase of
thought) is traceable as a characteristic of, at least, the Teuton
nations. It must be admitted that the popular verbal fun of the middle
ages is not always easy to grasp, but it cannot be denied that where
understood, or where its outlet is found in the graphic or glyphic arts,
there is allied to the innocent coarseness and unscrupulousness, a
richness of conceit, a wealth of humour, and a delicate and accurate sense
of the laughable far beyond Greek wit or Roman jocularity.
It is to the embodiments of the spirit of humour as found in our mediaeval
churches that our present study is directed.
It may be as well to first say a little upon those comicalities which may
be styled 'grotesques by misadventure.' This is a branch of the subject to
be approached with some diffidence, for it is in many cases difficult to
discriminate between that which was intended to be grotesque, and that
which was executed with serious or often devout feelings, but for one of
several causes often presenting to us an irresistibly comic effect.
The causes may be five. First, the varying mechanical and constructive
incompetency of the artists to embody their ideas. Second, the copying of
an earlier work with executive ability, with strong perception of its
unintentional and latent humour, but without respect to, or without
knowledge of, its serious meaning. Third, the use of symbolic
representation, in which the greater the skill, often the greater the
ludicrous effect. Fourth, the change of fashion, manners, and customs.
Fifth, a bias of mind which impelled to whimsical treatment.
Consideration of the causes thus roughly analysed will explain away a
large proportion of the irreverence of the irreverent paintings and
carvings which excite such surprise, and sometimes disgust, in the minds
of many modern observers of ecclesiological detail.
It will be seen that the placing of carvings in any one of these five
classes, or in the category of intentional grotesques, must, in many
cases, be a mere matter of opinion. For the present purpose it will not be
necessary to separate them, except so far as the plan of the work does it
automatically. Many ecclesiastical and other seals afford familiar
instances of the 'comic without intention,' parallel to what is said above
as to carvings.
The Carvers.
[Illustration: LINCOLN, _14th cent._]
Seemingly probability and evidence go hand in hand to shew that a great
bulk of the church mason work of this country was the work of foreigners.
Saxon churches were probably first built by Roman workmen, whose erections
would teach sufficient to enable Saxons to afterward build for themselves.
Imported talent, however, is likely to have been constantly employed.
Edward the Confessor brought back with him from France new French designs
for the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey, and doubtless he brought French
masons also. Anglo-Norman is strongly Byzantine in character, and though
the channels through which it passed may be various, there is little doubt
that its origin was the great Empire of the East. Again, the great
workshop of Europe, where Eastern ideas were gathered together and
digested, and which supplied cathedrals and cathedral builders at command,
was Flanders; and there is little doubt that during some five centuries
after the Norman Conquest, Flemings were employed, in a greater or less
degree, on English work. Italians were largely employed. The Angel Choir
of Lincoln is one distinct witness to that. The workmen who executed the
finely-carved woodwork of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, King's College,
Cambridge, and Westminster Abbey, in the sixteenth century, were chiefly
Italians, under the superintendence of Torregiano, a Florentine artist. He
was a fellow-pupil of Michael Angelo, and is best known by the dastardly
blow he dealt him with a mallet, disfiguring him for life. The resentment
of Lorenzo de Medici at this caused Torregiano to leave Florence. He came
to England in 1503.
The architect, however, of King Henry VII.'s Chapel was Bishop Alcock, an
Englishman, born at Hull, the already existing Grammar School of which
place he endowed, and, perhaps, rebuilt. Many other architects of English
buildings were Englishmen, probably the majority, and doubtless a large
proportion of the workmen also,[1] but it would be idle to deny that
imported art speaks loudly from work of all the styles.
The carved detail may be relied upon to tell us something, and it speaks
of an original reliance upon the East, which was never outgrown. The
carvings found in England are not marked by anything at all approaching a
national spirit, even in the limited degree that was possible. Except for
a few carvings of armorial designs, and still fewer with slight local
reference, there are none in wood or stone which would not be equally in
place in any Romance country in Europe. The carvings, also, in the
Continental churches present familiar aspects to the student of English
ornament.
