Part 8

The initial letter of this section is a fine grotesque rendering of the Egyptian goddess Athor, Athyr, or Het-her (meaning the dwelling of God.) She was the daughter of the sun, and bore in images the sun's disc. Probably through a lapse into ignorance on the part of the priest-painters, she became of less consideration, and the signification even of her image was forgotten. She had always had as one of her representations, a bird with a human head horned and bearing the disc; but the disc began to be shewn as a tambourine, and she herself was styled "the mistress of dance and jest." As in the cosmogony of one of the Egyptian Trinities she was the Third Person, as Supreme Love, the Greeks held her to be the same as Aphrodite. The name of the sun-disc was Aten, and its worship was kindred to that of Ra, the mid-day sun. The Hebrew Adonai and the Syriac Adonis have been considered to be derived from this word Aten.

Several examples of bird-compounds are in the Exeter series of misericordes of the thirteenth century. They are renderings in wood of the older Anglo-Saxon style of design, and are ludicrously grotesque.

It is scarcely to be considered that the compound figures were influenced by the prevalence of mumming in the periods of the various carvings. In this, as in many other respects, the traditions of the carvers' art protected it from being coloured by the aspect of the times, except in a limited degree, shewn in distinctly isolated examples.

Non-descripts.

There is a large number of bizarre works which defy natural classification, and though in many cases they are a branch of the compound order of figures, yet they are frequently well defined as non-descripts. These, though in one respect the most grotesque of the grotesques, do not claim lengthy description. Where they are not traceable compounds, they are often apparently the creatures of fancy, without meaning and without history. It may be, however, that could we trace it, we should find for each a pedigree as interesting, if not as old, as that of any of the sun-myths. Among the absurd figures which scarcely call for explanation are such as that shown in the initial, from the Hospital and Collegiate Church of St. Katherine by the Tower (now removed to a substituted hospital in Regent's Park).

In the Architectural Museum, Tufton Street, London, is a carving from an unknown church, in which appear two figures which were not an uncommon subject for artists of the odd. These are human heads, to which are attached legs without intermediary bodies, and with tails depending from the back of the heads.

In the "Pilgremage of the Sowle," printed by Caxton in 1483, translated from a French manuscript of 1435 or earlier, is a description of a man's conscience, which, there is little doubt, furnished the idealic material for these carvings. A "sowle" being "snarlyed in the trappe" of Satan, is being, by a travesty on the forms of a court of law, claimed by both the "horrible Sathanas" and its own Warden or Guardian Angel. The Devil calls for his chief witness by the name of Synderesys, but the witness calls himself the Worm of Conscience. The following is the soul's description:--"Then came forth by me an old one, that long time had hid himself nigh me, which before that time I had not perceived. He was wonderfully hideous and of cruel countenance; and he began to grin, and shewed me his jaws and gums, for teeth he had none, they all being broken and worn away. He had no body, but under his head he had only a tail, which seemed the tail of a worm of exceeding length and greatness." This strange accuser tells the Soul that he had often warned it, and so often bitten it that all his teeth were wasted and broken, his function being "to bite and wounde them that wrong themselves."[7]

The above examples are scarcely unique. In Ripon Cathedral, on a misericorde of 1489, representing the bearing of the grapes of Eschol on a staff, are two somewhat similar figures, likewise mere "nobodies," though without tails. These are a covert allusion to the wonderful stories of the spies, which, it is thus hinted, are akin to the travellers' tales of mediæval times, as well as a pun on the report that they had seen nobody.

It is evident that the idea of men without bodies came from the East, and also that it had credence as an actual fact. In the _Cosmographiæ Universalis_, printed in 1550, they are alluded to in the following terms:--"Sunt qui cervicibus carent et in humeris habet oculos; De India ultra Gangem fluvium sita."

There are many carvings which are more or less of the same character, and probably intended to embody the idea of conscience or sins.

The two rather indecorous figures shewn in the following block from Great Malvern are varieties doubtless typifying sins.

Rebuses.

