No. 28. A Jolly Monk.
No. 29. Satan in Bonds.
No. 30. Satan.
The inclination to give to the demons (the middle ages always looked upon them as innumerable) monstrous forms, which easily ran into the grotesque, was natural, and the painter, indeed, prided himself on drawing them ugly; but he was no doubt influenced in so generally caricaturing them, by mixing up this idea with those furnished by the popular superstitions of the Teutonic race, who believed in multitudes of spirits, representatives of the ancient satyrs, who were of a playfully malicious description, and went about plaguing mankind in a very droll manner, and sometimes appeared to them in equally droll forms. They were the Pucks and Robin Goodfellows of later times; but the Christian missionaries to the west taught their converts to believe, and probably believed themselves, that all these imaginary beings were real demons, who wandered over the earth for people’s ruin and destruction. Thus the grotesque imagination of the converted people was introduced into the Christian system of demonology. It is a part of the subject to which we shall return in our next chapter; but I will here introduce two examples of the Anglo-Saxon demons. To explain the first of these, it will be necessary to state that, according to the mediæval notions, Satan, the arch demon, who had fallen from heaven for his rebellion against the Almighty, was not a free agent who went about tempting mankind, but he was himself plunged in the abyss, where he was held in bonds, and tormented by the demons who peopled the infernal regions, and also issued thence to seek their prey upon God’s newest creation, the earth. The history of Satan’s fall, and the description of his position (No. 29), form the subject of the earlier part of the Anglo-Saxon poetry ascribed to Cædmon, and it is one of the illuminations to the manuscript of Cædmon (which is now preserved at Oxford), which has furnished us with our cut, representing Satan in his bonds. The fiend is here pictured bound to stakes, over what appears to be a gridiron, while one of the demons, rising out of a fiery furnace, and holding in his hand an instrument of punishment, seems to be exulting over him, and at the same time urging on the troop of grotesque imps who are swarming round and tormenting their victim. The next cut, No. 30, is also taken from an Anglo-Saxon manuscript, preserved in the British Museum (MS. Cotton., Tiberius, C. vi.), which belongs to the earlier half of the eleventh century, and contains a copy of the psalter. It gives us the Anglo-Saxon notion of the demon under another form, equally characteristic, wearing only a girdle of flames, but in this case the especial singularity of the design consists in the eyes in the fiend’s wings.
No. 31. The Temptation.
No. 32. David and the Lion.
Another circumstance had no doubt an influence on the mediæval taste for grotesque and caricature—the natural rudeness of early mediæval art. The writers of antiquity tell us of a remote period of Grecian art when it was necessary to write under each figure of a picture the name of what it was intended to represent, in order to make the whole intelligible—“this is a horse,” “this is a man,” “this is a tree.” Without being quite so rude as this, the early mediæval artists, through ignorance of perspective, want of knowledge of proportion, and of skill in drawing, found great difficulty in representing a scene in which there was more than one figure, and in which it was necessary to distinguish them from each other; and they were continually trying to help themselves by adopting conventional forms or conventional positions, and by sometimes adding symbols that did not exactly represent what they meant. The exaggeration in form consisted chiefly in giving an undue prominence to some characteristic feature, which answered the same purpose as the Anglo-Saxon nickname and distinctive name, and which is, in fact, one of the first principles of all caricature. Conventional positions partook much of the character of conventional forms, but gave still greater room for grotesque. Thus the very first characteristics of mediæval art implied the existence of caricature, and no doubt led to the taste for the grotesque. The effect of this influence is apparent everywhere, and in innumerable cases serious pictures of the gravest and most important subjects are simply and absolutely caricatures. Anglo-Saxon art ran much into this style, and is often very grotesque in character. The first example we give (cut No. 31) is taken from one of the illustrations to Alfric’s Anglo-Saxon version of the Pentateuch, in the profusely illuminated manuscript in the British Museum (MS. Cotton., Claudius B iv.), which was written at the end of the tenth, or beginning of the eleventh, century. It represents the temptation and fall of man; and the subject is treated, as will be seen, in a rather grotesque manner. Eve is evidently dictating to her husband, who, in obeying her, shows a mixture of eagerness and trepidation. Adam is no less evidently going to swallow the apple whole, which is, perhaps, in accordance with the mediæval legend, according to which the fruit stuck in his throat. It is hardly necessary to remark that the tree is entirely a conventional one; and it would be difficult to imagine how it came to bear apples at all. The mediæval artists were extremely unskilful in drawing trees; to these they usually gave the forms of cabbages, or some such plants, of which the form was simple, or often of a mere bunch of leaves. Our next example (cut No. 32) is also Anglo-Saxon, and is furnished by the manuscript in the British Museum already mentioned (MS. Cotton., Tiberius C vi.) It probably represents young David killing the lion, and is remarkable not only for the strange posture and bad proportions of the man, but for the tranquillity of the animal and the exaggerated and violent action of its slayer. This is very commonly the case in the mediæval drawings and sculptures, the artists apparently possessing far less skill in representing action in an animal than in man, and therefore more rarely attempting it. These illustrations are both taken from illuminated manuscripts. The two which follow are furnished by sculptures, and are of a rather later date than the preceding. The abbey of St. George of Boscherville, in the diocese of Auxerre (in Normandy), was founded by Ralph de Tancarville, one of the ministers of William the Conqueror, and therefore in the latter half of the eleventh century. A history of this religious house was published by a clever local antiquary—M. Achille Deville—from whose work we take our cut No. 33, one of a few rude sculptures on the abbey church, which no doubt belonged to the original fabric. It is not difficult to recognise the subject as Joseph taking the Virgin Mary with her Child into Egypt; but there is something exceedingly droll in the unintentional caricature of the faces, as well as in the whole design. The Virgin Mary appears without a nimbus, while the nimbus of the Infant Jesus is made to look very like a bonnet. It may be remarked that this subject of the flight into Egypt is by no means an uncommon one in mediæval art; and a drawing of the same subject, copied in my “History of Domestic Manners and Sentiments” (p. 115), presents a remarkable illustration of the contrast of the skill of a Norman sculptor and of an almost contemporary Anglo-Norman illuminator. Our cut also furnishes us with evidence of the error of the old opinion that ladies rode astride in the middle ages. Even one, who by his style of art must have been an obscure local carver on stone, when he represented a female on horseback, placed her in the position which has always been considered suitable to the sex.