The Grotesque in Church Art Part 13

The Fox in Church Art.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PREACHING FOX, CHRISTCHURCH, HAMPs.h.i.+RE.]

The Fox, apostrophized as follows:

"O gentle one among the beasts of prey O eloquent and comely-faced animal!"

as an important subject in mediaeval art, has two distinct places.

There is a general impression that there was a great popular literary composition, running through many editions and through many centuries, having its own direct artistic ill.u.s.tration, and a wide indirect ill.u.s.tration which, later, by its ability to stand alone, had broken away from close connection with the epic, yet possessed a derivative ident.i.ty with it.

Closer examination, however, proves that there is indeed the Fox in its particular literature with its avowed ill.u.s.trations, but also that there is the Fox in mediaeval art, ill.u.s.trative of ideas partly found in literature, but ill.u.s.trative of no particular work, and yet awaiting a key. Each is a separate and distinct thing.

Among the grotesques of our churches there are some references to the literary "Reynard the Fox," but they are few and far between; while numerous most likely and prominent incidents of Reynard's career, as narrated in the poem, have no place among the carvings.

The subjects of the carvings are mostly so many variations of the idea of the Fox turned ecclesiastic and preying upon his care and congregation; and in this he is a.s.sisted by the ape, who also takes sides with him in carvings of other proceedings; but in none of these scenes is there evidence of reference to the epic. A great point of difference, too, lies in the conclusion of the epic, and the conclusion of Reynard's life as shewn in the carvings. In the epic, the King makes Reynard the Lord Chancellor and favourite.

The end of the Fox of church art, however, is far different; several sculptures agree in shewing him hanged by a body of geese.

In the epic, Reynard's victims are many. The deaths of the Hare and the Ram afford good circ.u.mstantial pictures, yet in the carvings there is neither of these; and it is scarcely Reynard who plots, and sins, and conceals, but a more vulgar fox who concerns himself, chiefly about geese, in an open, verminous way, while many of the sculptures are little more than natural history ill.u.s.trations, in which we see _vulpes_, but not the Fox.

To enable, however, a fair comparison to be made between literature and art in this byway, it will be as well to glance at the history of the poem, and lay down a brief a.n.a.lysis of its episodes; and, next, to present sketches of some typical examples from the carvings.

Much of ancient satire owes its origin to that description of fable which bestows the attributes and capacities of the human race upon the lower animals, which are made to reason and to speak. Their mental processes and their actions are entirely human, although their respective animal characteristics are often used to accentuate their human character. In every animal Edward Carpenter sees varying sparks of the actual mental life we call human, in, it may be added, arrested or perverted development, in which, in each instance, one characteristic has immeasurably prevailed. For the animal qualities, whether human or not in kind, man has ever had a sympathetic recognition, which has made both symbol and fable easily acceptable. Perhaps symbolism, which for so many ages has taken the various animals as figures to intelligibly express abstract qualities, gave rise to fable. If so, fable may be considered the grotesque of symbolism. The same ideas--of certain qualities--are taken from their original serious import, and used to amuse, and, while amusing, to strike.

On the other hand, Grimm a.s.serts that animal-fable arose in the Netherlands, North France, and West Germany, extending neither to the Romance countries, nor to the Keltic; whereas we find animal symbolism everywhere. Grimm's statement may be taken to speak, perhaps, of a certain cla.s.s of fable, and the countries he names are certainly where we should expect to find the free-est handling of superst.i.tions. His arguments are based on the Germanic form of the names given to the beasts, but his localities seem to follow the course of the editions. Perhaps special causes, and not the influence of race, decided the localities. The earliest trace of a connected animal-fable is of that which is also the most wide-spread and popular--the history of the Fox.

This early production is a poem, called _Isengrinus_, in Latin hexameters, by a cleric of South Flanders, whose name has not survived. It was written in the first half of the twelfth century, and first printed, it is said, so late as 1834.

