Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Essays in Art and Culture) by Michael Camille

Author:Michael Camille [Camille, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: 2013-12-11T03:00:00+00:00

MISERICORDS AND POSTERIORS

For centuries the choir of even the smallest parish church had been the site of one of the most fertile of the marginal genres that Bakhtin has called ‘the lower bodily stratum’, carvings hidden from all but the eyes of the canons and choristers who sat or leaned upon them – the misericords (illus. 47). The name is thought to have derived from the idea of a ‘mercy-seat’ that provided some support for the older and infirm monks and canons during the long hours of services. When in the up position a misericord provided a ledge to lean back on, and when down, a proper seat. ‘Hidden from the eye of mischief’, in the words of Edward Prior, one of the earliest historians of English medieval sculpture, its art was on the underside in more ways than one. In the small field not visible when the seat is in use, the woodcarver had a chance to develop the marginal repertory found in manuscripts into three-dimensional woodcarvings.123 But the compositions need not always have been derived from manuscripts. At Rouen Cathedral, for example, there is a marvellous set of misericords – ordered in 1467 by Cardinal Guillaume D’Estouteville – that was copied from the babewyns of the Portail des Libraires.124 This suggests that nearly two hundred years after the monstrous carvings in stone had been made, they were still valued by artists and patrons as a repertory of imaginative and respectably riotous babewynerie.

The variety of subject-matter, the freshness and grainy earthiness of the carving and the intimate scale of misericords have attracted countless popular and scholarly treatments (we all have our favourites). But what is often not emphasized enough is the relative position of this art and its meaning, as regards the low subject-matter. A number of French examples have a distinctly ‘popular’ aspect, depicting riddles, pastimes and folk tales in a dynamic and often derogatory style. Here in the very centre of the sacred space, the marginal world erupts. Why this became a fashion, and why it was allowed, has to be related to the way in which these carvings were literally debased and made subservient to those ‘above’ them. The peasants labouring in the fields, the foolish merchant who carries his horse across a stream, the fox preaching to the geese – all are blotted out by the bottoms of the clergy. Sometimes this is actually reflected in the carver’s design, as at Saumur, where a figure is pinned with his nose reaching up to the choir-stall seat – literally the posterior of the sitter (illus. 47).

The censorship of the ‘low’ realism of these scenes by the portly canons’ behinds during the divine services was the obliteration of one social group by another. The ribald subject-matter was clearly visible only to the clerical élite, since laypeople, even in small churches, were not allowed to enter the sanctuary. This might explain the popularity, especially in England, of misericords showing scenes from popular romances, such as Tristan and Isolde, and other courtly subjects – not for the elevation of these themes, but literally to squash them.

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