The Grotesque in Church Art

The other may be Vulcan giving Venus “a piece of his mind.”

If these readings are correct these two carvings are among the very few instances of representations of circumstantial detail of the Olympian mythology. Most of the church references to mythology have more connection with the earlier symbolic meanings than with the later narrative histories into which the cults degenerated. Other examples are in the references to Hercules in the sixteenth century stalls of Henry VII.’s Chapel, Westminster.

There is in mediæval art several examples remaining of what may be called topsy-turveyism, in which two figures mutually lent their parts to each other in such a way that four figures may be found.

An excellent example of this is at New College, Oxford, in which, though the four figures are so apparent when once seen, the two (taken as upper and lower), are in a natural and ingenious acrobatic position. The grotesque head at the base is put in to balance the composition, and perhaps to prevent the trick being discerned at once.

A CONTINUOUS GROUP OF FOUR FIGURES, OXFORD.

The grace of the free if somewhat meagre Corinthian acanthus as used in Early English work is often rendered more marked by the introduction of an extraneous subject. Thus at Wells the foliate design is relieved by the ungainly figure of a melancholy individual, who, before retiring to rest, pursues an examination into his pedal callosities, or extracts the poignant thorn. Or can it be that we have here a reminder of the Egyptian monarch, Sómarája, mentioned in the Hindoo accounts of the Egyptian mythology, who was dissolute and outcast, and who, to shew his repentance and patience, stood twelve days upon one leg?

A PILGRIM’S PAINS, WELLS.

This discursive chapter would not be complete without a reference to the alleged impropriety of church grotesques. Though it is not to be denied that in the wide range of subjects a considerable number of indecent subjects have crept in, yet their proportion is small. Examination would lead to the belief that upon the whole the art of the churches is much purer than the literature or the popular taste of the respective periods. Though there may be sometimes met examples of grossness of humour and a frank want of reserve, such as in the annexed drawing from the chapel of All Souls, Oxford, yet these are rarely of the most gross or least reserved character.

A POSTURIST, ALL SOULS, OXFORD.

It may be well to note, in this connection that the literature from which we draw the bulk of our ideas as to mediæval life, are foreign, and that, although English manners would not be remotely different in essentials, yet there would be as many absolute differences as there are yet remaining to our eyes in architecture and in art generally.

The Pig and other Animal Musicians.

APE AS PIPER,
BEVERLEY.ne might count in the churches animal musicians, perhaps, by thousands, and the reason of their presence is doubtless the same as that which explains the frequency of the serious carvings of musicians which adorn the arches of nave and choir throughout the country—namely the prevalent use of various kinds of instrumental music in the service of the church. The animal musicians are the burlesques of the human, and the fact that the pig is the most frequent performer may perhaps suggest that the ability of the musician had overwhelmed the consideration of other qualities which might be expected, but were not found, in the harmony-producing choristers. Clever as musicians, they may have become merely functionaries as regards interest in the church, as we see to-day in the case of our bell-ringers, who for the most part issue from the churches as worshippers enter them.

It may also be that the frequency of suilline musicians may have derisive reference to the ancient veneration in which the pig was held in the mythologies. It was a symbol of the sun, and, derivatively, of fecundity. Perhaps the strongest trace of this is in Scandinavian mythology. The northern races sacrificed a boar to Freyr, the patron deity of Sweden and of Iceland, the god of fertility; he was fabled to ride upon a boar named Gullinbrusti, or Golden Bristle. Freyr’s festival was at Yule-tide. Yule is jul or heol, the sun, and Gehul is the Saxon “Sunfeast.” The gods of Scandinavia were said to nightly feast upon the great boar Sæhrimnir, which eaten up, was every morning found whole again. This seems somewhat akin to the Hindoo story of Crórásura, a demon with the face of a boar, who continually read the Vedas and was so devout that Vishnu (the sun god) gave him a boon. He asked that no creature existing in the three worlds might have power to slay him, which was granted.

The special sacrifice of the pig was not peculiar to Scandinavia, for the Druids and the Greeks also offered up a boar at the winter solstice. The sacrifice of a pig was a constant preliminary of the Athenian assemblies. As a corn destroyer the same animal was sacrificed to Ceres.

The above explains the recurrence of the pig rather than the pig musician. A pregnant sow was, however, yearly sacrificed to Mercury, the inventor of the harp, and a sow playing the harp is among the rich set of choir carvings in Beverley Minster.

