I. The enlightened, or in plainer terms, the sceptical character of the present age. Unaccustomed to view any great examples of heroic devotion and self-sacrifice now, we naturally, though scarcely allowing it to ourselves, begin to doubt whether there ever were any such. In thinking of Patience, our forefathers would naturally have had S. Vincent presented to their mind: but we, who, some of us have scarcely heard of his name, and some, are totally ignorant of his character, have of course no such ideas suggested. So again, where our ancestors would have represented S. Lawrence, we content ourselves with a representation of Fidelity. And it is in accordance with this easy and self-indulgent age, rather to personify a thing, which as having never had real existence, cannot be brought into comparison with ourselves, than by representing a really existing person, to run the risk of a contrast between his virtues and our own.
2. This allegorising spirit is more in accordance with the general paganism of our architectural designs: though, be it observed, a feature of the very worst and most corrupt state of Paganism. It is worth noting that in heathen countries, evil qualities have always been personified before good. Paganism like every other false system, became worst at its close. In the early times of Grecian mythology the attributes of purity, and truth, and mercy, were so strongly felt to reside in the gods, that a separate personification of them was needless: whereas strife, and violence and fury, qualities which had no place in heaven, demanded, and obtained a separate existence. But in process of time, when the divinities themselves became invested with the attributes of sinful humanity, the qualities of goodness which were no longer supposed theirs, found separate embodiments and expressions.
{cvii}
3. We may assign as a reason for the difference we have noticed the far greater reality with which our ancestors looked on the connections subsisting between ourselves and the other world. Thus, tempests and hurricanes, which we coldly explain on philosophical principles, they considered as directly proceeding from the violence of evil spirits: [Footnote 62] —earthquakes and volcanoes they regarded as outbreaks, so to speak, of that place of punishment, which they believed locally situated within the earth:—diseases and pestilences they held to be the immediate work of the devil: madness and lunacy were, in their view, synonymous with possession. Whether theirs, as it certainly was the most pious, were not also the most philosophical view, has been so ably discussed in the 'Church of the Fathers' under the chapter S. Anthony in Conflict, that we need here only allude to it. But the same spirit led them to adopt the effigies of those saints who had been members of the same Church Militant with themselves, and who now were members of that Triumphant Church which they hoped hereafter to join: and its contrary leads us to adopt the cold, vague, dreamy unsubstantialities of allegorism.
[Footnote 62: A Master of Philosophy travelling with others on the way, when a fearful thunderstorm arose, checked the fear of his fellows, and discoursed to them of the natural reasons of that uproar in the clouds, and those sudden flashes wherewith they seemed (out of the ignorance of causes) to be too much affrighted; in the midst of his philosophical discourse, he was struck dead with that dreadful eruption which he slighted. What could this be but the finger of that God Who will have His works rather entertained with wonder and trembling than with curious scanning? Neither is it to be otherwise in those violent hurricanes, devouring earthquakes, and more than ordinary tempests, and fiery apparitions which we have seen and heard of; for however there be natural causes given of the usual events of this kind, yet nothing hinders but the Almighty, for the manifestations of His power and justice, may set spirits, whether good or evil, on work, to do the same things sometimes in more state and magnificence of horror.—Bishop Hall, 'The Invisible World,' sect. vi.]
The earliest kind of monumental symbolism is that which represents the trade or profession of the person commemorated. And these principally occur on Lombardic slabs and Dos d'Anes. The distaff represents {cviii} the mother of a family: [Footnote 63] a pair of gloves a glover: [Footnote 64] so we have a pair of shears: and the like. But the Cross constantly appears; and in a highly floriated form: sometimes at its foot are three steps representing the Mount: sometimes a Holy Lamb. [Footnote 65] And so ecclesiastical personages have their appropriate symbols: so the chalice or the ring [Footnote 66] represents a priest:—another type is the hand raised in benediction [Footnote 67] over a chalice: brasses abound in symbolical imagery. The animal at the feet varies with the varying circumstances of the deceased: a married lady has the dog, the emblem of fidelity: with which we may compare the speech of Clytemnestra, of her absent Lord, [Footnote 68]
There are, doubtless, instances (there is one in Bristol, S. Peter's) where the unmarried are so represented: but they are very rare, and quite in the decline of the art. The knight again has, generally, a terrier at his feet, as the emblem of courage: sometimes the greyhound, [Footnote 69] the symbol of speed. Lord Beaumont [Footnote 70] has an elephant: it is a bearing in his coat-armour.
[Footnote 63: See on this subject an interesting article in the Church of England Quarterly, for September, 1841. ]
[Footnote 64: As in Fletching, Sussex.]
[Footnote 65: As in Lolworth, Cambridgeshire.]
[Footnote 66: As in S. Mary, Castlegate, York.]
[Footnote 67: As in Hedon, Yorkshire.]
[Footnote 68: Agamemnon, 606. (Ed. Dindorf.)]
[Footnote 69: As in Sir Grey de Groby, S. Alban's.]
[Footnote 70: Engraved in the 5th number of the Cambridge Camden Society's Illustrations of Monumental Brasses.]
Early priests have a lion [Footnote 71] also at their feet; but this typified their trampling on the devil: as servants of Him concerning whom it is written, 'And the Devil shall go forth before [Footnote 72] His feet' They have also a dragon for the same reason. And this position doubtless also has reference to the verse, 'Thou shalt tread upon the lion [Footnote 73] and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.' In the decline of the art, effigies have the crest of the departed at their feet.