If wealth was always represented by a moneybag, often weighing
the carrier down, sins of the flesh were variously represented
by grotesque figures, usually naked and displaying or indicating
their long hair or beards, symbolic of rampant sexuality.
Many of these are exhibitionists, both male (displaying and
sometimes licking oversized apparatus of masculinity) and female
(often showing huge vulvas). Some exhibitionists have since
had their important messages hacked
by uncomprehending prudes.
Others
remain as they were first carved, as this semi-robed and richly
head-dressed vulva-pulling female inside one of the six Romanesque
churches in Poitiers,
Church of Sainte-Radegonde,
Poitiers (Vienne)
and this Spanish portrait-pair
worthy almost of Goya.
click
to see the earliest known pair of exhibitionists
San Pedro de Tejada (Burgos)
Damnation was vividly represented, most frequently by monsters
grabbing or swallowing human figures (often naked, and/or acrobatic,
and/or exhibitionist) - representing Satan's Realm claiming
and swallowing up the souls of sinners.
(For more on monsters click here.)
(Toothy and/or horned devils also occur
in 12th century Persian illustrations of Hell,
where sinners are also attacked by snakes and scorpions.)
click
for larger pictures
click
to 
enlarge
Maillezais (Vendée), France
The
head-to-ears acrobatic position (the form of the figure 6 which
is the number associated with sin in the book of Revelations)
is also echoed by another symbol of luxurious carnality
- the mermaid, later depicted gazing into a mirror to illustrate
'unnatural' vanity in the modern sense. This mermaid is suckling
snakes forever in Hell
- a little like Prometheus on his rock.
Seu d'Urgell (Lleida), Spain
The sin of Luxuria
(the depravity of the rich) was typically punished by Hellish
snakes, tortoises,
or toads
attacking the breasts of long-tressed naked and thus lascivious
and licentious women - while Concupiscentia
(lust, lechery and lubriciousness) in men was punished by
serpents biting their balls or beards or moustaches, or otherwise
threatening them.
Saint-Front-sur-Nizonne (Dordogne),
France
click
for a larger picture
Huge,
bicorporeal, demonic beasts commonly symbolised the fate of
sinners, though the combination of this motif with an ithyphallic
male is extremely rare, if not unique.
Puypéroux (Charente), France
click
for a larger picture
Sometimes
the accompanying beast is more ambiguous - as in the case of
the centaur beside a male groping a female at Burford
in Oxfordshire, and two centaurs in an enigmatic but probably
sexual scene at Berrioplano
(Navarra). The centaur could sometimes represent Christ, but
more often the beastly man, as at Burford. At Stavanger
(Norway) he is being tormented by an ornithomorph.
The blowing of horns
into the ears of the unambiguously-megaphallic damned suggests
both the Last Trump of Judgement and the presence of evil.
Passirac (Charente), France
At Saint-Morillon
(Gironde) a male with a huge scrotum blows his own trumpet.
The
horn or oliphaunt theme is marvellously elaborated on the more
important churches. At Brioude,
the instruments are blown while two ?monks pull each other's
beard, while at Agen it is the sinner which blows the horns,
while ensnared by the reptilian tails of frightening birds which
scream into his ears.
Agen Cathedral (Lot-et-Garonne),
France
Men
flanked by beasts have, of course, other meanings, depending
upon what the beasts are doing to the man (warning or punishing
or swallowing), and what the man is doing to the beasts. A popular
theme from the dawn of recorded history is the Master
of Beasts, who, in a Christian context, can be Adam, Daniel,
Samson or Christ. Adam (iconographically derived from Orpheus)
might be portrayed naked, as indeed might Samson. This nakedness
has nothing to do with exhibitionism or carnal sin, but, rather,
emphasises Man's 'naked superiority' over other animals.
Saint-Aulaye (Dordogne), photographed
by Tina Negus.
A naked Samson thrusts his hands down
the throats of a pair of lions.
Click
for more
photos
by Tina Negus on the theme of Master of Beasts.
For hundreds of years neither sex
nor marriage were endorsed by the Western Church. St Augustine
had said that the only sex that was not a passage to Hell was
the carnal union of two Saved Souls for the sole purpose of
creating another soul to be saved. Thus most marriages were
considered to be at least potentially sinful (unlike sacred
marriages between holy men), and it was not until the the Fourth
Lateran Council of 1215 that the Church declared marriage to
be a sacrament - with a prescribed ritual - and ensured its
eventual demise by espousing the 'family values' so despised
by Jesus and the first Christians. It is no coincidence that
this came very shortly after the new cult of the Virgin Mary
replaced the respect accorded to Mary Magdalene and Lazarus
the Leper in the previous hundred years. The arrogant new Gothic
churches were dedicated to Notre-Dame and not to La
Madeleine or Saint-Lazare.
El Pla de Santa
Maria (Tarragona), Spain
Female exhibitionists have been illustrated in various books,
notably in Images
of Lust , but
few people are aware that there are at least as many male
exhibitionist carvings on churches across the length and breadth
of Europe - from Bohemia to Galicia, and Denmark to Sicily -
an enticing selection of which is illustrated here.
Solignac (Haute-Vienne), France
Saint-Ouen (Charente-Maritime),
France
Avening (Gloucestershire),
England
Abson (Somerset), England
click
for a larger picture
They
appear also on castles and even stranger places in Britain and
Ireland.
Post-mediæval gate-pillar,
Ballycloghduff (Westmeath), Ireland
click
for a larger picture
_________________________________________
This web-page is dedicated
to the late Martha Weir,
who was amazed but unfazed by these carvings,
and without whom "Images
of Lust"
would never have been researched or written.
LIST
of PHOTOGRAPHS of MALE and FEMALE EXHIBITIONISTS
on this site
enlarge