But if we have yet to wait some fortunate discovery of rolls of workmen's
names, with their rate of wages, we are not without such interesting
information concerning the old carvers as is contained in portraits they
have left of themselves. Just as authors sometimes recognize how
satisfactory it is to have their "effigies" done at the fronts of their
books, so have the carvers of old sometimes attached to their works
portraits of themselves or their fellows, in their habits as they lived,
in their attitudes as they laboured.
[Illustration: AN INDUSTRIOUS CARVER, LYNN.]
Our first carver hails from Lincolnshire. In 1852, when the Church of St.
Nicholas, Lynn, was restored, the misericordes were taken out and not
replaced, but passed as articles of commerce eventually to the
Architectural Museum, Tufton Street, London. Among these is a view of a
carver's studio, shewing the industrious master seated, tapping carefully
away at a design upon the bench before him. There are three apprentices in
the background working at benches; there are at the back some incised
panels, and a piece of open screen-work. Perhaps we may suppose the
weather to be cold, for the carver has on an exceedingly comfortable cloak
or surcoat. At his feet reposes his dog.
[Illustration: CARVER'S INITIALS, ST. NICHOLAS'S, LYNN.]
There is an interesting peculiarity about these Lynn carvings; the sides
of the misericordes are designs in the fashion of monograms, or rebuses.
The sides supporting the carver are his initials, pierced with his carving
tools, a saw and a chisel. The difficulty is the same in all of the set;
the meaning of the monograms is not to be lightly determined. In this case
it may be U.V., or perhaps U is twice repeated.
[Illustration: COMMUNICATING A STRIKING IDEA, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]
The next carvers belong to the following century. Here also we see the
principal figures in the midst of work. In this case, however, there has
arrived an interruption. Either one of the workers is about to commit
mock assault and battery upon another with a mallet, or a brilliant idea
for a grotesque has just struck him, and he hastens to impart it. From the
expression of the faces, and the attitudes for which two other workmen
have stood as models, at the sides, the latter may be the more likely. It
is not impossible that the carver of the fine set of sixty-eight
misericordes in Beverley Minster had in mind the incident of the blow
given to Michael Angelo, and it would be interesting to know if any of
Torregiano's Italians worked at Beverley. This aproned, noisy, jocular
crew are very different from the dignified artist we have just left, but
doubtless they turned out good work of the humorous class.
The two "sidesmen" are occupied in the two ways of shewing intelligence
and contempt known as "taking a sight," etc.
[Illustration: MUTUAL CONTEMPT, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]
The next carver is a figure at Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. This is
locally known as the Wellingborough shoemaker, but nearly all local
designations of such things are wrong, and this is no exception. Elsewhere
in speaking of this sedate figure, I have conjectured he may be cutting
something out of leather, and not making shoes. However, I have since
arrived at Miss Phipson's conclusion: the figure can only be that of a
carver. He is fashioning not a leather rosette, but a Tudor rose in oak,
to be afterwards pinned with an oak pin in some spandrel. He is rather a
reserved-looking individual, but a master of his craft, if we may suppose
he has "turned out" the two eagles at his right and left.
[Illustration: A PIECE OF FINE WORK, WELLINGBOROUGH.]
No doubt there were several ways of building churches, or supplying them
with their art decorations. Some masons would be attached to a cathedral,
and be lent or sent here and there by arrangement. Others would be ever
wandering, seeking church work. Others might come from abroad for
particular work, and return with the harvest of English money when the
work was done. For special objects there were depots. It is an
acknowledged fact that the black basalt fonts of Norman times were
imported from Flanders. There are occasionally met other things of this
material with the same class of design, evidently from the same source,
such as the sculptured coffin-lid at Bridlington Priory, given on a
following page. I have not seen it noted, but I think it will be
established that "brasses," so much alike all over the country, were
mostly ready-made articles also from Flanders. From the stereotyped
conventionality of the altar-tomb effigies, they also may be judged to be
the productions of workshops doing little but this work, and probably
foreign.
