The Grotesque in Church Art Part 8

[Ill.u.s.tration: HUMOUR, YORK.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MASK WITH SAUSAGE, STRATFORD-UPON-AVON.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A JEALOUS EYE, YORK.]

The knight with the twisted beard, from Swine, may be a portrait, and the Gargantuan-faced dominus from St. Mary's Minster certainly is. An old barbarian head from a croche or elbow-rest at Bakewell is rude and worn, but yet bold and fine.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A BEARD WITH A TWIST, SWINE, YORKSHIRE.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A QUIZZICAL VISAGE, BAKEWELL.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRIMACE MAKER, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FOOL'S HEADS, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

Some of these are better than the joculators and mimes' faces in which the artist seriously set himself a humorous task, as in the three heads (page 130) from Beverley Minster, though the latter are in some respects more grotesque.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PORTRAIT, ST. MARY'S MINSTER. ISLE OF THANET.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A ROUGH CHARACTER, BAKEWELL.]

Another curious instance of a grimace and posture maker, a.s.sisting his countenance's contortions by the use of his fingers, is at Dorchester Abbey. In this the artist has not been master of the facial anatomy, and shows a double pair of lips, one pair in repose, the other pulled back at the corners.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRIMACE MAKER, DORCHESTER, OXON.]

Often a grotesque face will be found added to a beautiful design of foliage, either as the conventional mask, as in the design in Lincoln Chapter House, or a realistic head, as the following grim, dour visage between graceful curves on a misericord at King's College, Cambridge.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRACE AND THE GRACELESS, KING'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.]

The Domestic and Popular.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE WEAKER VESSEL, SHERBORNE.]

Domestic and popular incidents are plentiful among the carvings, of which they form, indeed, a distinct cla.s.s; 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 mediaeval manners in general.

In the majority of cases the incidents have a familiar, if not an endearing suggestiveness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOMESTIC DISCIPLINE, BEVERLEY MINSTER.]

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN UNKIND FARE, 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.

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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PILGRIMAGE IN COMFORT, CANTERBURY.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MARTINMAS. CHRISTMAS. HOLY TRINITY, HULL.]

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 c.o.ke 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HUNTSMAN AND DEER, YORK.]

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 ill.u.s.trating 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 mediaeval 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 antic.i.p.ation 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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.

Cedra.n.u.s, 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 Chalons, 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.

Cedra.n.u.s 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.