Rebuses are often met among Gothic sculptures, but not in such frequency, or with an amount of humour to claim any great attention here. They are almost entirely, as in the case of the canting heraldry of seals, of late date, being mostly of the 15th and 16th centuries. They are often met as the punning memorial of the name of a founder, builder, or architect, as the bolt-ton of Bishop Bolton in St. Bartholomew's, Smithfield, the many-times-repeated cock of Bishop Alcock in Henry VII's. Chapel, the eye and the slip of a tree, and the man slipping from a tree, for Bishop Islip, Westminster; and others well known. In the series of misericordes in Beverley Minster, there are _arma palantes_ of the dignitaries of the Church in 1520. William White, the Chancellor, has no less than seven different renderings of the pun upon his name, all being representations of weights, apparently of four-stone ponderosity. Thomas Donnington, the Precentor, whose name would doubtless often be written Do'ington, has a doe upon a ton or barrel. John Sperke, the Clerk of the Fabric, has a dog with a bone, and a vigilant cock; this, however, is not a name-rebus so much as an allusion to the exigencies of his office. The Church of St. Nicholas, Lynn, had misericordes (some of which are now in the Architectural Museum) which have several monograms and rebuses. Unfortunately, they are somewhat involved, and there is at present no key by which to read them. The least doubtful is that given below.

It has a "ton" rebus which will admit, however, of perhaps three different renderings. It is most likely Thorn-ton, less so Bar-ton, and still less Hop-ton, all Lincolnshire names.

Trinities.

Repeatedly has the statement been made that the various mythologies are only so many corruptions of the Mosaic system. Manifestly if this could be admitted there would be little interest in enquiring further into their details. But there are three arguments against the statement, any one of which is effective. Although it is perhaps totally unnecessary to contradict that which can be accepted by the unreflective only, it is sufficiently near the purpose of this volume to slightly touch upon the matter, as pointing strong distinctions among ancient worships.

First, there is the simple fact recorded in the Mosaic account itself, that there existed at that time, and had done previously, various religious systems, the rooting out of which was an important function of the liberated Hebrews. The only reply to this is that, by a slight shift of ground, the mythologies were corruptions of the patriarchal religion, not the Mosaic system. Yet paganism surrounded the patriarchs.

The second point is that most of the mythologies had crystallized into taking the sun as the main symbol of worship, and into taking the equinoxes and other points of the constellation path as other symbols and reminders of periodic worship; whereas in the Mosaic system the whole structure of the solar year is ignored, all the calculations being lunar. If it be objected that Numbers ix. 6-13, and II. Chronicles xxx. 2, refer indirectly to an intercalary month, that, if admitted, could only for expediency's sake, and has no bearing upon the general silence as to the solar periods. This second point is an important testimony to what may be termed Mosaic originality.

The third point is that in most of the mythologies there is the distinct mention of a Trinity; in the Mosaic system, the system of the Old Testament, none. With the question as to whether the New Testament supports the notion of a Trinity, we need not concern ourselves here; it is enough that it has been adopted as an item of the Christian belief.

The mythological Trinities are vague and, of course, difficult or impossible to understand. Most of them appear to be attempts of great minds of archaic times to reconcile the manifest contradictions ever observable in the universe. This is done in various ways. Some omit one consideration, some another; but they generally agree that to have a three-fold character in one deity is necessary in explaining the phenomenon of existence. Some of the Trinities may be recited.

PERSIAN.

OROMASDES, Goodness, the deviser of Creation.

MITHRAS, Eternal Intellect, the architect and ruler of the world, literally "the Friend."

ARIMANES, the mundane soul (Psyche).

GRECIAN.

ZEUS.

PALLAS.

HERA.

ROMAN.

JUPITER, Power.

MINERVA, Wisdom, Eternal Intellect.

JUNO, Love.

SCANDINAVIAN.

ODIN, Giver of Life.

HÆNIR, Giver of motion and sense.

LODUR, Giver of speech and the senses.

AMERICAN INDIAN.

OTKON.