The chase of the boar was the sport of September, the ordinary killing season, the swine being then in condition after their autumn feed of bucon, or beechmast (hence bacon), “His Martinmas has come” passed into a proverb. The prevalence of the pig as a food animal had undoubtedly its share in the frequency of art reference.

In the Christian adoption of pagan attributes, the pig was apportioned to St. Anthony, it is said, variously, because he had been a swine-herd, or lived in woods. The smallest or weakling pig in a litter, called in the north “piggy-widdy” (small white pig), and in the south midlands the “dillin” (perhaps equivalent to delayed), and is elsewhere styled the Anthony pig, as specially needing the protection of his patron.

A common representation of the pig musician is a sow who plays to her brood. At Winchester, the feast of the little ones is enlivened by the strains of the double flute. At Durham Castle, in a carving formerly in Aucland Castle Chapel, the sow plays the bagpipes while the young pigs dance. At Ripon, a vigorous carving has the same subject, and another at Beverley, in which a realistic trough forms the foreground.

PIGS AND PIPES, RIPON.

The “Pig and Whistle” forms an old tavern sign. Dr. Brewer explains this as the pot, bowl, or cup (the pig), and the wassail it contained. The earthenware vessel used to warm the feet in bed is in Scotland yet called “the pig,” and to southern strangers the use of the word has caused a temporary embarrassment. If this explanation is not coincident with some other not at present to hand, the carving of the pig and whistle in the sixteenth century carving in Henry VII.’s chapel shows that the corruption of the “pig and wassail” was accepted in ignorance as far back as that period.

PIG AND WHISTLE, WESTMINSTER.

But too much stress is not to be laid upon the pig as a musician, for at Westminster the bear plays the bagpipes, just as at Winchester the ape performs on the harp. In the Beverley Minster choir an ape converts a cat into an almost automatic instrument by biting its tail.

APE AS HARPIST, WESTMINSTER.

Compound Forms.

ATHOR, CHICHESTER.n nearly every church compound forms are met which in a high degree merit the designation of grotesque. Few religions have been without these symbolic representations of complex characters. If the Egyptian had its cat-headed and hawk-headed men, the Assyrian its human-headed bull, the Mexican its serpent-armed tiger-men, so also the Scandinavian mythology had its horse-headed and vulture-headed giants, and its human-headed eagle. Horace, who doubtless knew the figurative meaning of what he satirizes, viewed the representations of such compounds in his days, and asks—

“If in a picture you should see
A handsome woman with a fishes tail,
Or a man’s head upon a horse’s neck,
Or limbs of beasts of the most diff’rent kind,
Cover’d with feathers of all sorts of birds
Would you not laugh?”[6]

It is, perhaps, a little remote from our subject to inquire whether the poet or the priest came the first in bringing about these archaic combinations; yet a word or two may be devoted to suggesting the inquiry. It is probable that the religious ideas and artistic forms met in ancient worships first solely existed in poetic expressions of the qualities of the sun—of the other members of the solar system—of the gods. Thus the swiftness of the sun in his course and in his light induced the mention of wings. Hence the wings of an eagle added to a circular form arose as the symbol in one place; in another arose the God Mercury; while Jove the great sun-god is shewn accompanied by an eagle. The fertility of the earth became as to corn Ceres, as to vines Bacchus, as to flowers Flora, and so forth. The human personification, in cases where a combination of qualities or functions was sought to be indicated, resulted in more or less abstruse literary fables; on the other hand the artist or symbol seeker found it easier to select a lower plane of thought for his embodiments. Thus, while swiftness suggested the eagle, strength was figured by the lion: so when a symbol of swiftness and strength was required arose the compound eagle-lion, the gryphon.

The gryphon, however, though constantly met in Gothic, is rarely grotesque in itself. Another form which also, to a certain extent, is incorruptible, is that of the sphinx. This is a figure symbolic of the sun from the Egyptian point of view, in which the Nile was all-important. Nilus, or Ammon, the Egyptian Jove, was the sun-god, an equivalent to Osiris, and the sphinx was similar in estimation, being, it is reasonably conjectured, a compound of Leo and Virgo, at whose conjunction the Nile has yearly risen. According to Dr. Birch, the sphinx is to be read as being the symbol of Harmachis or “the sun on the horizon.” It may be that the Child rising from the Shell is sunrise over the sea, and the Sphinx sunrise over the land. It has been conjectured that the cherubim of the tabernacle were sphinx-form. The cherubim on the Mosaic Ark are among the subjects of the earliest mention of composite symbols. Ezekiel says they were composed of parts of the figures of a man (wisdom, intellect), a lion (dominion), a bull (strength), and an eagle (sharp-sightedness, swiftness.) The Persians and Hindoos had similar figures. A man with buffalo horns is painted in the Synhedria of the American Indians in conjunction with that of a panther or puma-like beast, and these are supposed to be a contraction of the cherubimical figures of the man, the bull, and the lion; these, renewed yearly, are near the carved figures of eagles common in the Indian sun-worship.