What is required to determine the general facts on these points is a
return from various fabric accounts. We shall probably find both English
and foreign carvers. There is little or no doubt that the carvers of our
grotesques were members of the mysterious society which has developed into
the modern body of Freemasons. It would be interesting--if it were not so
apparently impossible--to trace in the records of early Freemasonry, not
only the names and nationalities of the masons and carvers, but the
details of that fine organization which enabled them to develope ideas and
improvements simultaneously throughout Europe; and which would tell us,
moreover, something of the master minds which conceived and directed the
changes of style. But the masonic history of our carvers is much enveloped
in error to the outside world. Thus we are told that in the minority of
Henry VI. the masons were suppressed by statute, but that on his assuming
the control of affairs he repealed the Act, and himself became a mason;
moreover, we are told he wrote out "Certayne Questyons with Awnsweres to
the same concerning the Mystery of Maconrye" which was afterwards "copyed
by me Johan Leylande Antiquarius," at the command of Henry VIII.; the MS.
being gravely stated to be in the Bodleian Library. No such MS. exists at
the Bodleian Library. If it did, its diction and spelling (which is all on
pretended record in certain books probably repudiated by the masonic body
proper) would instantly condemn it as a forgery. Certainly an Act was
passed, 3 Henry VI., which is in itself a historical monument to the
importance of Freemasonry. It is a brief enactment that the yearly
meetings of the masons, being contrary to the Statute of Labourers (of 25
Edward III., 1351) fixing the rates of labour, which the masons varied and
apparently increased, were no longer to be held; offenders to be judged
guilty of felony. The Commons did not quite know what to style the
meetings, using in this short Act the following terms for them: Chapters,
Assemblies, Congregations, and Confederacies.
But important though this proves the masons to have been, there is no
account of the statute being repealed until the 5 Elizabeth, when another
took its place equally intolerant to the spirit of Freemasonry, and
Freemasonry really only became legal by the Act of 6 George IV.
But the prohibition of 1424 was not abolition. If the masons were debarred
from being allowed to exercise their advanced notions of remuneration, or
to have any legal recognition whatever, it scarcely seems to have affected
their action. For if they had refrained from exercising their freedom, and
submitted to being put down by statute, it is probable we should have met
them in the form of more ordinary gilds as instituted by other craftsmen.
But we do not meet them thus, and the inference is that they went on in
their own way, at their own time, and at their own price. It may be
presumed that the more or less migratory habits of the masons made the Act
impossible to be rigidly enforced.
Coming down towards the end of Gothic times, we find, at any rate, there
was one place where images might be ordered. In the Stanford
churchwardens' accounts for 1556 there occur the following entries:--
"It. In expences to Abyndon to speke for ymages vijd.
It. for iij ymages, the Rode, Mare, and John xxijs. iiijd."
It will have been noticed that the portraits of the carvers are Late. It
is a great merit, on antiquarian grounds, that Gothic work, prior to the
revival in art, was too much unconscious to admit anything so
self-personal as a thought of the workers themselves, though frequently
their 'marks' are unobtrusively set upon their works. By the sixteenth
century, the sculptor's art developed with the rest of mental effort, and
the artists drank fresh draughts from the springs coming by way of Rome,
springs whose waters had been concerned in the existence of nearly all the
art that had been in Europe for ten centuries.
[Illustration: DOG AND BONE, BRECHIN.]
The Artistic Quality of Church Grotesques.
The grotesque has been pronounced a false taste, and not desirable to be
perpetuated. Reflection upon the causes and meanings of Gothic grotesque
will shew that perpetuation is to be regretted for other than artistic
reasons. If the taste be false yet the work is valuable on historic
grounds, for what it teaches of its own time and much more for what it
hints of earlier periods of which there is meagre record anywhere.
Therefore it would be well not to confuse the student of the future with
our clever variations of imperfectly understood ideas. Practically the
grotesque and emblematic period ended at the Reformation; and it was well.
But while leaving the falseness of the taste for grotesques an open
question, there is something to be said for them without straining fact.
For it is certain that there is underlying Gothic grotesque ornament a
unique and, if not understood, an uncopiable beauty, be the subject never
so ugly. The fascinating element appear to be, first, the completeness of
the genius which was exercised upon it. It not only conveys the
travestying idea, but also sufficiently conveys the original thought
travestied.
What is it at which we laugh? It shall be a figure which is of a kind
generally dignified, now with no dignity; generally to be respected, but
now commanding no respect; capable of being feared, but now inspiring no
fear; usually lovable, but now provoking no love. It shall be a figure of
which the preconceived idea was either worthy or dreadful--which suddenly
we have presented to us shorn of its superior attributes. Ideals are
unconsciously enshrined in the mind, and when images proclaiming
themselves the same ideals appear in sharp degraded contrast--we laugh.
