The Grotesque in Church Art

by T. Tindall Wildridge

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.