The Grotesque in Church Art :: The Domestic and Popular.

The Domestic and Popular.

D
THE WEAKER VESSEL,
SHERBORNE.omestic and popular incidents are plentiful among the carvings, of which they form, indeed, a distinct class; and they afford a considerable amount of material with which might be built up, in a truly Hogarthian and exaggerated spirit, an elaborate account of mediÆval manners in general. In the majority of cases the incidents have a familiar, if not an endearing suggestiveness.The records of mankind are not wanting in stormy incidents in which the gentle female spirit has chafed under some presumed foolishness or wickedness of the head of the house, and at length breaking bounds, inflicted on him personal reminders that patience endureth but for a season. An example of this is given above, which shews the possibility of such a thing as far back as 1520, the date of the Beverley Minster misericordes. While the lady is devoting her attention to the flagellation of her unfortunate and perhaps entirely blameless spouse, a dog avails himself of the opportunity to rifle the caldron.

DOMESTIC DISCIPLINE, BEVERLEY MINSTER.

The picture in the initial, taken from a carving in the choir of Sherborne Minster, shews another domestic incident in which the lady administers castigation. Though in itself no more than a vulgar satire, it is probable that this carving was copied from some representation of St. Lucy, who is sometimes shewn with a staff in her hand, and behind her the devil prostrate.

AN UNKIND FARE, BEVERLEY MINSTER.

It is not easy to say what is the meaning of another carving in Beverley Minster, or whether it has any connection with that just noted. The probability is that it has not. This may be a shrewish wife being wheeled in the tumbril to the waterside, there to undergo for the better ruling of her tongue, a punishment the authority for which was custom older than law. But I am inclined to think that another reading will be nearer the truth. The vehicle is not the tumbril but a wheelbarrow, and the man propelling it is younger than the lady, who is pulling his hair. I imagine the man is apprentice or husband, and is not very cheerfully trundling his companion home. A similar, but more definite misericorde is in Ripon Cathedral.

In this barrow, the old woman, wearing a cap with hat on the top, as yet occasionally seen in country places, is seated in a mistress-like way. She is not committing any violence, but apparently is offering the man (call him the bridegroom) his choice of either a bag of money with dutiful obedience, or a huge cudgel, which she wields with muscular power, with dereliction. The gem of the carving is the man’s face. He smiles a quiet, amused, satirical smile, as of one who would say, “’Tis no harm to humour these foolish old bodies, and must be done, I trow.”

THE CHARIOT, RIPON.

But the object called a bag of money is as likely to be a bottle, and the whole subject may be something quite different. She may be going to the doctor, or offering the man a drink; or it may be Noah wheeling his wife into the Ark, which, it was one of the jokes in a Mystery play to suppose she was very unwilling to enter.

PILGRIMAGE IN COMFORT, CANTERBURY.

MARTINMAS. CHRISTMAS. HOLY TRINITY, HULL.

HUNTSMAN AND DEER, YORK.

The block from the capital of a column in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral, tells us little of its history. It is given as an example of a cheerful grace and ease not common in early work.

The hunting of the boar is a frequent subject of the Gothic carver, being generally considered the sport of September, though Sir Edward Coke says the season for the boar was from Christmas to Candlemas. It is uncommon to find the boar’s head shewn treated as in the accompanying block, struck off, and with the lemon in his mouth, ready for the table. These quatrefoils are the only two with a special design upon them, out of twelve on the font of Holy Trinity Church, Hull, the others having rosettes. There is no rule in this, but there are other examples in which small portions of fonts are picked out for significant decoration, and possibly on the side originally intended to be turned towards the door of the church, or the altar.

Hunting scenes frequently occur. A boss in York Minster shews a huntsman “breaking” a deer as it hangs from a tree.

The wild sweetness of one stringed and one wind instrument—not uncommonly met as harp and piccolo near London “saloon bars”—was a usual duet of the middle ages. In Stoeffler’s Calendarum Romanorum Magnum (of 1518) in a series of woodcuts illustrating the months, and which are otherwise reasonable, he gives one of these duets performed in a field as a proper occupation of the month of April with the following highly appropriate distich—

“Aprilis patule nucis sub umbra
post convivia dormio libenter.”

A CURIOUS DUET, CHICHESTER.

In this carving, however, the musicians appear to be within doors and to be giving a set duet. To the interest of the ear they add a curious spectacle for the eye, for they are seated in chairs which have no fore-legs, and their balance is kept by the flageoletist taking hold of the harp as the players sit facing, so that while leaning back they form a counter-poise to each other. The chairs are a curious study in mediÆval furniture.

It is not unlikely that the sculptor in the case of the annexed block had in his mind something similar to the saying—

“When a man’s single he lives at his ease.”

BACHELOR QUARTERS, WORCESTER.

A man come in from, we may presume, frost and snow, has taken off his boots, and warms his feet as, seated on his fald-stool by the fire, he stirs the pot with lively anticipation of the meal preparing inside. He is probably a shepherd or swine-herd; on one side is seated his dog, at the other are hung two fat gammons of bacon.

Shepherds and shepherding furnish frequent subjects to the carver.

In a Coventry Corpus Christi play of 1534 one of the three shepherds presents his gloves to the infant Saviour in these words—

“Have here my myttens, to pytt en thi hondis,
Other treysure have I none to present thee with.”

This carving has been called the Good Shepherd. If the artist really meant Christ by this shepherd with a hood over his head and hat over that, with great gloves and shoes, with a round beardless face, with his arms round the necks of two sheep, holding their feet in his hands, it is the finest piece of religious burlesque extant. But it is not to be supposed that the idea even occurred to the sculptor.