A carving in the arm-rest of one of the stalls of Beverley Minster, suggested in the block on page 159, shews a sphinx with a shield; there are in the same church several fine examples seated in the orthodox manner.

On a capital in the sedilia of Dorchester Abbey is a curious compound which may be classed as a sphinx. One of the hands (or paws) is held over the eyes of a dog, which suggests the manner in which animals were anciently sacrificed. Another sphinx in the same sedilia is of the winged variety. It has the head cowled; many of the mediæval combinatory forms are mantled.

In Worcester Cathedral is a compound of man, ox, and lion, very different from the sphinx or cherubim shapes, being a grotesque deprived of all the original poetry of the conception.

Virgil describes Scylla (the Punic Scol, destruction) as a beautiful figure upwards, half her body being a beautiful virgin; downwards, a horrible fish with a wolf’s belly (utero). Homer similarly.

The mermaid is a frequent subject, but more monotonous in its form and action than any other creature, and is generally found executed with a respectful simplicity that scarcely ever savours of grotesqueness. The mermaid, “the sea wolf of the abyss,” and the “mighty sea-woman” of Boewulf, has an early origin as a deity of fascinating but malignant tendencies.

The centaur, perhaps, ranks next to the sphinx in artistic merit. To the early Christians the centaur was merely a symbol of unbridled passions, and all mediæval reference classes it as evil. Virgil mentions it as being met in numbers near the gates of Hades, and the Parthenon sculptures shew it as the enemy of men.

GROTESQUE CHERUBIM, WORCESTER.

The story of the encyclopedias regarding centaurs is that they were Thessalonian horsemen, whom the Greeks, ignorant of horsemanship, took to be half-men, half-animals. They were called, it is said, centaurs, from their skill in killing the wild bulls of the Pelion mountains, and, later, hippo-centaurs. This explanation may, in the presence of other combinatory forms, be considered doubtful, as it is more probable that this, like those, arose out of a poetic appreciation of the qualities underlying beauty of form, that is, out of an intelligent symbolism. The horse, where known, was always a favourite animal among men. Innumerable coinages attest this fact. Early Corinthian coins have the figure of Pegasus. In most the horse is shewn alone. In the next proportion he is attached to a chariot. In few is he shewn being ridden, as it is his qualities that were intended to be expressed, and not those of the being who has subjected him. One of the old Greek gold staters has a man driving a chariot in which the horse has a human head; while the man is urging the horse with the sacred three-branched rod, each branch of which terminates in a trefoil. The centaur has a yet unallotted place in the symbolism of the sun-myth. Classic mythology says Chiron the centaur was the teacher of Apollo in music, medicine, and hunting, and centaurs are mostly sagittarii or archers, whose arrows, like those of Apollo, are the sunbeams. The centaur met in Gothic ornament is the Zodiacal Sagittarius, and true to this original derivation, the centaur is generally found with his bow and arrow.

It is said that the Irish saints, Ciaran and Nessan, are the same with the centaurs Chiron and Nessus.

A capital of the south doorway, Iffley, has a unique composition of centaurs. A female centaur, armed with bow (broken) and arrow, is suckling a child centaur after the human manner. The equine portions of the figures are in exceptionally good drawing, though the tremendous elongation of the human trunks, and the ill-rendered position, render the group very grotesque. Both the mother and child wear the classic cestus or girdle. The bow carried by the mother is held apparently in readiness in the left hand, while it is probable that the right breast was meant to be shown removed, as was stated of the Amazons. The mother looks off, and there is an air of alertness about the two, which is explained by the sculpture on the return of the capital, where the father-centaur is seen slaying a wolf, lion, or other beast.

CENTAUR AS DRAGON SLAYER, EXETER.

On a centaur at Exeter of the thirteenth century, the mythical idea is somewhat retained; the centaur has shot an arrow into the throat of a dragon, which is part of the ornament. This is a very rude but suggestive carving. Is the centaur but a symbol of Apollo himself?

The next block (at Ely) is also of the centaur order, though not suggestive of aggression. The figure is female, and she is playing the zither. This is of the fourteenth century.