Thus we affirm the correctness of the original judgments both as to the
great and the contemptible imitating it, for laughter is the effect of
appreciation of incongruity. Custom overrides nearly all, and blunts
contrast of ideas, yet wit, darting here and there among men, ever finds
fresh contrasts and fresh laughter.
[Illustration: DOG AND BONE, CHRISTCHURCH, HAMPSHIRE.]
Further counts for something the excellence of the artistic management,
which in the treatment of the most unpromising subjects filled the
composition with beautiful lines. It was left to Hogarth's genius to
insist on the reality of "the line of beauty" as governing all loveliness,
and he suggests that a perceptive recognition of this existed on the part
of the classic sculptors. This applies to their work in general, but he
also mentions their frequent addition of some curved object connected
with the subject, as though it were a kind of key to the artistic
composition. Whether consciously or not, the ancients used many such
adjunctive curved lines, and Hogarth's conclusions cannot be styled
fanciful. The helmet, plume, and serpent-edged aegis of Minerva, the
double-bowed bolt and serpents of Jupiter, the ornaments of the trident,
the aplustre and the twisted rope of Neptune, the bow and serpent of
Apollo, the plume of Mars, the caduceus of Mercury, the ship-prow of
Saturn, the gubernum or rudder of Venus, the drinking horn of Pan,
together with many another form to be observed in particular works of the
ancients, is each a definite and perfect example of the faultless line.
Now, to repeat, many--an infinite number--of the ornaments of Gothic
architecture, and not less the grotesque than any other description, are
likewise composed of the most beautiful lines conceivable, either
entirely, or combined with lines of abrupt and ungraceful turn that seem
to deliberately provoke one's artistic protest; and yet the whole
composition shall, by its curious mixture of beauty and bizarre, its
contrast of elegance with awkwardness, leave a real and unique sense of
pleasure in the mind. Doubtless the root of this pleasure is the
gratification of the mind at having secretly detected itself responding to
the call of art to exercise itself in appreciative discrimination. This
may be unconsciously done; and in a great measure the qualities which give
the pleasure would be bestowed upon the work in similar happy
unconsciousness of the exact why and wherefore. Often, as in the ancient
statues, a small curved form is introduced as an appendage to a mediaeval
grotesque.
[Illustration: HAWKS OR EAGLES? WELLINGBOROUGH, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE.]
Thus we see that there are combinations of two kinds of contrast which
make Gothic grotesques agreeable, the artistic contrasts among the mere
lines of the carvings, and the significatory contrasts evolved by the
meanings of the carvings.
As far back as the twelfth century, a critic of church grotesques
recognized their combination of contrasts. This was St. Bernard of
Clairvaux, who, speaking of the ecclesiastical decoration of his time,
paid the grotesques of church art the exact tribute they so often merit;
probably the greater portion of what he saw has given place to succeeding
carvings, though of precisely the same characteristics. He calls them "a
wonderful sort of hideous beauty and beautiful deformity." He, moreover,
put a question, many times since repeated by hundreds who never heard of
him, asking the use of placing ridiculous monstrosities in the cloisters
before the eyes of the brethren when occupied with their studies.
It is not possible to explain the "use" of perpetuating the barbarous
symbols of a long-forgotten past; but it will be interesting to shew that
there were actual causes accounting for their continued existence and
their continued production, unknown ages after their own epoch.
Gothic Ornaments not Didactic.
Reflection will not lead us to believe carvings to have been placed in
churches with direct intent to teach or preach. Many writers have
coincided in producing a general opinion that the churches, as containing
these carvings, were practically the picture (or sculpture) galleries and
illustrated papers for the illiterate of the past. This supposition will
not bear examination. It would mean that in the days when humble men
rarely travelled from home, and then mostly by compulsion, to fight for
lord or king, or against him, the inhabitant of a village or town had for
the (say) forty years sojourn in his spot of Merrie England, a small
collection of composite animals, monsters, mermaids, impossible flowers,
etc.--with perhaps one doubtful domestic scene of a lady breaking a vessel
over the head of a gentleman who is inquisitive as to boots--with which to
improve his mind. Sometimes his church would contain not half-a-dozen
forms, and mostly not one he could understand or cared to interpret.