The Feast of Fools was a kind of religious farce, a “mystery” run riot. Cedranus, a Byzantine historian, who wrote in the eleventh century, records that it was introduced into the Greek Church A.D. 990, by Theophylact, patriarch of Constantinople. We can partly understand that the popular craving for the wild liberties of the Saturnalia might be met, and perhaps modified, by a brief removal of the solemn constraint of the Christian priest-rule. But licentiousness in church worship was no new thing, and, long before the time of Theophylact, the Church of the West, and probably the Greek Church also, had been rendered scandalous by the laxity with which the church services were conducted. At the Council of Orleans, in A.D. 533, it was found necessary to rule that no person in a church shall sing, drink, or do anything unbecoming; at another in ChÂlons, in A.D. 650, women were forbidden to sing indecent songs in church. There is in fact every evidence, including the sculptures of our subject, that religion was not, popularly, a thing solemn in itself. Cedranus mentions the “diabolic dances” among the enormities practised at the Feast of Fools, which was generally held about Christmas, though not confined to that festival.

In the twelfth century, the abuse increased; songs of the most indecent and offensive character were sung in the midst of the mock services; puddings were eaten, and dice rattled on the altar, and old shoes burnt as incense.

DANCING FOOLS, BEVERLEY MINSTER.

AN ABJECT OBJECT. WINCHESTER COLLEGE CHAPEL.This observance, so evidently an expedient parody of the old-time festivals, is traceable in England, and said to have been abolished about the end of the fourteenth century. The carvings in Beverley Minster, here presented, are supposed to refer to the Feast, and at any rate give us a good idea of the mediÆval fool. There were innumerable classic dances. The Greeks send down the names of two hundred kinds. A dance with arms was the Pyrrhic dance, which was similar in some of its varieties to the military dance known as the Morris. The Morris was introduced into Spain by the Moors, and brought into England by John of Gaunt in 1332. It was, however, little used until the reign of Henry VII. There were other vivacious dances, called Bayle, of Moorish origin, which, as well as various kinds of the stately Court dance, were used by the Spaniards. It is difficult, from general sources, to ascertain the dances in vogue in old England. A drawing in the Cotton MSS. shews a Saxon dancing a reel. The general inference is, however, that the Morris (of the Moors or Moriscoes) was the chief dance of the English, and perhaps it is that in which the saltatory fools of the carving are engaged.

Probably the extraordinary monstrosity shewn in the annexed block had an actual existence. There are fairly numerous accounts of such malformities in mediÆval times, and it was a function of mediÆval humour to make capital out of unfortunate deformity. This poor man has distorted hands instead of feet, and he moves about on pattens or wooden clogs strapped to his hands and legs. There is little meaning in the side carvings. The fool-ape, making an uncouth gesture, is perhaps to shew the character of those who mock misfortune. The man with the scimitar may represent the alarm of one who might suddenly come upon the sight of the abortion, and fearing some mystery or trap, draw his blade. In a sense this is a humourous carving—yet there is a quality for which it is much more remarkable, and that is its element of forcible and realistic pathos.

A MYTHOLOGICAL
EPISODE, YORK.

Two reliefs from York Minster are presumably scenes from classic mythology, from, in regard to the costumes, a Saxon point of view. One may be supposed to be the rape of Ganymede. Oak leaves are an attribute of Jupiter, as is also the eagle which bore Ganymede to Olympus.

MARITAL VIOLENCE,
YORK.

The other may be Vulcan giving Venus “a piece of his mind.”

If these readings are correct these two carvings are among the very few instances of representations of circumstantial detail of the Olympian mythology. Most of the church references to mythology have more connection with the earlier symbolic meanings than with the later narrative histories into which the cults degenerated. Other examples are in the references to Hercules in the sixteenth century stalls of Henry VII.’s Chapel, Westminster.There is in mediÆval art several examples remaining of what may be called topsy-turveyism, in which two figures mutually lent their parts to each other in such a way that four figures may be found.

An excellent example of this is at New College, Oxford, in which, though the four figures are so apparent when once seen, the two (taken as upper and lower), are in a natural and ingenious acrobatic position. The grotesque head at the base is put in to balance the composition, and perhaps to prevent the trick being discerned at once.

A CONTINUOUS GROUP OF FOUR FIGURES, OXFORD.

The grace of the free if somewhat meagre Corinthian acanthus as used in Early English work is often rendered more marked by the introduction of an extraneous subject. Thus at Wells the foliate design is relieved by the ungainly figure of a melancholy individual, who, before retiring to rest, pursues an examination into his pedal callosities, or extracts the poignant thorn. Or can it be that we have here a reminder of the Egyptian monarch, SÓmarÁja, mentioned in the Hindoo accounts of the Egyptian mythology, who was dissolute and outcast, and who, to shew his repentance and patience, stood twelve days upon one leg?

A PILGRIM’S PAINS, WELLS.

This discursive chapter would not be complete without a reference to the alleged impropriety of church grotesques. Though it is not to be denied that in the wide range of subjects a considerable number of indecent subjects have crept in, yet their proportion is small. Examination would lead to the belief that upon the whole the art of the churches is much purer than the literature or the popular taste of the respective periods. Though there may be sometimes met examples of grossness of humour and a frank want of reserve, such as in the annexed drawing from the chapel of All Souls, Oxford, yet these are rarely of the most gross or least reserved character.

A POSTURIST, ALL SOULS, OXFORD.

It may be well to note, in this connection that the literature from which we draw the bulk of our ideas as to mediÆval life, are foreign, and that, although English manners would not be remotely different in essentials, yet there would be as many absolute differences as there are yet remaining to our eyes in architecture and in art generally.

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