into prison, and Reynard has a scrip made of a piece of the Bear's hide,
and shoes of the skin of the feet of the Wolf and his wife. Blessed by
Bellin the Ram, who is the King's chaplain, and accompanied a short
distance by the whole court, he sets out for Rome. The chaplain Ram and
Lampe the Hare, accompany him home to bid his wife farewell. He inveigles
the Hare inside, and the family eat him. He puts the Hare's head in the
bear-skin wallet, and taking it to the impatient Bellin outside, asks him
to take it to the King, as it contains letters of state policy.
The satchel is opened in full court, and Reynard once more proclaimed a
traitor, accursed and banned, the Bear and Wolf restored, and the Ram and
all his race given to them for atonement. A twelve-day tourney is held. On
the eighth day the Coney and the Crow present complaint against Reynard;
he had wounded the Coney, and eaten the Crow's wife. It is resolved, in
spite of the Lioness's second intercession, to besiege Malepart and hang
Reynard.
Grimbart secretly runs off to warn Reynard, who decides to return to court
once more and plead his cause. They set out together, and Reynard again
confesses his sins. This introduces a story of how he once fooled the
Wolf. Isengrin coveted to eat a foal, and sent the Fox to inquire the
price from the mare. She replied the price was written on her hinder hoof.
The Fox, seeing the trick, returned to the Wolf saying he could not
understand the inscription. The Wolf boasts of his learning, having long
ago taken his degrees as Doctor of Both Faculties. The Wolf bends down to
examine the newly-shod hoof, and the rest may be supposed.
On their way to court, Reynard and Grimbart meet Martin the Ape, who is
bound for Rome, and promises his gold shall buy Reynard's absolution.
Arrived at court, Reynard boldly explains away the stories of the Coney
and the Crow, and demands the trial by battle. The Coney and Crow, having
no witnesses, and being averse to battle, withdraw. Reynard accuses the
dead Bellin of killing the Hare Lampe and secreting rare jewels he sent
to the King. His story is half believed in the hope that the jewels, which
he described at great length, may be found. Reynard's former services to
the state are remembered, and he is about to depart triumphant, when the
Wolf, unable to restrain his rage, accuses him afresh. In the end, as each
accusation is smoothly foiled, he accepts the wager of battle. They
withdraw to prepare for the lists. Reynard is shorn and shaven, all but
his tail, by his relatives the Apes. He is well oiled. He is also enjoined
to drink plentifully overnight.
They meet in the lists. Reynard kicks up the dust to blind the Wolf, draws
his wet tail across his eyes, and at length tears an eye out. He is,
however, seized by the Wolf's strong jaw, and is about to be finished off
when he takes advantage of a word of parley to seize the wolf in a tender
part with his hand, and the fight recommences, ending in the total
overthrow of Isengrin. The King orders the fray to be stayed and the
Wolf's life spared. The Wolf is carried off. All fly to congratulate the
victor,
"All gazed in his face with fawning eyes,
And loaded him with flatteries."
The King makes him the Lord Chancellor and takes him to his close esteem.
The tale winds up:
"To wisdom now let each one turn,
Avoid the base and virtue learn;
This is the end of Reynard's story,
May God assist us to His glory."
[Illustration: THE FOX RETURNING FROM HUNTING, MANCHESTER.]
The above is the gist of the matter dealing with the Fox in letters; from
these lively images we will turn to the more wooden achievements of the
carvers. The general fact that the Fox is a marauder specially fond of the
flesh of that bird of long descent, the goose, but also partial to that of
other birds, is frequently illustrated by church carvings. In the churches
at the following places he is carved as having seized his prey:--Beverley
(Minster), Boston, Fairford, Faversham, Gloucester, Hereford, Norwich,
Oxford (Magdalen), Peterborough, Ripon, Wellingborough, Winchester, and
Windsor (St. George's Chapel). At the last-named he is also shewn as
preying upon a hen. At Beverley (Minster) Ely, Manchester, and Thanet (St.
Mary's Minster) the picture of the abduction of the goose is heightened in
interest by his pursuit by a woman armed with a distaff. Doubtless there
are others; the object throughout is to give examples, not an exhaustive
list.