Misericordes, the secondary seats or shelves allowed as a relaxation
during the ancient long standing services, are invariably carved, and
episode is more likely to be found there than anywhere else in the church.
Hence, misericordes have been specially selected for this erroneous
consideration of ornament to be the story-book of the Middle Ages. This is
unfortunate for the theory, for they were placed only in churches having
connection with a monastic or collegiate establishment. They are in the
chancels, where the feet of laymen rarely trod, and, moreover, there would
be few hours out of the twenty-four when the stalls would not be occupied
by the performers of the daily offices or celebrations.
The fact appears to be that the carvings were the outcome of causes far
different from an intention to produce genre pictures. It is patent that
anything which kept within its proper mechanical and architectural
outline, was admitted. What was offered depended upon a multitude of
considerations, but chiefly upon the traditions of mason-craft. The Rev.
Charles Boutell has an apt description touching upon the origin of the
carvings: calling them "chronicles," he says they were "written by men who
were altogether unconscious of being chroniclers at all.... They worked
under the impulse of motives altogether devoid of the historical element.
They were influenced by the traditions of their art, by their own
feelings, and were directed by their own knowledge, experience, and
observation, and also by the associations of their every-day lives." This
appears to explain in general terms the sources of iconography. In brief,
the sculptor had a stock-in-trade of designs, which he varied or
supplemented, according to his ability and originality.
That the stock-in-trade, or traditions of the art, handed down from
master to apprentice, generation after generation, persistently retained
an immense amount of intellectualia thus derived from a remote antiquity,
is but an item of this subject, but the most important of which this work
has cognizance.
[Illustration: SEA-HORSE DRAGONZED, LINCOLN, _14th cent._]
Ingrained Paganism.
We at this day may be excused for not participating in the good St.
Bernard's dislike to the "hideous beauties" of the grotesque, and for not
deploring, as he does, the money expended on their production. For many of
them are the embodiments of ideas which the masons had perpetuated from a
period centuries before his time, and which could in no other way have
been handed down to us. There are many reasons why books were unlikely
media for early times; for later, the serious import of the origin of the
designs would be likely to be doubted; and for the most part the special
function of the designs has been the adornment of edifices of religion.
They were, in fact, religious symbols which in various ages of the world
have been used with varying degrees of purity. One of the Rabbis,
Maimonides, has an instructive passage on the rise of symbolic images.
Speaking of men's first falling away from a presumed early pure religion
he says:--"They began to build temples to the stars, ... and this was the
root of idolatry ... and the false prophet showed them the image that he
had feigned out of his own heart, and said it was the image of that star
which was made known to him by prophecy; and they began after this manner
to make images in temples and under trees ... and this thing was spread
throughout the world--to serve images with services different one from
another and to sacrifice unto, and worship them. So in process of time the
glorious and fearful name was forgotten out of the mouth of all living ...
and there was found on earth no people that knew aught save images of wood
and stone, and temples of stone which they built." The ancient Hindoo
fables also indicate how imagery arose; they speak of the god Ram, "who,
having no shape, is described by a similitude." The worship of the "Host
of Heaven" was star-worship, or "Baalim."
The Sabean idolatry was the worship of the stars, to which belongs much of
the earlier image carving, for the household gods of the ancient Hebrews,
the Teraphim (as the images of Laban stolen by Rachel), were probably in
the human form as representing planets, even in varying astronomical
aspects of the same planet. They are said to have been of metal. The
ancient Germans had similar household gods of wood, carved out of the root
of the mandragora plant, or alraun as they called it, from the
superstition kindred to that of the East, that the images would answer
questions (from _raunen_ to whisper in the ear). Examination of many
ancient Attic figurines appears to shew that they had a not unsimilar
origin, reminding us that both Herodotus and Plato state the original
religion of the Greeks to have been star-worship, and hence is derived the
[Greek: Theos] god, from [Greek: Thein] to run. Thus in other than the
poet's sense are the stars "elder scripture."
