RELIGIOUS CARICATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES.
Mr. Robert Tomes, American consul, a few years ago, at the French city
of Rheims, describes very agreeably the impression made upon his mind by
the grand historic cathedral of that ancient place.[3] Filled with a
sense of the majestic presence of the edifice, he approached one of the
chief portals, to find it crusted with a most uncouth semi-burlesque
representation, cut in stone, of the Last Judgment. The trump has
sounded, and the Lord from a lofty throne is pronouncing doom upon the
risen as they are brought up to the judgment-seat by the angels. Below
him are two rows of the dead just rising from their graves, extending to
the full width of the great door. Upon many of the faces there is an
expression of amazement, which the artist apparently designed to be
comic, and several of the attitudes are extremely absurd and ludicrous.
Some have managed to push off the lid of their tombs a little way, and
are peeping out through the narrow aperture, others have just got their
heads above the surface of the ground, and others are sitting up in
their graves; some have one leg out, some are springing into the air,
and some are running, as if in wild fright, for their lives. Though the
usual expression upon the faces is one of astonishment, yet this is
varied. Some are rubbing their eyes as if startled from a deep sleep,
but not yet aware of the cause of alarm; others are utterly bewildered,
and hesitate to leave their resting-place; some leap out in mad
excitement, and others hurry off as if fearing to be again consigned to
the tomb. An angel is leading a cheerful company of popes, bishops, and
kings toward the Saviour, while a hideous demon, with a mouth stretching
from ear to ear, is dragging off a number of the condemned toward the
devil, who is seen stirring up a huge caldron boiling and bubbling with
naked babies, dead before baptism. On another part of the wall is a
carved representation of the vices which led to the destruction of Sodom
and Gomorrah. These were so monstrously obscene that the authorities of
the cathedral, in deference to the modern sense of decency, have caused
them to be partly cut away by the chisel.
[Footnote 3: "The Champagne Country," p. 34, by Robert Tomes, London,
1867.]
The first cut on the next page is an example of burlesque ornament. The
artist apparently intended to indicate another termination of the
interview than the one recorded by AEsop between the wolf and the stork.
The old cathedral at Strasburg, destroyed a hundred years ago, was long
renowned for its sculptured burlesques. We give two of several capitals
exhibiting the sacred rites of the Church travestied by animals.
[Illustration: Capital in the Autun Cathedral.]
It marks the change in the feelings and manners of men that, three
hundred years after those Strasburg capitals were carved, with the
sanction of the chapter, a book-seller, for only exhibiting an engraving
of some of them in his shop window, was convicted of having committed a
crime "most scandalous and injurious to religion." His sentence was "to
make the _amende honorable_, naked to his shirt, a rope round his neck,
holding in his hand a lighted wax-candle weighing two pounds, before the
principal door of the cathedral, whither he will be conducted by the
executioner, and there, on his knees, with uncovered head," confess his
fault and ask pardon of God and the king. The pictures were to be burned
before his eyes, and then, after paying all the costs of the
prosecution, he was to go into eternal banishment.
[Illustration: Capitals in the Strasburg Cathedral, A.D. 1300.]
Other American consuls besides Mr. Tomes, and multitudes of American
citizens not so fortunate as to study mediaeval art at their country's
expense, have been profoundly puzzled by this crust of crude burlesque
on ecclesiastical architecture. The objects in Europe which usually give
to a susceptible American his first and his last rapture are the
cathedrals, those venerable enigmas, the glory and shame of the Middle
Ages, which present so complete a contrast to the toy-temples, new,
cabinet-finished, upholstered, sofa-seated, of American cities, not to
mention the consecrated barns, white-painted and treeless, of the rural
districts. And the cathedrals are a contrast to every thing in Europe
also, if only from their prodigious magnitude. A cathedral town
generally stands in a valley, through which a small river winds. When
the visitor from any of the encompassing hills gets his first view of
the compact little city, the cathedral looms up in the midst thereof so
vast, so tall, that the disproportion to the surrounding structures is
sometimes even ludicrous, like a huge black elephant with a flock of
small brown sheep huddling about its feet. But when at last the stranger
stands in its shadow, he finds the spell of its presence irresistible;
and it is a spell which the lapse of time not unfrequently strengthens,
till he is conscious of a tender, strong attachment to the edifice,
which leads him to visit it at unusual times, to try the effect upon it
of moonlight, of storm, of dawn and twilight, of mist, rain, and snow.