A somewhat unusual subject is one in Manchester Cathedral, in which the
Fox is returning from hunting. A carving where the Fox is used to point a
moral is another, in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in which three monks,
conveyed in a wheel-barrow into Hell's Mouth, are accompanied by a Fox
with a goose in his mouth. Probably the idea here broadly expressed is
intended to be quietly suggested by some of the above.
Next in frequency is the more definite satire of the Fox preaching to
Geese. We find it at Beverley (both the Minster and St. Mary's), Boston,
Bristol, Cartmel, Ely, Etchingham, Nantwich, Ripon, Stowlangcroft, and
Windsor (St. George's Chapel). In the last he has a goose in his cowl.
All those need for their completion the supposition that the text of the
Fox's sermon is the same as was given at length in a representation of a
preaching scene on an ancient stained-glass window in the church of St.
Martin, Leicester, which was unhappily destroyed in the last century. In
this, from the Fox's mouth proceeded the words "Testis est mihi Deus, quam
cupiam vos omnes visceribus meus" (God is my witness how I desire you all
in my bowels.--Philippians, i., 8). In Wolfius, A.D. 1300, is a
description of another such representation, in a MS. of AEsop's Fables. It
may accord quite well with the theory of the transmission of designs by
the continuity of the artificers' gild system to suppose that some
proportion of the material found its way into their repertoire through
the medium of manuscripts (not necessarily original in them), especially
for such subjects as were essentially mediaeval. We have seen how the
carvings of Jonah and of Samson, at Ripon, were taken from the Poor Man's
Bible; here we have the Preaching Fox mentioned in a book of 1300 as being
in an earlier work. A Fox bearing two Cocks by the neck on a staff is the
initial T in a MS. considered by Montflaucon to be of the ninth century.
Fredegarius, the Frankish historian, in the middle of the seventh century,
has a fable of a Fox at the court of the Lion, repeated by others in the
tenth and eleventh. Paulin Paris and Thomas Wright agreed in thinking the
whole fable of French origin, and first in the Latin tongue. So that we
may reasonably suppose that the countless tons of books and MSS. (though
it is useless to grope now among the mere memories of ashes), burnt at the
Reformation, would contain much that would have made clearer our
understanding of this subject of Gothic grotesques. It is clear, however,
that the Fox was used as a means of satirical comment before the writing
of the Isengrine Fable, and that most of the church carvings refer to what
we may call pre-Fable or co-Fable conceptions.
There may be other material lying hidden in our great libraries, but
search for early Reynard drawings produces almost nothing.
At Ripon the Fox is shewn without vestments, in a neat Gothic pulpit
adorned with carvings of the trefoil.[8] His hands, and what they may
have held, are gone. His congregation is to his right a goose, to his left
a cock, who appear to be uttering responses, while his face is significant
of conscious slyness.
[Illustration: THE PREACHING FOX, RIPON.]
In Beverley Minster the Preaching Fox is in a square panelled pulpit on
four legs; before him are seven geese, one of whom slumbers peacefully. He
wears a gown and cowl, has a rosary in his right hand, and appears to be
performing his part with some animation. Behind the pulpit stands an ape
with a goose hung on a stick, while another fox--to give point to the
lesson--is slinking off with a goose slung over his back. At St. Mary's,
Beverley, the various carvings have a decidedly manuscript appearance. The
one of the Preaching Fox has labels, upon which, in some unknown original,
may have been inscribed texts or other matter. Here the Fox wears only his
"scapulaire," and has his right hand raised in correct exhortative manner;
his pulpit is of stone, and is early. Behind stand two persons, perhaps
male and female, whose religious dress would lead us to suppose them to
represent the class to whose teaching a fox-like character is to be
attributed. At the front are seated two apes, also in scapularies, or
hoods, who, as well as the Fox, may be here to shew the real character of
the supposed sanctified.
[Illustration: THE RULE AND THE ROAST CONTRASTED, ST. MARY'S, BEVERLEY.]
