A somewhat unusual subject is one in Manchester Cathedral, in which the Fox is returning from hunting. A carving where the Fox is used to point a moral is another, in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, in which three monks, conveyed in a wheel-barrow into Hell’s Mouth, are accompanied by a Fox with a goose in his mouth. Probably the idea here broadly expressed is intended to be quietly suggested by some of the above.
Next in frequency is the more definite satire of the Fox preaching to Geese. We find it at Beverley (both the Minster and St. Mary’s), Boston, Bristol, Cartmel, Ely, Etchingham, Nantwich, Ripon, Stowlangcroft, and Windsor (St. George’s Chapel). In the last he has a goose in his cowl.
All those need for their completion the supposition that the text of the Fox’s sermon is the same as was given at length in a representation of a preaching scene on an ancient stained-glass window in the church of St. Martin, Leicester, which was unhappily destroyed in the last century. In this, from the Fox’s mouth proceeded the words “Testis est mihi Deus, quam cupiam vos omnes visceribus meus” (God is my witness how I desire you all in my bowels.—Philippians, i., 8). In Wolfius, A.D. 1300, is a description of another such representation, in a MS. of Æsop’s Fables. It may accord quite well with the theory of the transmission of designs by the continuity of the artificers’ gild system to suppose that some proportion of the material found its way into their repertoire through the medium of manuscripts (not necessarily original in them), especially for such subjects as were essentially mediæval. We have seen how the carvings of Jonah and of Samson, at Ripon, were taken from the Poor Man’s Bible; here we have the Preaching Fox mentioned in a book of 1300 as being in an earlier work. A Fox bearing two Cocks by the neck on a staff is the initial T in a MS. considered by Montflaucon to be of the ninth century. Fredegarius, the Frankish historian, in the middle of the seventh century, has a fable of a Fox at the court of the Lion, repeated by others in the tenth and eleventh. Paulin Paris and Thomas Wright agreed in thinking the whole fable of French origin, and first in the Latin tongue. So that we may reasonably suppose that the countless tons of books and MSS. (though it is useless to grope now among the mere memories of ashes), burnt at the Reformation, would contain much that would have made clearer our understanding of this subject of Gothic grotesques. It is clear, however, that the Fox was used as a means of satirical comment before the writing of the Isengrine Fable, and that most of the church carvings refer to what we may call pre-Fable or co-Fable conceptions.
There may be other material lying hidden in our great libraries, but search for early Reynard drawings produces almost nothing.
At Ripon the Fox is shewn without vestments, in a neat Gothic pulpit adorned with carvings of the trefoil.[8] His hands, and what they may have held, are gone. His congregation is to his right a goose, to his left a cock, who appear to be uttering responses, while his face is significant of conscious slyness.
THE PREACHING FOX, RIPON.
In Beverley Minster the Preaching Fox is in a square panelled pulpit on four legs; before him are seven geese, one of whom slumbers peacefully. He wears a gown and cowl, has a rosary in his right hand, and appears to be performing his part with some animation. Behind the pulpit stands an ape with a goose hung on a stick, while another fox—to give point to the lesson—is slinking off with a goose slung over his back. At St. Mary’s, Beverley, the various carvings have a decidedly manuscript appearance. The one of the Preaching Fox has labels, upon which, in some unknown original, may have been inscribed texts or other matter. Here the Fox wears only his “scapulaire,” and has his right hand raised in correct exhortative manner; his pulpit is of stone, and is early. Behind stand two persons, perhaps male and female, whose religious dress would lead us to suppose them to represent the class to whose teaching a fox-like character is to be attributed. At the front are seated two apes, also in scapularies, or hoods, who, as well as the Fox, may be here to shew the real character of the supposed sanctified.