MUSICAL CENTAUR, ELY.

Another classic conception which has been perpetuated in Gothic is the harpy, though in most cases without any apparent recognition of the harpy character. Exceptions are such instances as that of the harpy drawn in the chapter “Satires without Satan.” In one at Winchester a fine mediæval effect is produced by putting a hood on the human head.

Another curious bird combination is in a carving in the Architectural Museum, Tufton Street, London, from an unknown church. This is a semi-human figure, whose upper part is skilfully draped. The head, bent towards the ground, is that of a bird of the ibis species, and it is probable that we have here a relic of the Egyptian Mercury Thoth, who was incarnated as an ibis. Thoth is called the God of the Heart (the conscience), and the ibis was said to be sacred to him because when sleeping it assumes the shape of a heart.

An unusual compound is that of a swan with the agreeable head of a young woman, in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor. This may be one of the swan-sisters in the old story of the “Knight of the Swan.”

The initial letter of this section is a fine grotesque rendering of the Egyptian goddess Athor, Athyr, or Het-her (meaning the dwelling of God.) She was the daughter of the sun, and bore in images the sun’s disc. Probably through a lapse into ignorance on the part of the priest-painters, she became of less consideration, and the signification even of her image was forgotten. She had always had as one of her representations, a bird with a human head horned and bearing the disc; but the disc began to be shewn as a tambourine, and she herself was styled “the mistress of dance and jest.” As in the cosmogony of one of the Egyptian Trinities she was the Third Person, as Supreme Love, the Greeks held her to be the same as Aphrodite. The name of the sun-disc was Aten, and its worship was kindred to that of Ra, the mid-day sun. The Hebrew Adonai and the Syriac Adonis have been considered to be derived from this word Aten.

Several examples of bird-compounds are in the Exeter series of misericordes of the thirteenth century. They are renderings in wood of the older Anglo-Saxon style of design, and are ludicrously grotesque.

It is scarcely to be considered that the compound figures were influenced by the prevalence of mumming in the periods of the various carvings. In this, as in many other respects, the traditions of the carvers’ art protected it from being coloured by the aspect of the times, except in a limited degree, shewn in distinctly isolated examples.

BIRD-COMPOUND, EXETER.

Non-descripts.

A BEARDED BIPED,
ST. KATHERINE’S.here is a large number of bizarre works which defy natural classification, and though in many cases they are a branch of the compound order of figures, yet they are frequently well defined as non-descripts. These, though in one respect the most grotesque of the grotesques, do not claim lengthy description. Where they are not traceable compounds, they are often apparently the creatures of fancy, without meaning and without history. It may be, however, that could we trace it, we should find for each a pedigree as interesting, if not as old, as that of any of the sun-myths. Among the absurd figures which scarcely call for explanation are such as that shown in the initial, from the Hospital and Collegiate Church of St. Katherine by the Tower (now removed to a substituted hospital in Regent’s Park).

In the Architectural Museum, Tufton Street, London, is a carving from an unknown church, in which appear two figures which were not an uncommon subject for artists of the odd. These are human heads, to which are attached legs without intermediary bodies, and with tails depending from the back of the heads.

In the “Pilgremage of the Sowle,” printed by Caxton in 1483, translated from a French manuscript of 1435 or earlier, is a description of a man’s conscience, which, there is little doubt, furnished the idealic material for these carvings. A “sowle” being “snarlyed in the trappe” of Satan, is being, by a travesty on the forms of a court of law, claimed by both the “horrible Sathanas” and its own Warden or Guardian Angel. The Devil calls for his chief witness by the name of Synderesys, but the witness calls himself the Worm of Conscience. The following is the soul’s description:—“Then came forth by me an old one, that long time had hid himself nigh me, which before that time I had not perceived. He was wonderfully hideous and of cruel countenance; and he began to grin, and shewed me his jaws and gums, for teeth he had none, they all being broken and worn away. He had no body, but under his head he had only a tail, which seemed the tail of a worm of exceeding length and greatness.” This strange accuser tells the Soul that he had often warned it, and so often bitten it that all his teeth were wasted and broken, his function being “to bite and wounde them that wrong themselves.”[7]

THE WORM OF CONSCIENCE. (From an unknown Church.)

NOBODIES, RIPON.