It will have been noticed how frequently the carvings evade explanation;
all these satires on the clergy may mean either that the system was bad,
or that there was much abuse of it. A remarkable instance of this is in
another misericorde in St. Mary's, Beverley. Here we have the Benedictine
with mild and serene countenance, without a sign of sin, and bearing the
scroll of truth and simplicity of life--call it the rule of his order. Yet
how do many of his followers act? With greed for the temporalities, they
aspire to the pastoral crook, and devour their flocks with such rapacity
as to threaten the up-rooting of the whole order.
[Illustration: THE PREACHING FOX, ST. MARY'S, BEVERLEY.]
Such might be one rendering; yet the placid cleric may be simply
introduced to shew the outward appearance of the ravening ones.
It has been a favourite explanation of these anti-cleric carvings to say
that they were due to the jealousy which existed between the regular
orders and the preaching friars. But carvings such as this last are
sufficient to prove the explanation erroneous; preaching friars carried no
croziers.
Yet another instance from St. Mary's shews us two foxes in scapularies
reading from a book placed on an eagle-lectern.
[Illustration: FOXES AT THE LECTERN, ST. MARY'S, BEVERLEY.]
The bird--lectern or not--has round its head a kind of aureola or glory;
it is probably an eagle, but who shall say it is not a dove? The
religiously-garbed foxes are alone unmistakable.
At Boston we have a mitred Fox, enthroned in the episcopal seat in full
canonicals, clutching at a cock which stands near, while another bird is
at the side. Close by the throne, another fox, in a cowl only, is reading
from a book.
At Christchurch, Hampshire, we see the Fox on a seat-elbow, in a pulpit of
good design, and near him, on a stool, the Cock; it appears in the
initial of this article.
At Worcester, a scapularied Fox is kneeling before a small table or altar,
laying his hand with an affectation of reverence upon--a sheep's head.
This is one of the side carvings to the misericorde of the three mowers,
considered under the head of "Trinities."
[Illustration: EPISCOPAL HYPOCRISY, BOSTON.]
The Fox seizing the Hen, at Windsor, reminds of the Fable, yet in so many
other instances it is the Cock who is the prey. Still further removing the
carvings out of the sphere of the Fable is a carving at Chicester of the
Fox playing the harp to a goose, while an ape dances; and another at St.
George's, Windsor, in which it is an ape who wears the stole, and is
engaged in the laying on of hands. In the Fable the Fox teaches the Hare
the Creed, yet in a carving at Manchester it is his two young cubs whom
he is teaching from a book.
The Fox in the Shell of Salvation, artfully discoursing on the merits of a
bottle of holy water, as drawn on page 58, may be considered a Preaching
Fox.
There is at Nantwich a carving which, unlike any of those already noticed,
is closely illustrative of an incident of the epic. It represents the
story told to Nouvel's court by the widower Crow. He and his wife, in
travelling through the country, came across what they thought was the dead
body of Reynard on the heath. He was stiff, his tongue protruded, his eyes
were inverted. They lamented his unhappy fate, and "course so early run."
The lady approached his chin, not, indeed, with any idea of commencing a
meal; far from that, it was to ascertain if perchance any signs of life
remained, when--snap! Her head was off! The Crow himself had the
melancholy luck to fly to a tree, there to sit and watch his wife eaten
up. In the carving we have the crows first coming upon the sight of the
counterfeit carrion as it lies near a rabbit warren. To shew how perfect
is Reynard's semblance of death, the rear portions of two rabbits are to
be seen as they hurry into their holes on the approach of the crows, the
proximity of the Fox not having previously alarmed them.
The side figures have no simultaneous connection with the central
composition, being merely representations of Reynard, once more as a
larder regarder. The pilgrim's hat, borne by one of the figures, is a
further reminder of the Fable, and the monkish garb is of course in
keeping. These two are somewhat singular in being fox-headed men. At
Chester, also, is a Fox feigning death.
[Illustration: THE FOX FEIGNING DEATH, NANTWICH.]
[Illustration: THE TEMPTATION. THE PUNISHMENT. THE WAKE KNOT. BEVERLEY
MINSTER.]
