The Grotesque in Church Art

by T. Tindall Wildridge

Non-descripts.

A BEARDED BIPED,
ST. KATHERINE’S.here 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).

A CLOAKED SIN,
TUFTON STREET.

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 WORM OF CONSCIENCE. (From an unknown Church.)