He finds himself going to it for solace and rest. On setting out upon a
journey, he makes a detour to get another last look, and, returning,
goes, valise in hand, to see his cathedral before he sees his
companions. Many American consuls have had this experience, have truly
fallen in love with the cathedral of their station, and remained
faithful to it for years after their return, like Mr. Howells, whose
heart and pen still return to Venice and San Carlo, so much to the
delight of his readers.
This charm appears to lie in the mere grandeur of the edifice as a work
of art, for we observe it to be most potent over persons who are least
in sympathy with the feeling which cathedrals embody. Very religious
people are as likely to be repelled as attracted by them; and, indeed,
in England and Scotland there are large numbers of Dissenters who have
avoided entering them all their lives on principle. It is Americans who
enjoy them most; for they see in them a most captivating assemblage of
novelties--vast magnitude, solidity of structure only inferior to
nature's own work, venerable age, harmonious and solemn
magnificence--all combined in an edifice which can not, on any principle
of utility, justify its existence, and does not pay the least fraction
of its expenses. Little do they know personally of the state of feeling
which made successive generations of human beings willing to live in
hovels and inhale pollution in order that they might erect those
wondrous piles. The cost of maintaining them--of which cost the annual
expenditure in money is the least important part--does not come home to
us. We abandon ourselves without reserve to the enjoyment of stupendous
works wholly new to our experience.
[Illustration: Engraved upon a Stall in Sherborne Minster, England.]
It is Americans, also, who are most baffled by the attempt to explain
the contradiction between the noble proportions of these edifices and
the decorations upon some of their walls. How could it have been, we ask
in amazement, that minds capable of conceiving the harmonies of these
fretted roofs, these majestic colonnades, these symmetrical towers,
could also have permitted their surfaces to be profaned by sculptures
so absurd and so abominable that by no artifice of circumlocution can an
idea of some of them be conveyed in printable words? In close proximity
to statues of the Virgin, and in chapels whose every line is a line of
beauty, we know not how to interpret what M. Champfleury truly styles
"deviltries and obscenities unnamable, vice and passion depicted with
gross brutality, luxury which has thrown off every disguise, and shows
itself naked, bestial, and shameless." And these mediaeval artists
availed themselves of the accumulated buffooneries and monstrosities of
all the previous ages. The gross conceptions of India, Egypt, Greece,
and Rome appear in the ornamentation of Christian temples along with
shapes hideous or grotesque which may have been original. Even the oaken
stalls in which the officiating priests rested during the prolonged
ceremonials of festive days are in many cathedrals covered with comic
carving, some of which is pure caricature. A rather favorite subject was
the one shown above, a whipping-scene in a school, carved upon an
ancient stall in an English cathedral.
[Illustration: From a Manuscript of the Thirteenth Century.]
It is not certain, however, that the artist had any comic intention in
engraving this picture of retributive justice, with which the children
of former ages were so familiar. It was a standard subject. The troops
of Flemish carvers who roamed over Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, offering their services wherever a church was to be
decorated, carried with them port-folios of stock subjects, of which
this was one. Other carvings are unmistakable caricatures: a monk caught
making love to a nun, a wife beating her husband, an aged philosopher
ridden by a woman, monkeys wearing bishops' mitres, barbers drawing
teeth in ludicrous attitudes, and others less describable. In the huge
cathedral of English Winchester, which abounds in curious relics of the
Middle Ages, there is a series of painted panels in the chapel of Our
Lady, one of which is an evident caricature of the devil. He is having
his portrait painted, and the Virgin Mary is near the artist, urging him
to paint him blacker and uglier than usual. The devil does not like
this, and wears an expression similar to that of a rogue in a modern
police station who objects to being photographed. Often, however, in
these old pictures the devil is master of the situation, and exhibits
contempt for his adversaries in indecorous ways.