Thus far the examples have been of Reynard's crimes; we will now survey
his punishment. In the fable he was to be hanged, but was not, the Wolf
and the Bear, whom he always outwitted, being the disappointed
executioners. In the carvings he is really hanged, and the hangsmen are
the geese of his despoliation. Beverley Minster has among its fine
carvings an admirable rendering of this subject. Reynard is hanged on a
square gallows, a number of birds, geese, taking a beak at the rope. To
the left of the gallows stand two official geese, with mace and
battle-axe. The left supplementary carving gives a note of the crime;
Reynard is creeping upon two sleeping geese. The right hand supporting
carving gives us the Fox after being cut down. His friend, the Ape, is
untying the rope from his neck. Observe the twist of the rope at the end;
it declares that Reynard is dead, for it is a Wake Knot!
Also at Boston, Bristol, Nantwich, and Sherborne are carvings of the
hanging by geese. The gallows of the Sherborne execution is square, and
made of rough trees. The general action is less logical than in the
Beverley scene, but the geese are full of vivacity, evidently enjoying the
thoroughness with which they are carrying out their intentions.
[Illustration: EXECUTION OF REYNARD, SHERBORNE.]
In the hanging scenes there is no suggestion of the religious dress.
Reynard has lost his Benefit of Clergy. Besides the carving of the Ape
laying out the dead Fox, at Beverley there are also others where the Ape
is riding on the Fox's back, and again where he is tending him in bed. The
Ape succouring the Fox is also instanced at Windsor.
However, after the two broad classes of carvings are exhausted--the Fox
deluding or eating birds, and the Fox hanged by birds, there is little
left to tell of him.
It may be added that his hanging by his one-time victims has suggested to
the carver another subject of the same kind--the hanging of the cat by
mice, or, more probably, rats, mentioned on page 43. It is there stated to
be at Sherborne, in error, the place being Great Malvern.
[Illustration: EXECUTION OF THE CAT, GREAT MALVERN.]
The following curious scene from the Fox-fruitful church of St. Mary's,
Beverley, is perplexing, and gives the Fox receiving his quietus under
unique circumstances. He is, with anxiety, awaiting the diagnosis of an
ape-doctor, who is critically examining urinary deposits; his health has
been evidently not all he could wish. When, lo, an arrow, from the bow of
an archer in quilted leather, pierces him through the heart! What more
this carving means is a mystery.
[Illustration: REYNARD IN DANGER, ST. MARY'S, BEVERLEY.]
Carvings of the ordinary fables in which the Fox is concerned are not
unknown. At Faversham, Kent, is one of the Fox and the Grapes; at Chester
is the Fox and the Stork. The latter is, again, on a remarkable slab,
probably a coffin lid, in the Priory Church of Bridlington, East
Yorkshire, the strange combination of designs on which may be described.
At the head appear two curious dragon forms opposed over an elaborate
embattled temple, suggestive of Saxon and Byzantine derivation, with a
central pointed arch. This may be a rendering of the sun-myth, noted on
page 37. At the foot is a reversed lion, the curls and twists of whose
mane and tail closely resembles those of the white porcelain lions used by
the Chinese as incense-burners. Between the temple and the lion is incised
an illustration of the fable of the Fox and the Stork. The slab, of which
a rough sketch is annexed, is of black basaltic marble, similar to that
of the font of the church, which is of the type generally considered to be
Norman, and to have been imported ready made from Flanders, and on which
dragons are sometimes the ornament. The Fox on this slab is the earliest
sculptured figure of the animal known in England.
[Illustration: COFFIN LID, BRIDLINGTON, YORKSHIRE.]
There are also hunting scenes in which the fox is shot with bow and arrow,
as in Beverley Minster; or chased with hounds in a way more commending
itself to modern sporting ideas, as at Ripon.
In conclusion, the satirical intent of the fox inventions, as we find them
in the library or in the church, may be summed up, for here indeed lies
the whole secret of their prevalence and popularity. The section of
society satirized by the epic is large, but is principally covered by the
feudal institution. The notes struck are its greed of wealth and its greed
of the table, its injustice under the pretext of laws, its expedient
lying, the immunity from punishment afforded by riches, the absolute yet
revolution-fearing power of the sovereign, the helplessness of nobles
single-handed, and the general influence of religion thrown over
everything, while for its own sake being allowed to really influence
nothing.