The above examples are scarcely unique. In Ripon Cathedral, on a misericorde of 1489, representing the bearing of the grapes of Eschol on a staff, are two somewhat similar figures, likewise mere “nobodies,” though without tails. These are a covert allusion to the wonderful stories of the spies, which, it is thus hinted, are akin to the travellers’ tales of mediæval times, as well as a pun on the report that they had seen nobody.

It is evident that the idea of men without bodies came from the East, and also that it had credence as an actual fact. In the Cosmographiæ Universalis, printed in 1550, they are alluded to in the following terms:—“Sunt qui cervicibus carent et in humeris habet oculos; De India ultra Gangem fluvium sita.”

There are many carvings which are more or less of the same character, and probably intended to embody the idea of conscience or sins.

The two rather indecorous figures shewn in the following block from Great Malvern are varieties doubtless typifying sins.

SINS IN SYMBOL, GREAT MALVERN.

Rebuses.

BOLT-TON.ebuses are often met among Gothic sculptures, but not in such frequency, or with an amount of humour to claim any great attention here. They are almost entirely, as in the case of the canting heraldry of seals, of late date, being mostly of the 15th and 16th centuries. They are often met as the punning memorial of the name of a founder, builder, or architect, as the bolt-ton of Bishop Bolton in St. Bartholomew’s, Smithfield, the many-times-repeated cock of Bishop Alcock in Henry VII’s. Chapel, the eye and the slip of a tree, and the man slipping from a tree, for Bishop Islip, Westminster; and others well known. In the series of misericordes in Beverley Minster, there are arma palantes of the dignitaries of the Church in 1520. William White, the Chancellor, has no less than seven different renderings of the pun upon his name, all being representations of weights, apparently of four-stone ponderosity. Thomas Donnington, the Precentor, whose name would doubtless often be written Do’ington, has a doe upon a ton or barrel. John Sperke, the Clerk of the Fabric, has a dog with a bone, and a vigilant cock; this, however, is not a name-rebus so much as an allusion to the exigencies of his office. The Church of St. Nicholas, Lynn, had misericordes (some of which are now in the Architectural Museum) which have several monograms and rebuses. Unfortunately, they are somewhat involved, and there is at present no key by which to read them. The least doubtful is that given below.

WILLIAM WHITE,
BEVERLEY MINSTER.

WEIGHT, REBUS FOR WHITE, BEVERLEY MINSTER.

It has a “ton” rebus which will admit, however, of perhaps three different renderings. It is most likely Thorn-ton, less so Bar-ton, and still less Hop-ton, all Lincolnshire names.

Illustration: MERCHANT MARK, COGNIZANCE AND REBUS, ST. NICHOLAS’S, LYNN.

Trinities.

LARVA-LIKE DRAGON,
ST. PAUL’S, BEDFORD.epeatedly has the statement been made that the various mythologies are only so many corruptions of the Mosaic system. Manifestly if this could be admitted there would be little interest in enquiring further into their details. But there are three arguments against the statement, any one of which is effective. Although it is perhaps totally unnecessary to contradict that which can be accepted by the unreflective only, it is sufficiently near the purpose of this volume to slightly touch upon the matter, as pointing strong distinctions among ancient worships.

First, there is the simple fact recorded in the Mosaic account itself, that there existed at that time, and had done previously, various religious systems, the rooting out of which was an important function of the liberated Hebrews. The only reply to this is that, by a slight shift of ground, the mythologies were corruptions of the patriarchal religion, not the Mosaic system. Yet paganism surrounded the patriarchs.

The second point is that most of the mythologies had crystallized into taking the sun as the main symbol of worship, and into taking the equinoxes and other points of the constellation path as other symbols and reminders of periodic worship; whereas in the Mosaic system the whole structure of the solar year is ignored, all the calculations being lunar. If it be objected that Numbers ix. 6-13, and II. Chronicles xxx. 2, refer indirectly to an intercalary month, that, if admitted, could only for expediency’s sake, and has no bearing upon the general silence as to the solar periods. This second point is an important testimony to what may be termed Mosaic originality.

The third point is that in most of the mythologies there is the distinct mention of a Trinity; in the Mosaic system, the system of the Old Testament, none. With the question as to whether the New Testament supports the notion of a Trinity, we need not concern ourselves here; it is enough that it has been adopted as an item of the Christian belief.

The mythological Trinities are vague and, of course, difficult or impossible to understand. Most of them appear to be attempts of great minds of archaic times to reconcile the manifest contradictions ever observable in the universe. This is done in various ways. Some omit one consideration, some another; but they generally agree that to have a three-fold character in one deity is necessary in explaining the phenomenon of existence. Some of the Trinities may be recited.