MESSOU.

ATAHUATA.

EGYPTIAN.

CNEPH, the Creator, Goodness.

PTA (Opas), the active principle of Creation (= Vulcan).

EICTON.

The Egyptians had other Trinities than the above, each chief city having its own form; in these, however, the third personality appears to be supposed to proceed from the other two, which scarcely seems to have been intended in the instances already given. Some of the city Trinities were as follow:--

THEBES.

AMUN-RA (= Jupiter), (RA = the Mid-day Sun.)

MANT or MENTU (= "the mother," Juno.)

CHONSO (= Hercules.)

PHILAE & ABYDOS.

OSIRIS (= Pluto).

ISIS (= Prosperine).

HORUS, the Saviour, the Shepherd (the Rising Sun).

ABOO-SIMBEL.

PTA or PHTHAH.

AMUM-RA.

ATHOR, Love (the wife of HORUS).

So that it is no coincidence that both Hercules and Horus are met in Gothic carvings as deliverers from dragons.

ELEPHANTINE.

KHUM or CHNOUMIS.

ANUKA.

HAK.

MEMPHIS.

PTAH.

MERENPHTAH.

NEFER-ATUM.

HELIOPOLIS.

TUM (Setting Sun.)

NEBHETP.

HORUS.

Another Egyptian triad, styled "Trimorphous God!" was:--

BAIT.

ATHOR.

AKORI.

Another:--

TELEPHORUS.

ESCULAPIUS.

SALUS.

VEDIC HINDOO.

AGNI, Fire, governing the Earth.

INDRA, The Firmament, governing Space or Mid Air.

SURYA, The Sun, governing the Heavens.

BRAHMINIC HINDOO.

BRAHMA, the Creator.

VISHNU, the Preserver.

SIVA, the Destroyer (the Transformer) (= Fire).

The Platonic and other philosophic Trinities need not detain us; it has been asserted that by their means the doctrine of the pagan Trinity was grafted on to Christianity.

Right down through the ages the number three has always been regarded as of mystic force. Wherever perfection or efficiency was sought its means were tripled; thus Jove's thunderbolt had three forks of lightning, Neptune's lance was a trident, and Pluto's dog had three heads. The Graces, the Fates, and the Furies were each three. The trefoil was held sacred by the Greeks as well as other triad forms. In the East three was almost equally regarded. Three stars are frequently met upon Asiatic seals. The Scarabæus was esteemed as having thirty joints.

Mediæval thought, in accepting the idea of the Christian Trinity, lavishly threw its symbolism everywhere; writers and symbolists, architects and heralds, multiplied ideas of three-fold qualities.

Heraldry is permeated with three-fold repetitions, a proportion of at least one-third of the generality of heraldic coats having a trinity of one sort or another. In all probability the stars and bars of America rose from the coat-armour of an English family in which the stars were three, the bars three.

St. Nicholas had as his attributes three purses, three bulls of gold, three children.

Sacred marks were three dots, sometimes alone, sometimes in a triangle, sometimes in a double triangle; three balls attached, making a trefoil; three bones in a triangle crossing at the corners; a fleur-de-lys in various designs of three conjoined; three lines crossed by three lines; and many other forms.

God, the symbolists said, was symbolized by a hexagon, whose sides were Glory, Power, Majesty, Wisdom, Blessing, and Honor. The three steps to heaven were Oratio, Amor, Imitatio. The three steps to the altar, the three spires of the cathedral, the three lancets of an Early English window, were all supposed to refer to the Trinity.

Having seen that the idea of the Trinity is a part of most of the ancient religious systems, it remains to point to one or two instances where, in common with other ideas from that source, the Trinity has a place among church grotesques.