The chief point of the epic is generally considered to be that power in
the hands of the feudal barons was accompanied by a trivial amount of
intelligence, which was easily deceived by the more astute element of
society. The carvings give no note of this. A further object, however, may
be seen. The whole story of the Fox is meant not only to shew that
"It is not strength that always wins,
For wit doth strength excel,"
by playing on the passions and weaknesses of mankind, but in particular to
hold up to scorn the immunity procured by professional religion, though it
is fair to note that the Fox does not adopt a religious life because
suited to his treacherous and deceitful character, but to conceal it. Thus
so far as they elucidate the general "foxiness" of religious hypocrisy,
the carvings and the epic illustrate the same theme, but it is evident
that they embodied and developed already-existing popular recognition of
the evil, each in its own way, and without special reference one to the
other.
Situations of the Grotesque Ornament in Church Art.
The places chosen for the execution of the work which, by reason of its
intention or its want of conformity with what we now consider a true taste
in art, may be styled Grotesque, do not seem to be in any marked degree
different from the situations selected for other ornamental work. It may,
however, be permitted to glance at those situations, and enquire as to
such comparisons as they afford, though the conclusions to be arrived at
must necessarily be loose and general.
In Norman work the chief iconographical interest is to be found in the
capitals of pilasters and pillars, for here is often told a story of some
completeness. Other places are the arches, chiefly of doorways; bosses of
groining, and the horizontal corners of pillar plinths; exteriorly, the
gargoyles are most full of meaning, seconded by the corbels of the
corbel-table. We may expect in Norman grotesque some reference to ancient
mystics; the forms are bold and rugged, such appearance of delicacy as
exists being attained by interlacing lines in conventional patterns, with,
also, the effect of distance upon repeating ornament.
Transitional Norman retained all the characteristic ornament of the purer
style, but with the development of Early English the grotesque for a time
somewhat passed out of vogue, slight but eminently graceful modifications
of the Corinthian acanthus supplying most of the places where strange
beasts had formerly presented their bewildering shapes. It might not be
impossible to connect this partial purification of ornament with a phase
of church history.
[Illustration: APE CORBEL, CARRYING ROOF TIMBER, EWELME.]
But in some portions of structure, as the gargoyles, and in the woodwork
of the choirs, the grotesque still held its own. As Early English grew
distinctly into the Decorated, every available spot was enriched with
carving. The collections (called "portfolios" elsewhere) of the old
carvers would seem to have been ransacked and exhausted, all that had gone
before receiving fresh rendering in wood and stone, while life and nature
were now often called upon to furnish new material. The pointed arch
remained, however, an undecorated sweep of mouldings, and the plinth
corners were rarely touched; in fact there was here scarcely now the same
squareness of space which before had asked for ornament. All the other
places ornamented in Norman work were filled up in Decorated with the new
designs of old subjects. The resting-places of ornament were multiplied;
the dripstones of every kind of arch, and the capitals of every kind of
pillar, whether in the arcading of the walls, the heaped-up richness of
the reredos, or the single subject of the piscina, became nests of the
grotesque. In a single group of sedilia all the architecture of a great
cathedral may be seen in miniature, in arch, column, groined roof, boss,
window-tracery, pinnacle, and finial, each part with its share of
ornament, of grotesque. In the choirs the carvers had busied themselves
with summoning odd forms from out the hard oak, till the croches or
elbow-rests, the bench ends, the stall canopies, and below all, and above
all, the misericordes, swarmed with all the ideas of Asia and Europe past
and present. Musicians are everywhere, but most persistently on the
intersections of the choir arches, and somewhat less so on those of the
nave.
[Illustration: MISERICORDE--LION COMPOSITION, WELLINGBOROUGH.]
A favourite place for humourous figures was on the stone brackets or
corbels which bear up timber roofs; examples are in the ape corbel in this
article, and the responsible yet happy-looking saint at the end of the
list of Contents.
When the Perpendicular style came with other arts from Italy, and the
lavish spread of the Decorated was chastened and over-chastened into
regularity, there came for the second or third time the same ideas from
the never-dying mythologies, their concrete embodiments sometimes with
eloquence rendered, nearly always with vigour. They came to the old
places, but in most fulness to that most full place, the dark recess where
lurks the misericorde.