The Egyptians had other Trinities than the above, each chief city having its own form; in these, however, the third personality appears to be supposed to proceed from the other two, which scarcely seems to have been intended in the instances already given. Some of the city Trinities were as follow:—

So that it is no coincidence that both Hercules and Horus are met in Gothic carvings as deliverers from dragons.

Another Egyptian triad, styled “Trimorphous God!” was:—

Bait. Athor.  Akori.

Another:—

Telephorus. Esculapius.  Salus.

The Platonic and other philosophic Trinities need not detain us; it has been asserted that by their means the doctrine of the pagan Trinity was grafted on to Christianity.

Right down through the ages the number three has always been regarded as of mystic force. Wherever perfection or efficiency was sought its means were tripled; thus Jove’s thunderbolt had three forks of lightning, Neptune’s lance was a trident, and Pluto’s dog had three heads. The Graces, the Fates, and the Furies were each three. The trefoil was held sacred by the Greeks as well as other triad forms. In the East three was almost equally regarded. Three stars are frequently met upon Asiatic seals. The Scarabæus was esteemed as having thirty joints.

Mediæval thought, in accepting the idea of the Christian Trinity, lavishly threw its symbolism everywhere; writers and symbolists, architects and heralds, multiplied ideas of three-fold qualities.

Heraldry is permeated with three-fold repetitions, a proportion of at least one-third of the generality of heraldic coats having a trinity of one sort or another. In all probability the stars and bars of America rose from the coat-armour of an English family in which the stars were three, the bars three.

St. Nicholas had as his attributes three purses, three bulls of gold, three children.

Sacred marks were three dots, sometimes alone, sometimes in a triangle, sometimes in a double triangle; three balls attached, making a trefoil; three bones in a triangle crossing at the corners; a fleur-de-lys in various designs of three conjoined; three lines crossed by three lines; and many other forms.

God, the symbolists said, was symbolized by a hexagon, whose sides were Glory, Power, Majesty, Wisdom, Blessing, and Honor. The three steps to heaven were Oratio, Amor, Imitatio. The three steps to the altar, the three spires of the cathedral, the three lancets of an Early English window, were all supposed to refer to the Trinity.

Having seen that the idea of the Trinity is a part of most of the ancient religious systems, it remains to point to one or two instances where, in common with other ideas from that source, the Trinity has a place among church grotesques.

There is a triune head in St. Mary’s Church, Faversham, Kent, which was doubtless executed as indicative of the Trinity. The Beehive of the Romishe Church, in 1579, says: “They in their churches and Masse Bookes doe paint the Trinitie with three faces; for our mother the holie Church did learn that at Rome, where they were wont to paint or carve Janus with two faces.” In the Salisbury Missal of 1534 is a woodcut of the Trinity triangle surmounted by a three-faced head similar to the above. Hone reproduces it in his Ancient Mysteries Described, and asks, “May not the triune head have been originally suggested by the three-headed Saxon deity named “Trigla”?” The Faversham tria, it will be noticed, has the curled and formal beards of the Greek mask.

A TRINITY, ST. MARY’S, FAVERSHAM.

Another instance of a three-fold head similar to the Faversham carving is at Cartmel.

A still more remarkable form of the same thing occurs as a rosette on the tomb of Bishop de la Wich, in Chichester Cathedral, in which the trinity of faces is doubled and placed in a circle in an exceedingly ingenious and symmetrical manner. This has oak leaves issuing from the mouths, which we have seen as a frequent adjunct of the classic mask as indicating Jupiter.

DOUBLE TRINITY OF FOLIATE MASKS, CHICHESTER.

In carvings three will often be found to be a favourite number without a direct reference to the Trinity. The form of the misericorde is almost invariably a three-part design, and, being purely arbitrary, its universal adoption is one of the evidences of the organization of the craft gild.

As with the misericorde, so with its subjects. At Exeter we have seen (page 4) the tail of the harpy made into a trefoil ornament, while she grasps a trefoil-headed rod (just as among Assyrian carvings we should have met a figure bearing the sacred three-headed poppy). At Gayton (page 87) we have the three-toothed flesh-hook; at Maidstone is another. Chichester Cathedral and Chichester Hospital have each three groups. Beverley Minster has three fish interlaced, and three hares running round inside a circle. In Worcester Cathedral there are three misericordes, in each of which there are three figures, in which groups the number is evidently intentional. Three till the ground, three reap corn with sickles, three mow with scythes.