Beasts in the Lady Chapel

     Bishop Walter de Langton’s Lady Chapel, finished c. 1336,[1] has numerous blind arcades along the lower wall above the bottom bench. Each arcade contains a decorated canopy, supported by shafts with carved capitals. The canopies, which bow forward, have trefoil ogee arches,[2] surmounted with finials edged with crockets.[3] Within the arches are sculpted animal and a small number of plant depictions, many being mythical beasts or grotesque hybrids or chimeras. These fabula and curiositates, names used in the medieval period,[4] must have reflected the thinking of the visiting Parisian stonemasons. Precisely, what was their purpose, however, has been well considered, but there is no agreed answer.

 

                                                Two arcades in the Lady Chapel

 

Four examples of beasts. Appear to be from the left, a human head on a fish body, a cat’s head on a segmented body like an insect, possible panther and a human in a strange monkey-like pose.

 

            Did these beasts have a religious significance? Did they have something to say?

“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.

The following is a list of explanations for sculpting these fantastical beasts.

1.    Like grotesques they were meant to ward off evil. This is incongruous 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.

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]

3.    The images were used as an aid in converting illiterate people who were following pagan religions. Many of them referenced pagan traditions, particularly representations of 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 real evidence. There are enough images within the Bible, many extraordinary, without resorting to show fantastic beasts.

4.    They were simply the result of musing by the masons, a kind of medieval graffiti. Why then are there so many and why do almost all lack some kind of humour? Why are some repetitious?

5.    They were a jibe at someone known to the church. If so, they lack detail especially in the face. A pejorative narrative would not fit in with a Chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

6.    They were not scary but instead reminded onlookers of favoured stories known in the 14th-century. An oral tradition could explain why it was unnecessary to give a written explanation of these beasts in Lichfield or elsewhere. A form of popular Gothic architecture without a coherent symbolism.

7.    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 simply ornamental. It is quite possible they are in the form seen because that is what the mason felt like sculpting; they are deliberately meaningless, but pleasing to sculpt and aesthetically satisfying to view. Woodcock called them ‘liminal images’;[6] that is on a boundary where there is ambivalence and maybe confusion. They are unclassifiable in an unknown realm. Indeed, it is possible the masons had little idea of what creatures abounded in the world and were happy to sculpt garbled versions of nature. They too were stretching the imagination.

8.    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?

9.    Trubshaw[7] stated 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.

9 figures are of a bird with its beak pointing upwards. Sometimes the body is fish-like. The bird is close to being a Corvid.

    

 

9 figures are cat-like having round faces and small pointed ears. The bodies vary.

 

11 figures are dog-like and the one shown appears to be scratching with its back leg.

  

 

6 figures appear to be hooded men, like monks, with a cape and strange body

 

3 figures appear 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?

 

One image is a Sheela na gig.

  

An animal with a twisted horn

  

            Is this a green man or a hobgoblin?

 

The only conclusion can be its an eclectic mix of simple chimeras whose purpose, if they had a purpose, has long been obscured. They should not be dismissed as folly. What would have Langton thought; he died before they were sculpted?

[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).  

[7] B. Trubshaw, Mawning and mooning: Towards an understanding of medieval carvings and their carers. (Marlborough: 1012), 121