If we turn from the sacred edifices to the sacred books used in
them--those richly illuminated missals, the books of "Hours," the
psalters, and other works of devotion--we are amazed beyond expression
to discover upon their brilliant pages a similar taste in ornamentation.
The school scene on the previous page, in which monkey-headed children
are playing school, dates back to the thirteenth century.
Burlesque tournaments, in the same taste, often figure in the
prayer-books among representations of the Madonna, the crucifixion, and
scenes in the lives of the patriarchs. The gallant hare tilts at the
fierce cock of the barn-yard, or sly Reynard parries the thrust of the
clumsy bear.
[Illustration: From a Manuscript Mass-book of the Fourteenth Century.]
One of the most curious relics of those religious centuries is a French
prayer-book preserved in the British Museum, where it was discovered and
described by Mr. Malcolm, one of the first persons who ever attempted to
elucidate the subject of caricature. Besides the "Hours of the Blessed
Virgin," it contains various prayers and collects, the office for the
dead, and some psalms, all in Latin. It is illustrated by several
brilliantly colored, well-drawn, but most grotesque and incomprehensible
figures, designed, as has been conjectured, to "expose the wicked and
inordinate lives of the clergy, who were hated by the manuscript writers
as taking away much of their business." This was the explanation given
of these remarkable pictures to the trustees of the Museum by the
collector of whom they bought the volume. Several of them are submitted
to the reader's ingenuity on the following page.
Besides the specimens given, there is a wolf growling at a snake
twisting itself round its hind-leg; there is "a grinning-match" between
a human head on an animal's body and a boar's head on a monkey's body;
there is a creature like a pea-hen, with two bodies, one neck, and two
dogs' heads; there is an animal with four bodies and one head; there is
a bearded man's face and a woman's on one neck, and the body has no
limbs, but an enormous tail; there is a turret, on the top of which a
monkey sits, and a savage below is aiming an arrow at him. In the
British Museum--that unequaled repository of all that is curious and
rare--there is the famous and splendid psalter of Richard II.,
containing many strange pictures in the taste of the period. On the
second page, for example, along with two pictures of the kind usual in
Catholic works of devotion, there is a third which represents an absurd
combat within lists between the court-fool and the court-giant. The
fool, who is also a dwarf, is belaboring the giant with an instrument
like those hollow clubs used in our pantomimes when the clown is to be
whacked with great violence. The giant shrinks from the blows, and the
king, pointing at the dwarf, seems to say, "Go it, little one; I bet
upon _you_."
[Illustration: From a French Prayer-book of the Thirteenth Century, in
the British Museum.]
Mr. Malcolm, who copied this picture from the original, where, he says,
it is most superbly finished, interprets it to be a caricature of the
famous combat between David and Goliath in the presence of King Saul and
his court. In the same mass-book there is a highly ridiculous
representation of Jonah on board ship, with a blue Boreas with cheeks
puffed out raising the tempest, and a black devil clawing the sail from
the yard. In selecting a few of the more innocent pictures from the
prayer-book of Queen Mary, daughter of Henry VIII. of England, Mr.
Malcolm gives expression to his amazement at the character of the
drawings, which he dared not exhibit to a British public! Was this book,
he asks, made on purpose for the queen? Was it a gift or a purchase? But
whether she bought or whether she accepted it, he thinks she must have
"delighted in ludicrous and improper ideas," or else "her inclination
for absurdity and caricature conquered even her religion, in defense of
which she spread ruin and desolation through her kingdom."
[Illustration: From Queen Mary's Prayer-book, A.D. 1553.]