In this, the narrative is briefly as follows:--The Lion is sick, and calls a court to choose his successor. Reynard is the only animal that does not appear. The Wolf, Isengrinus, to ruin Reynard's adherents, the Goat and the Ram, prescribes as a remedy for the Lion's disorder a medicine of Goat and Ram livers. They defend the absent Reynard, and p.r.o.nounce him a great doctor, and, to save their livers, drive the Wolf by force from before the throne. Reynard is summoned. He comes with herbs, which, he says, will only be efficacious if the patient is wrapped in the skin of a wolf four years old. The Wolf is skinned, the Lion is cured, and Fox made Chancellor.

In this story is neatly dovetailed another, narrating how the Wolf had been prevented from devouring a party of weak pilgrim animals by the judicious display of a wolf's head. This head was cut off a wolf found hanging in a tree, and, at Reynard's instigation, the party, on the strength of possessing it, led the Wolf to believe them to be a company of professional wolf-slayers.

After this poem followed another at the end of the same century with numerous additions and alterations, by a monk of Ghent. Next came a high German poem, also of the twelfth century, expanded, but without great addition. After this came the French version, Roman de Renart, which, with supplementary compositions, enlarged the matter to no less than 41,748 verses. There is another French version, called Renart le Contrefet, of nearly the same horrible length.

A Flemish version, written in the middle of the thirteenth century, and continued in the fourteenth, became the great father of editions.

All these were in verse, but on the invention of printing the Flemish form was re-cast into prose, and printed at Gouda in 1479, and at Delft in 1485; abridged and mutilated it was often re-printed in Holland.

Caxton printed a translation in 1481, and another a few years later. The English quarto, like the Dutch, also gave rise in time to a call for a cheap abridgment, and it appeared in 1639, as "The Most delectable history of Reynard the Fox."

Meanwhile a Low Saxon form had appeared, "Reinche Bos," first printed at Lubeck in 1498, and next at Rostock in 1517, a translation, with alterations, from the Flemish publication. Various other editions in German followed, with cuts by Amman.

In all these and their successors the incidents were varied. Having seen that, within at least certain limits, the story must have been exceedingly well-known and popular, we will run through the incidents narrated in the most popular of the German Reynard poems, chiefly taken from Goethe's rendering.

Nouvel, the Lion, calls a parliament, and the Fox does not appear, and is accused of various crimes. The Wolf accuses him of sullying the honour of his wife, and blinding his three children. A little Dog accuses him of stealing a pudding end (this the Cat denies, stating that the pudding was one of her own stealing). The Leopard accuses him of murder, having only the day before rescued the Hare from his clutch as he was throttling him, under pretence of severity in teaching the Creed.

The Badger, Grimbart, now comes forward in defence.

"An ancient proverb says, quoth he, Justice in an enemy Is seldom to be found."

He accuses the Wolf in his turn of violating the bonds of partners.h.i.+p. The Fox and the Wolf had arranged to rob a fish-cart. The Fox lay for dead on the road, and the carter, taking him up, threw him on the top of the load of fish, turning to his horse again. Reynard then threw the fish on to the road, and jumping down to join in the feast found left for him but fin and scales. The Badger explains away also the story of Reynard's guilt as to Dame Isengrin, and, with regard to the Hare, asks if a teacher shall not chastise his scholars. In short, since the King proclaimed a peace, Reynard was thoroughly reformed, and but for being absorbed in penance would no doubt have been present to defend himself from any false reports.

Unfortunately for this justification, at the very moment of its conclusion a funeral procession pa.s.ses;

"On sable bier The relics of a Hen appear,"

while Henning, the c.o.c.k, makes a piteous complaint of Reynard's misdeeds.

He said how the Fox had

"a.s.sured him he'd become a friar, And brought a letter from his prior; Show'd him his hood and s.h.i.+rt of hair, His rosary and scapulaire; Took leave of him with pious grace, That he might hasten to his place To read the nona and the sept, And vesper too before he slept; And as he slowly took his way, Read in his pocket breviary."

all of which ended in the devout penitent eating nineteen of Henning's brood.

The Lion invites his council's advice. It is decided to send an envoy to Reynard, and Bruno, the Bear, is selected to summon him to court.

Bruno finds him at his castle of Malepart, and thunders a summons.

