The Monster Mash

When you go down to an abbey today you’re sure of a big surprise...

Perhaps it has become evident from the images I have been sharing that I like to take photographs of strange looking creatures in medieval buildings that the casual observer might overlook.

Ely Cathedral, gallery, south side.

Ignored by early twentieth-century art historians, monsters have increasingly become a popular field of study, as observers attempted to rationalise their presence within illuminated manuscripts and both secular and ecclesiastical buildings.

Reasons discussed by historians have included the idea of trial pieces. Novice stone masons, for example, might practise their skills on pieces that were tucked away from direct view and giving a monster three eyes would be less grievous than giving the Virgin Mary a similar affliction.

Rievaulx Abbey, corbel bracket with carved faces.

Another argument, one which I favour, suggested that monsters could hold a didactic function. Young novices might have been racked by temptation and depictions of men physically been torn or eaten by monstrous creatures could perhaps have helped to visualise and overcome their internal conflict.

St Augustine's Abbey, sculpted human head flanked by biting animals.

Monsters also appeared in floor tiles, a sadly neglected medium in these studies. Floor tiles, and their monsters, were literally beneath the monks and squashed under their feet – was this a kind of re-enactment of Christ trampling the devil?

St Mary's Abbey York, capital and tile depicting similar hybrid creature.

Of course there is the danger of ascribing too much meaning to these images. None of the arguments so far put forward by historians totally explain the presence of monsters in medieval art. As such perhaps they were not meant to be explained at all; perhaps they were simply a form of irreverent or amusing decoration.

Though poor Bernard of Clairvaux failed to see the humour in such images: “What profit is there in those ridiculous monsters...? To what purpose are those unclean apes, those fierce lions, those monstrous centaurs, those half men, those striped tigers...? ...Here is a four-footed beast with a serpent’s tail; there, a fish with a beast’s head. Here again the forepart of a horse trails half a goat behind it, or a horned beast bears the hinder quarters of a horse. In short, so many and so marvellous are the varieties of diverse shapes on every hand, that we are more tempted to read in the marble than in our books.”