Summary. Within the arches of the Lady Chapel are sculpted animals, plants, mythical beasts, grotesque hybrids and chimeras. This bestiary reflected the 14th century idea of what creatures were in the world, but why sculpt them and place in a Lady Chapel is lost to us.
Did these beasts have a religious significance? Did they have something to say? They also parallelled weird beasts that appeared in the margins of manuscripts in the 14th-century. The border around a text became a free area for artists to draw surreal and subversive images.
Grotesque in the margin of The Luttrell Psalter, British Library, Add MS 42130.
The following is a list of possible explanations for these beasts.
1. Like grotesques they were meant to ward off evil. This is weak since they are small, almost hidden and not too frightening. Furthermore, they are within a metre of delicately sculptured heads of nobles and angels. They are more curious than scary. It also does not explain why many are repeated. Perhaps, they reminded onlookers of favoured stories known in the 14th-century. If the stained glass reminds onlookers of the bible, this stonework reminds visitors of their oral traditions.
2.
The visiting masons believed in the folk-lore,
now lost, which they freely voiced and depicted? “The truth of the stories was
just what they did not trouble about.”[5] They were sculpting what
they like to sculpt or could easily sculpt. They were simply the result of
musing by the masons, a kind of medieval graffiti.
3.
The
images were used as an aid in converting illiterate people who were following
pagan religions. Many reference pagan traditions, particularly the
anthropomorphized animals, and displaying these well-known beasts in church was
a nudge towards Christianity. They marked out the arcades as they led the doubting
pilgrim to the high altar at the east end of the chapel. This presupposes
Christians cared about pagans sufficiently to contain some of their tropes in a
church; a supposition without any evidence.
4.
Perhaps, their purpose was to emphasise they did
not have a point at all, so the onlooker was driven to search for one of their
own. They were ornamental art. Woodcock called them ‘liminal images’;[6] that is on a boundary
where there is ambivalence and maybe confusion.
They were to remind worshippers that all creatures were part
of the Kingdom of God. Why then show idealised beasts and not known animals?
Why do many have a humanoid aspect?
“But ask the animals, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you, and the fish of the sea will declare to you.” JOB, 12 v7–8.
5. Trubshaw[7] theorised the medieval mind had a very different, paradoxical, view of what was sacred. The church could include both the dangerous and impure as well as the benevolent and blessed. Both the sanctified and the abject are considered indefinable. Holier-than-thou icons could accompany horrible-than-thou grotesques. They are not to be explained by modern mores. In similar vein Charles[8] thought the weird marginalia of manuscripts, many being coarse some even blasphemous, reflected normal medieval life, with the profane and the sacred living alongside each other. Is it the same as the modern obsession by some for alien life, outrageous fake images and virtual nonsense?
There are 9
figures of a bird with its beak pointing upwards. Sometimes the body is
fish-like. The bird is close to being a Corvid.
There are 9
figures cat-like having round faces and small pointed ears. The bodies vary.
There are 11
figures dog-like and the one shown appears to be scratching with its back leg.
There are 6
figures appearing to be hooded men, like monks, with a cape and strange body
.JPG)
There are 3
figures appearing much like an owl with a long beak.
Is this an image of a stoneworker, perhaps the one overseeing the work in the Lady Chapel?
An animal with a twisted horn which might be a unicorn.
The image on the left has usually been identified as a Sheela na gig. That is a figurative naked woman displaying an exaggerated vulva. Such figures were first carved in France and Spain during the 11th century, and some believe they show fertility others suggest lust, but it is all conjecture. The image on the right is an AI rendition and clearly shows a bird with a long beak splayed out, perhaps, in flight. Close examination shows AI is more accurate. Why would a Sheela na gig be sculpted in a Chapel dedicated to the Virgin?
The only conclusion can be they
are an eclectic mix of simple chimeras whose purpose, if they had a purpose,
has long been forgotten. They should not be dismissed as folly or given a
purpose beyond our understanding of the medieval world.
[1]
In 1336, William de Heywood and Robert Aylbrick were admitted as custodians of
the fabric of the chapel of the Blessed Mary. This is taken to indicate the
Chapel was now being used.
[2]
Ogee means an S-shaped curve. An ogee
arch has a pointed apex, formed by the intersection of two S curves usually
decorated.
[3]
A. B. Clifton, The Cathedral church of
Lichfield. (London: 1900)
[4]
M. Camille, Image on the edge: The margins of medieval art. (London:
1992)
[5]
A. H. Collins, Symbolism of animals and birds represented in English Church
Architecture, (New York: 1913), 4.
[6]
A. Woodcock, Liminal images: Aspects of Medieval Architectural
Sculpture in the South of England from the Eleventh to the Sixteenth Centuries.
British Archaeological Report 31 (2005).