Reynard, by plausible speech and a story of honey, disarms some of his hostility, and entices him off to a carpenter's yard, where an oak trunk, half split, yet has the wedge in. Reynard declaring the honey is in the cleft, Bruno puts his head and paws in. Reynard draws out the wedge. The Bear howls till the whole village is aroused, and Bruno, to save his life, draws himself out minus skin from head and paws. In the confusion the parson's cook falls into the stream, and the parson offers two b.u.t.ts of beer to the man who saves her. While this is being done, the Bear escapes, and the Fox taunts him.

The Bear displaying his condition at court, the King swears to hang Reynard, this time sending Hinge, the Cat, to summon Reynard to trial.

Hinge is lured to the parson's house in hopes of mice, and caught in a noose fixed for Reynard. The household wake, and beat the Cat, who dashes underneath the priest's robe, revenging himself in a cruel and unseemly way. The Cat is finally left apparently dead, but reviving, gnaws the cord, and crawls back to court.

"The King was wroth, as wroth could be."

The Badger now offers to go, three times being the necessary number for summoning a peer of the realm. He puts the case plainly before Reynard, who agrees to come, and they set out together. On the way Reynard has a fit of remorse, and confesses his sins. Grimbart plucks a twig, makes the Fox beat himself, leap over it three times, kiss it; and then declares him free from his sins. All the time Reynard casts a greedy eye on some chickens, and makes a dash at one shortly after. Accused by Grimbart, he declares he had only looked aside to murmur a prayer for those who die in "yonder cloister."

"And also I would say A prayer for the endless peace Of many long-departed geese, Which, when in a state of sin, I stole from the nuns who dwell therein."

The Fox arrives at court with a proud step and a bold eye. He is accused, but

"Tried every s.h.i.+ft and vain pretence To baffle truth and common sense, And s.h.i.+eld his crimes with eloquence."

In vain. He is condemned to die. His friend Martin the Ape, Grimbart the Badger, and others withdraw in resentment, and the King is troubled.

At the gallows Reynard professes to deliver a dying confession, and introduces a story of seven waggon-loads of gold and jewels which had been a secret h.o.a.rd of his father, stolen for the purpose of bribing chiefs to depose the Lion and place the Bear on the throne.

Reynard is pardoned on condition of pointing out the treasure. He declares it to be in Husterlo, but excuses himself from accompanying the King on his way there, as he, Reynard, is excommunicated for once a.s.sisting the Wolf to escape from a monastery, and must, therefore, go to Rome to get absolution.

The King announces his pardon to the court. The Bear and Wolf are thrown into prison, and Reynard has a scrip made of a piece of the Bear's hide, and shoes of the skin of the feet of the Wolf and his wife. Blessed by Bellin the Ram, who is the King's chaplain, and accompanied a short distance by the whole court, he sets out for Rome. The chaplain Ram and Lampe the Hare, accompany him home to bid his wife farewell. He inveigles the Hare inside, and the family eat him. He puts the Hare's head in the bear-skin wallet, and taking it to the impatient Bellin outside, asks him to take it to the King, as it contains letters of state policy.

The satchel is opened in full court, and Reynard once more proclaimed a traitor, accursed and banned, the Bear and Wolf restored, and the Ram and all his race given to them for atonement. A twelve-day tourney is held. On the eighth day the Coney and the Crow present complaint against Reynard; he had wounded the Coney, and eaten the Crow's wife. It is resolved, in spite of the Lioness's second intercession, to besiege Malepart and hang Reynard.

Grimbart secretly runs off to warn Reynard, who decides to return to court once more and plead his cause. They set out together, and Reynard again confesses his sins. This introduces a story of how he once fooled the Wolf. Isengrin coveted to eat a foal, and sent the Fox to inquire the price from the mare. She replied the price was written on her hinder hoof.

The Fox, seeing the trick, returned to the Wolf saying he could not understand the inscription. The Wolf boasts of his learning, having long ago taken his degrees as Doctor of Both Faculties. The Wolf bends down to examine the newly-shod hoof, and the rest may be supposed.