As the reader has now before his eyes a sufficient number of specimens
of the grotesque ecclesiastical ornamentation of the period under
consideration, he is prepared to consider the question which has
perplexed so many students besides Mr. Malcolm: How are we to account
for these indecencies in places and books consecrated to devotion? A
voice from the Church of the fifth century gives us the hint of the true
answer. "You ask me," writes St. Nilus to Olympiodorus of Alexandria,
"if it is becoming in us to cover the walls of the sanctuary with
representations of animals of all kinds, so that we see upon them snares
set, hares, goats, and other beasts in full flight before hunters
exhausting themselves in taking and pursuing them with their dogs; and,
again, upon the bank of a river, all kinds of fish caught by fishermen.
I answer you that this is a _puerility with which to amuse the eyes of
the faithful_."[4] To one who is acquainted with the history and genius
of the Roman Catholic Church, this very simple explanation of the
incongruity is sufficient. The policy of that wonderful organization in
every age has been to make every possible concession to ignorance that
is compatible with the continuance of ignorance. It has sought always
to amuse, to edify, to moralize, and console ignorance, but never to
enlighten it. The mind that planned the magnificent cathedral at Rheims,
of which Mr. Tomes was so much enamored, and the artists who designed
the glorious San Carlo that kindled rapture in the poetical mind of Mr.
Howells, did indeed permit the scandalous burlesques that disfigure
their walls; but they only permitted them. It was a concession which
they had to grant to the ignorant multitude whose unquestioning faith
alone made these enormous structures possible.
[Footnote 4: Quoted in Champfleury, p. 7, from "Maxima Bibliotheca
Patrum," vol. xxvii., p. 323.]
We touch here the question insinuated by Gibbon in his first volume,
where he plainly enough intimates his belief that Christianity was a
lapse into barbarism rather than a deliverance from it. Plausible
arguments in the same direction have been frequently made since Gibbon's
time by comparing the best of Roman civilization with the worst of the
self-torturing monkery of the early Christian centuries. In a debate on
this subject in New York not long since between a member of the bar and
a doctor of divinity, both of them gentlemen of learning, ability, and
candor, the lawyer pointed to the famous picture of St. Jerome (A.D.
375), naked, grasping a human skull, his magnificent head showing vast
capacity paralyzed by an absorbing terror, and exclaimed, "Behold the
lapse from Virgil, Horace, Cicero, Seneca, the Plinys, and the
Antonines!" The answer made by the clergyman was, "That is _not_
Christianity! In the Christian books no hint of that, no utterance
justifying that, can be found." Perhaps neither of the disputants
succeeded in expressing the whole truth on this point. The vaunted Roman
civilization was, in truth, only a thin crust upon the surface of the
empire, embracing but one small class in each province, the people
everywhere being ignorant slaves. Into that inert mass of servile
ignorance Christianity enters, and receives from it the interpretation
which ignorance always puts upon ideas advanced or new, interpreting it
as hungry French peasants in 1792 and South Carolina negroes in 1870
interpreted modern ideas of human rights. The new leaven set the mass
heaving and swelling until the crust was broken to pieces. The
civilization of Marcus Aurelius was lost. From parchment scrolls poetry
and philosophy were obliterated, that the sheets might be used for
prayers and meditations. The system of which St. Jerome was the product
and representative was a baleful mixture, of which nine-tenths were
Hindoo and the remaining tenth was half Christian and half Plato.
The true inference to be drawn is that no civilization is safe, nor even
genuine, until it embraces all classes of the community; and the
promulgation of Christianity was the first step toward that.
As the centuries wore on, the best of the clergy grew restive under this
monstrous style of ornamentation. "What purpose," wrote St. Bernard,
about A.D. 1140, "serve in our cloisters, under the eyes of the brothers
and during their pious readings, those ridiculous monstrosities, those
prodigies of beauties deformed or deformities made beautiful? Why those
nasty monkeys, those furious lions, those monstrous centaurs, those
animals half human, those spotted tigers, those soldiers in combat,
those huntsmen sounding the horn? Here a single head is fitted to
several bodies; there upon a single body there are several heads; now a
quadruped has a serpent's tail, and now a quadruped's head figures upon
a fish's body. Sometimes it is a monster with the fore parts of a horse
and the hinder parts of a goat; again an animal with horns ends with the
hind quarters of a horse. Everywhere is seen a variety of strange forms,
so numerous and so odd that the brothers occupy themselves more in
deciphering the marbles than their books, and pass whole days in
studying all those figures much more attentively than the divine law.
