The Grotesque in Church Art Part 12

ATHOR, Love (the wife of HORUS).

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

ELEPHANTINE.

KHUM or CHNOUMIS.

ANUKA.

HAK.

MEMPHIS.

PTAH.

MERENPHTAH.

NEFER-ATUM.

HELIOPOLIS.

TUM (Setting Sun.)

NEBHETP.

HORUS.

Another Egyptian triad, styled "Trimorphous G.o.d!" was:--

BAIT.

ATHOR.

AKORI.

Another:--

TELEPHORUS.

ESCULAPIUS.

SALUS.

VEDIC HINDOO.

AGNI, Fire, governing the Earth.

INDRA, The Firmament, governing s.p.a.ce or Mid Air.

SURYA, The Sun, governing the Heavens.

BRAHMINIC HINDOO.

BRAHMA, the Creator.

VISHNU, the Preserver.

SIVA, the Destroyer (the Transformer) (= Fire).

The Platonic and other philosophic Trinities need not detain us; it has been a.s.serted 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 Scarabaeus was esteemed as having thirty joints.

Mediaeval 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 repet.i.tions, 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 b.a.l.l.s 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.

G.o.d, 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 Ma.s.se 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 Ja.n.u.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 cla.s.sic mask as indicating Jupiter.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 a.s.syrian 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TRINITY OF MOWERS, WORCESTER.]

From them as being unusual in treatment, even in this stiff Flemish set, is selected the trinity of mowers. Groups of three in mowing scenes is a frequent number. Doubtless this carving is indicative of July, that being the "Hey-Monath" of early times. One of the side supporters or pendant carvings of this is a hare riding upon the back of a leoparded lion, perhaps some reference to Leo, the sign governing July.

The three mowers do not make a pleasing carving, owing to the repet.i.tion and want of curve.

Other instances of triplication in Gothic design might be given, particularly in the choice of floral forms in which nature has set the pattern. This section, however, is chiefly important as a convenient means of incorporating a record of something further of the fundamental beliefs of the world's youth, connected with and extending the question of the remote origin of the ideas at the root of so many grotesques in church art.