There is a triune head in St. Mary's Church, Faversham, Kent, which was doubtless executed as indicative of the Trinity. The _Beehive of the Romishe Church_, in 1579, says: "They in their churches and Masse Bookes doe paint the Trinitie with three faces; for our mother the holie Church did learn that at Rome, where they were wont to paint or carve Janus with two faces." In the Salisbury Missal of 1534 is a woodcut of the Trinity triangle surmounted by a three-faced head similar to the above. Hone reproduces it in his _Ancient Mysteries Described_, and asks, "May not the triune head have been originally suggested by the three-headed Saxon deity named "Trigla"?" The Faversham tria, it will be noticed, has the curled and formal beards of the Greek mask.

Another instance of a three-fold head similar to the Faversham carving is at Cartmel.

A still more remarkable form of the same thing occurs as a rosette on the tomb of Bishop de la Wich, in Chichester Cathedral, in which the trinity of faces is doubled and placed in a circle in an exceedingly ingenious and symmetrical manner. This has oak leaves issuing from the mouths, which we have seen as a frequent adjunct of the classic mask as indicating Jupiter.

In carvings three will often be found to be a favourite number without a direct reference to the Trinity. The form of the misericorde is almost invariably a three-part design, and, being purely arbitrary, its universal adoption is one of the evidences of the organization of the craft gild.

As with the misericorde, so with its subjects. At Exeter we have seen (page 4) the tail of the harpy made into a trefoil ornament, while she grasps a trefoil-headed rod (just as among Assyrian carvings we should have met a figure bearing the sacred three-headed poppy). At Gayton (page 87) we have the three-toothed flesh-hook; at Maidstone is another. Chichester Cathedral and Chichester Hospital have each three groups. Beverley Minster has three fish interlaced, and three hares running round inside a circle. In Worcester Cathedral there are three misericordes, in each of which there are three figures, in which groups the number is evidently intentional. Three till the ground, three reap corn with sickles, three mow with scythes.

From them as being unusual in treatment, even in this stiff Flemish set, is selected the trinity of mowers. Groups of three in mowing scenes is a frequent number. Doubtless this carving is indicative of July, that being the "Hey-Monath" of early times. One of the side supporters or pendant carvings of this is a hare riding upon the back of a leoparded lion, perhaps some reference to Leo, the sign governing July.

The three mowers do not make a pleasing carving, owing to the repetition and want of curve.

Other instances of triplication in Gothic design might be given, particularly in the choice of floral forms in which nature has set the pattern. This section, however, is chiefly important as a convenient means of incorporating a record of something further of the fundamental beliefs of the world's youth, connected with and extending the question of the remote origin of the ideas at the root of so many grotesques in church art.

The Fox in Church Art.

The Fox, apostrophized as follows:

"O gentle one among the beasts of prey O eloquent and comely-faced animal!"

as an important subject in mediæval art, has two distinct places.

There is a general impression that there was a great popular literary composition, running through many editions and through many centuries, having its own direct artistic illustration, and a wide indirect illustration which, later, by its ability to stand alone, had broken away from close connection with the epic, yet possessed a derivative identity with it.

Closer examination, however, proves that there is indeed the Fox in its particular literature with its avowed illustrations, but also that there is the Fox in mediæval art, illustrative of ideas partly found in literature, but illustrative of no particular work, and yet awaiting a key. Each is a separate and distinct thing.

Among the grotesques of our churches there are some references to the literary "Reynard the Fox," but they are few and far between; while numerous most likely and prominent incidents of Reynard's career, as narrated in the poem, have no place among the carvings.

The subjects of the carvings are mostly so many variations of the idea of the Fox turned ecclesiastic and preying upon his care and congregation; and in this he is assisted by the ape, who also takes sides with him in carvings of other proceedings; but in none of these scenes is there evidence of reference to the epic. A great point of difference, too, lies in the conclusion of the epic, and the conclusion of Reynard's life as shewn in the carvings. In the epic, the King makes Reynard the Lord Chancellor and favourite.

The end of the Fox of church art, however, is far different; several sculptures agree in shewing him hanged by a body of geese.

In the epic, Reynard's victims are many. The deaths of the Hare and the Ram afford good circumstantial pictures, yet in the carvings there is neither of these; and it is scarcely Reynard who plots, and sins, and conceals, but a more vulgar fox who concerns himself, chiefly about geese, in an open, verminous way, while many of the sculptures are little more than natural history illustrations, in which we see _vulpes_, but not the Fox.