A large number of the forms met in architectural ornament, it may be
fittingly reiterated, have a more or less close connection with the
worships which existed in times long prior to Christianity. A portion of
them was continuously used simply because the masons were accustomed to
them, or in later Gothic on account of the universal practice of copying
existing works; unless we can take it for granted in place of that
practice, that there existed down to Reformation days "portfolios" of
carver's designs which were to the last handed down from master to
apprentice, as must have undoubtedly been the case in earlier times. Other
portions of the ancient worship designs are found in Christian art because
they were received and grafted upon the symbolic system of the Church's
teaching. The retention of these fragments of superseded paganism does not
always appear to have been of deliberate or willing intention. The early
days of the Church even after its firm establishment, were much occupied
in combating every form of paganism. The converts were constantly lapsing
into their old beliefs, and the thunders of the early ecclesiastical
councils were as constantly being directed against the ancient
superstitions. Sufficient remains on record to shew how hard the gods
died.
To near the end of the fourth century the chief intelligence of Rome
publicly professed the Olympic faith. With the next century, however,
commenced a more or less determined programme of persecutory repression.
Thus, councils held at Arles about 452 ruled that a bishop was guilty of
sacrilege who neglected to extirpate the custom of adoring fountains,
trees, and stones. At that of Orleans in 533 Catholics were to be
excommunicated who returned to the worship of idols or ate flesh offered
to idols. At Tours in 567 several pagan superstitions were forbidden, and
at Narborne in 590; freemen who transgressed were to have penance, but
slaves to be beaten. At Nicea in 681 image worship was allowed of
Christ.[2] At Augsburgh (?) in 742 the Count Gravio was associated with
the Bishop to watch against popular lapses into paganism. In 743 Pepin
held a council in which he ruled, as his father had done before, that he
who practised any pagan rites be fined 15 sous (15/22 of a livre). To the
orders was attached the renunciation, in German, of the worship of Odin by
the Saxons, and a list of the pagan superstitions of the Germans. The
Council of Frankfort in 794 ordered the sacred woods to be destroyed.
Constantinople had apparently already not only become a channel for the
conveyance of oriental paganism in astro-symbolic images, but was also
evidently nearer to the lower idolatry of heathenism than the Church of
the West. Thus we find the bishops of Gaul, Germany, and Italy in council
at Frankfort, rejecting with anathema, and as idolatrous, the doctrines of
the Council of Constantinople upon the worship of images.
While all this repression was going on, the Church was making itself
acceptable, just as the Mosaic system had done in its day, by assimilating
the symbols of the forbidden faiths. Itself instituted without formularies
or ceremonial, both were needed when it became a step-ladder of ambition
and the expedient displacer of the corrupt idolatries into which
sun-worship had disintegrated. Hence among the means of organization,
observance and symbol took the place of original simplicity, and it is
small wonder that ideas were adopted which were already in men's minds.
Elements of heathenism which, after the lapse of centuries, still clung to
the Church's robes, became an interwoven part of her dearest symbolism. If
men did not burn what they had adored, they in effect adored that which
they had burned.
In spite, however, of edicts and adoptions, paganism has never been
entirely rooted out; what Sismondi calls the "rights of long possession,
the sacredness of time-hallowed opinion, and the potency of habit," are
not yet entirely overcome in the midst of the most enlightened peoples.
The carvings which point back to forgotten myths have their parallels in
curious superstitions and odd customs which are not less venerable.
There were many compromises made on account of the ineradicable attachment
of the people to religious customs into which they were born. Christian
festivals were erected on the dates of heathen observances. In the sixth
century, Pope Gregory sent word to Augustine, then in England, that the
idolatrous temples of the English need not be destroyed, though the idols
should, and that the cattle sacrificed to the heathen deities should be
killed on the anniversary of dedication or on the nativities of the
saints whose relics were within the church.
It is said that it was, later, usual to bring a fat buck into St. Paul's,
London, with the hunters' horns blowing, in the midst of divine service,
for the cathedral was built on or near the site of a former temple of
Diana. This custom was made the condition of a feudal tenure. The story of
Prosperine, another form of Diana, was the subject of heathen plays, and
down to the sixteenth century the character appears in religious mystery
plays as the recipient of much abuse.