Great God! if you are not ashamed of such useless things, how, at least,
can you avoid regretting the enormity of their cost?"
How, indeed! The honest abbe was far from seeing the symbolical meaning
in those odd figures which modern investigators have imagined. He was
simply ashamed of the ecclesiastical caricatures; but a century or two
later ingenious writers began to cover them with the fig-leaves of a
symbolical interpretation. According to the ingenious M. Durand, who
wrote (A.D. 1459) thirty years before Luther was born, every part of a
cathedral has its spiritual meaning. The stones of which it is built
represent the faithful, the lime that forms part of the cement is an
emblem of fervent charity, the sand mingled with it signifies the
actions undertaken by us for the good of our brethren, and the water in
which these ingredients blend is the symbol of the Holy Ghost. The
hideous shapes sculptured upon the portals are, of course, _malign
spirits flying from the temple of the Lord, and seeking refuge in the
very substance of the walls_! The great length of the temple signifies
the tireless patience with which the faithful support the ills of this
life in expectation of their celestial home; its breadth symbolizes that
large and noble love which embraces both the friends and the enemies of
God; its height typifies the hope of final pardon; the roof beams are
the prelates, who by the labor of preaching exhibit the truth in all its
clearness; the windows are the Scriptures, which receive the light from
the sun of truth, and keep out the winds, snows, and hail of heresy and
false doctrine devised by the father of schism and falsehood; the iron
bars and pins that sustain the windows are the general councils,
ecumenical and orthodox, which have sustained the holy and canonical
Scriptures; the two perpendicular stone columns which support the
windows are the two precepts of Christian charity, to love God and our
neighbor; the length of the windows shows the profundity and obscurity
of Scripture, and their roundness indicates that the Church is always in
harmony with itself.
This is simple enough. But M. Jerome Bugeaud, in his collection of
"Chansons Populaires" of the western provinces of France, gives part of
a catechism still taught to children, though coming down from the Middle
Ages, which carries this quaint symbolizing to a point of the highest
absurdity. The catechism turns upon the sacred character of the lowly
animal that most needed any protection which priestly ingenuity could
afford. Here are a few of the questions and answers:
_Priest._ "What signify the two ears of the ass?"
_Child._ "The two ears of the ass signify the two great patron saints of
our city."
_Priest._ "What signifies the head of the ass?"
_Child._ "The head of the ass signifies the great bell, and the halter
the clapper of the great bell, which is in the tower of the cathedral of
the patron saints of our city."
_Priest._ "What signifies the ass's mouth?"
_Child._ "The ass's mouth signifies the great door of the cathedral of
the patron saints of our city."
_Priest._ "What signify the four feet of the ass?"
_Child._ "The four feet of the ass signify the four great pillars of the
cathedral of the patron saints of our city."
_Priest._ "What signifies the paunch of the ass?"
_Child._ "The paunch of the ass signifies the great chest wherein
Christians put their offerings to the patron saints of our cathedral."
_Priest._ "What signifies the tail of the ass?"
_Child._ "The tail of the ass signifies the holy-water brush of the good
dean of the cathedral of the patron saints of our city."
The priest does not stop at the tail, but pursues the symbolism with a
simplicity and innocence which do not bear translating into our blunt
English words. As late as 1750 Bishop Burnet saw in a church at Worms an
altarpiece of a crudity almost incredible. It represented the Virgin
Mary throwing Christ into the hopper of a windmill, from the spout of
which he was issuing in the form of sacramental wafers, and priests were
about to distribute them among the people. The unquestionable purpose of
this picture was to assist the faith and animate the piety of the people
of Worms.