To enable, however, a fair comparison to be made between literature and art in this byway, it will be as well to glance at the history of the poem, and lay down a brief analysis of its episodes; and, next, to present sketches of some typical examples from the carvings.

Much of ancient satire owes its origin to that description of fable which bestows the attributes and capacities of the human race upon the lower animals, which are made to reason and to speak. Their mental processes and their actions are entirely human, although their respective animal characteristics are often used to accentuate their human character. In every animal Edward Carpenter sees varying sparks of the actual mental life we call human, in, it may be added, arrested or perverted development, in which, in each instance, one characteristic has immeasurably prevailed. For the animal qualities, whether human or not in kind, man has ever had a sympathetic recognition, which has made both symbol and fable easily acceptable. Perhaps symbolism, which for so many ages has taken the various animals as figures to intelligibly express abstract qualities, gave rise to fable. If so, fable may be considered the grotesque of symbolism. The same ideas--of certain qualities--are taken from their original serious import, and used to amuse, and, while amusing, to strike.

On the other hand, Grimm asserts that animal-fable arose in the Netherlands, North France, and West Germany, extending neither to the Romance countries, nor to the Keltic; whereas we find animal symbolism everywhere. Grimm's statement may be taken to speak, perhaps, of a certain class of fable, and the countries he names are certainly where we should expect to find the free-est handling of superstitions. His arguments are based on the Germanic form of the names given to the beasts, but his localities seem to follow the course of the editions. Perhaps special causes, and not the influence of race, decided the localities. The earliest trace of a connected animal-fable is of that which is also the most wide-spread and popular--the history of the Fox.

This early production is a poem, called _Isengrinus_, in Latin hexameters, by a cleric of South Flanders, whose name has not survived. It was written in the first half of the twelfth century, and first printed, it is said, so late as 1834.

In this, the narrative is briefly as follows:--The Lion is sick, and calls a court to choose his successor. Reynard is the only animal that does not appear. The Wolf, Isengrinus, to ruin Reynard's adherents, the Goat and the Ram, prescribes as a remedy for the Lion's disorder a medicine of Goat and Ram livers. They defend the absent Reynard, and pronounce him a great doctor, and, to save their livers, drive the Wolf by force from before the throne. Reynard is summoned. He comes with herbs, which, he says, will only be efficacious if the patient is wrapped in the skin of a wolf four years old. The Wolf is skinned, the Lion is cured, and Fox made Chancellor.

In this story is neatly dovetailed another, narrating how the Wolf had been prevented from devouring a party of weak pilgrim animals by the judicious display of a wolf's head. This head was cut off a wolf found hanging in a tree, and, at Reynard's instigation, the party, on the strength of possessing it, led the Wolf to believe them to be a company of professional wolf-slayers.

After this poem followed another at the end of the same century with numerous additions and alterations, by a monk of Ghent. Next came a high German poem, also of the twelfth century, expanded, but without great addition. After this came the French version, Roman de Renart, which, with supplementary compositions, enlarged the matter to no less than 41,748 verses. There is another French version, called Renart le Contrefet, of nearly the same horrible length.

A Flemish version, written in the middle of the thirteenth century, and continued in the fourteenth, became the great father of editions.

All these were in verse, but on the invention of printing the Flemish form was re-cast into prose, and printed at Gouda in 1479, and at Delft in 1485; abridged and mutilated it was often re-printed in Holland.

Caxton printed a translation in 1481, and another a few years later. The English quarto, like the Dutch, also gave rise in time to a call for a cheap abridgment, and it appeared in 1639, as "The Most delectable history of Reynard the Fox."

Meanwhile a Low Saxon form had appeared, "Reinche Bos," first printed at Lubeck in 1498, and next at Rostock in 1517, a translation, with alterations, from the Flemish publication. Various other editions in German followed, with cuts by Amman.