Ancient mythology points in one chief direction. "Omnes Deos referri ad
solem," says Macrobius, "All Gods refer to the sun," and in the light of
that saying a thousand complicated fables of antiquity melt into
simplicity. The ancient poets called the sun (at one time symbolically of
a First Great Cause, at another absolutely) the Leader, the Moderator, the
Depository of Light, the Ordainer of human things; each of his virtues was
styled a different god, and given its distinct name. The moon also, and
the stars were made the symbols of deities. These symbols put before the
people as vehicles for abstract ideas, were quickly adopted as gods, the
symbolism being disregarded, and the end was practically the same as that
narrated by the ancient rabbi just quoted. But it may be doubted whether
the pantheism of the classic nations was ever entirely gross. The great
festivals of the gods were accompanied by the initiation of carefully
selected persons into certain mysteries of which no description is
extant. Thirlwall hazards the conjecture "that they were the remains of a
worship which preceded the rise of the Hellenic mythology ... grounded on
a view of nature less fanciful, more earnest and better fitted to awaken
both philosophical thought and religious feeling." Whether a purer system
was unfolded to the initiated on these occasions or not, there is little
doubt that it had existed and was at the root of the symbol rites.
[Illustration: AN IMP ON CUSHIONS, CHRISTCHURCH, HANTS., _early 16th
cent._]
Mythic Origin of Church Carvings.
[Illustration: TAU CROSS, WELLINGBOROUGH.]
The discoveries in Egypt in recent years undoubtedly press upon us the
fact that there was in Europe an early indigenous civilization, and that
the exchange of ideas between East and West was at least equal. For the
purpose of this study, however, the theory of independence is not accepted
absolutely; it is premised that though there were in numerous parts of the
old world early native systems of worship of much similarity, yet that
such relics of them as are met in architecture came from the East.
The mythic ideas at the root of Gothic decoration were probably early
disseminated through Europe in vague and varying ways, whose chief impress
is in folk-lore; but the concrete forms themselves appear to have been
introduced later, after being brought, as it were, to a focus, being
selected and assimilated at some great mental centre. Alexandria was the
place where Eastern and Western culture impinged on each other, and
resulted in a conglomerate of ideas. These ideas, however, were not
essentially different in their nature, though each school, Assyrian,
Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, and Hebrew, had diverged widely if they came
from an unknown common source. But if Alexandria was the furnace in which
the material was fused, Byzantium appears to have been the great workshop
where the results were utilized, and from whence they were issued to
Europe.
Sculptured ornament is not alone in the fact of its being a direct legacy
from remotely ancient forms, though, on comparing that with any of the
other arts hitherto recognized as of Eastern origin, it will be found that
none bears such distinct marks of its parentage, or shews such continuity
of form. Thus examination of European glazed pottery, which comes perhaps
the nearest to our subject, shews that the ornamenting devices
occasionally betray an acquaintance with the old symbolic patterns, but
there is less recognition of meaning, scarcely any intention to perpetuate
idea, and no continuity of design. It was not in the nature of the
potter's purpose that there should be any of these, the difference being
that for the mason's and the sculptor's art there was a very close
association with the gild system. The first Christian sculptors would be
masons brought up in pagan gilds, and the gild instincts and traditions
had undoubtedly as strong an effect upon their work, on the whole, as any
religious beliefs they might possess.
The symbolism of the animals of the church in the late points of view of
the Bestiaries and of the expository writers of the Middle Ages, is not
here to be made the subject of special attention. That is a department
well treated in other works, particularly in the volume, "Animal Symbolism
in Ecclesiastical Architecture," by Mr. E. P. Evans, which yet remains to
be equalled. It is to be noted, however, that the early Christians,
seeing the animals and their compounds so integral a portion of pagan
imagery, endeavoured to twist every meaning to one sufficiently Christian:
but what is chiefly worthy of note is the unconscious resistance of the
sculptors to the treatment. Although a multitude of figures can be traced
as used symbolically in accordance with the Christian dicta, there are at
least as many which shew stronger affinity to pagan myth. There is
evidence that this was early recognized by the propogandists. The Council
of Nice in 787, in enjoining upon the faithful the due regard of images,
ordered that the works of art were not to be drawn from the imagination of
the painters, but to be only such as were approved by the rules and
traditions of the Catholic Church. So also ordained the Council of Milan
in 1565.