male figures: part III

The earliest male exhibitionist in a Christian context occurs in an Anglo-Saxon manuscript from the 8th century.



Vatican MS Barberini, Lat.570, detail

A squatting naked man points to his genitals which are being bitten by snakes that represent both the temptation and the hellish punishment for yielding to it. Snakes also attack his hair and his moustaches while he pulls his beard - his secondary sexual characteristics. The motif of a human being threatened or punished by beasts or monsters, frequent in Romanesque art, also occurs on Irish sculptured crosses.

Compare the manuscript illustration above with a carving on the cathedral at Elne (Pyrénées-Orientales), which is also of a monk, smiling as he is sliding into the maw of a remarkable beast whose tail coils back to its head in a double helix.

click to enlarge and rotate.

One of the inherent problems with early Christian attitudes to sex was the concept of'brotherly love', the pairing of monks in 'spiritual marriage' as eulogised by the 12th Century, Abbot (later Saint) Ælred of Rievaulx in Yorkshire, whose spiritual and close relationship with a monk called Simon slightly pre-dated the famous heterosexual liaison of Abelard and Eloïse and harked back to the "marriage of true minds": the Sacred Union of two holy males in Brotherly Love ('philadelphia') practised by uninstitutionalised early Christian monks in the Middle East and, later, in Ireland. (See Boswell, John: THE MARRIAGE OF LIKENESS - SAME-SEX UNIONS IN PRE-MODERN EUROPE, HarperCollins 1996)

This holy and passionate, mystical male companionship is also a strong element in Sh'ia Islam, where perhaps the most famous is that between the celebrated Afghan poet (and founder of the Mevlevi Order) Jalaluddin Rumi and his spiritual master Shams-i-Tabriz.

Such close companionship in a single-sex monastic environment where chastity was considered a prime virtue must inevitably have led to physical unions along a spectrum ranging from hugging to mutual masturbation by frottage - and perhaps to unrecorded extremes. The danger of what we now call 'homosexual acts' must have been ever-present just as it is in any same-sex institution, especially within the Roman Catholic church which even today displays duplicitous ambivalence in its attitude towards the behaviour (and 'sexual orientation') of priests who are not even confined to the monastic situation. So it is not surprising that the monk in the Anglo-Saxon manuscript points to large genitals to warn against the pitfall of sexual activity (and jealousy) within the monastery: the penis is best considered as a seductive foreign country to which one travels at one's peril. So, while Jesus could appear as a male nude on two late Classical mosaics in Ravenna depicting his baptism, the naked male very gradually came to be viewed, after the establishment of St Benedict's Rule a couple of centuries later, as a symbol of dire temptation - increasingly as the Benedictine monasteries multiplied. Benedictine monks may well have pre-empted or influenced Thomas Aquinas' teaching that masturbation was a worse sin than rape, incest, and adultery (because in these other sins procreation is a possibility). Already in the 11th century, Pope Leo IX (1049-54) had forbidden masturbators (reputed or self-confessed) to be admitted to sacred orders.

In pre-Romanesque times, however, Christ Exhibitionist (but not erect) seems not to have been an unusual motif as this Merovingian tile from Auvergne demonstrates.

click for a description

When exhibitionist figures feature on Romanesque capitals (rather than corbels), they are usually associated with devouring monsters, tormenting devils, or tempters. Another English example can be found on a lintel which has been re-erected on a church in Shropshire - a lintel in the Anglo-Saxon (rather than a French) style, which shows a damaged exhibitionist female (with coiffure or headdress) together with a very Irish or Pictish theriomorphic figure.

Bredwardine (Shropshire)
click for larger pictures

In Romanesque art women's hair (or elaborate head-dress) usually symbolises luxury and sensuality, while men's beards/moustaches often symbolise testosteronic sinfulness. A twelfth-century Spanish carving depicts a bicorporeal man each of whose bodies tugs at his beard.

click to enlarge

Sant Joan de les Abadesses (Girona), Spain

This is a variant of the motif of mutual beard-pullers which originally symbolised strife and discord between males, though also seems to have come to symbolise 'unnatural' affection. ( Nurith Kenaan-Kedar, however, quaintly regards beard-pulling as symbolic of the sin of Despair. Another curious interpretation is that it represents the 'bridling' or determined control of lust rather than its outlet.) A fine example of mutual beard-pullers symbolising strife is preserved in Poitiers.

Just as at a later period Raphael borrowed a Michelangelo Christ to depict a killer in his Massacre of the Innocents; as Caravaggio in his last canvas used his own face as that of Goliath beheaded by an untriumphant David; as Bacon borrowed from and referred to Velásquez for his Screaming Pope series, so Romanesque sculptors mixed and matched themes, ideas and each other's and Classical (and drawings of Classical) works. It is therefore not so surprising that the theme of two mean pulling each other's beard would start out as Discord and Strife but would soon transmute into a symbol of monastic mutual masturbation.

Elsewhere in Spain there are masturbating beard-pullers at the church of SS Cosmo & Damian at Bárcena de Pie de Concha (Santander), and at the collegiate church of San Martín de Elines in the same province. At Bárcena de Pie de Concha there is also a masturbating female exhibitionist.

Slightly earlier than the Anglo-Saxon manuscript, the Irish Book of Kells shows a warrior with spear displaying his virility - but as a vignette, without any evident censure.

detail of folio 200r

Also from Ireland, though carved in the 12th century is a remarkable grotesque from a Round Tower, showing a contorted figure with huge and very Norse-Irish head displaying buttocks and what can be interpreted either as dangling labia or scrotum - most likely the latter.
Two monsters bite its outstretched arms - which issue from its head.

Berrymount (Cavan), Ireland
compare with a corbel at Grey Abbey

That this remarkable sculpture is a window-top and not a corbel somewhat discredits the idea that corbel-carvings are 'marginal' art, being neither 'high'/'official' nor 'popular'. The fact that just one or two of the corbel-motifs (buttock-barers especially) migrate to misericords and roof-bosses does not detract from the Christian seriousness of the original motifs.

Carving on roof-beam, Queniborough, Leicestershire:
compare with an even more amazing beam-carving at Claybrooke Parva in the same county.

There is no shortage of exhibitionist and related subjects on internal capitals and on doorways. And there is no end to the variety and variations of the male exhibitionist motif. As we have seen in two of the four Romanesque/Gothic churches in Poitiers, they are not necessarily grotesque. This Czech figure would almost qualify for inclusion in a gay magazine.

Capital in Chapel-Palatine, Cheb (Bohemia), Czech Republic.

Devils, of course, are often depicted with huge genitals - propaganda which might occasionally have been counter-productive.

Two views of a high frieze at Villers-Saint-Paul (Oise), France:
the devil at the bottom is carrying a phallic money-bag.
The couple to the left are probably homosexual,
like some at Cervatos in Northern Spain (see below).
click to see another French church with corbels and frieze

More human than devilish: Celle-Guenand (Indre-et-Loire)

One iconographic source for megaphallic devils might be images of Mithraic, Celtic or Romano-Celtic deities - such as a teddybearish figure, now in a museum in Durham, found at a 2nd-4th century Roman fort at Bremenium (High Rochester) in Northumberland,

displaying small horns (or rabbit-ears), carefully-delineated nipples, and a large, thick penis.

On the other hand, a 12th century 'Christian' capital at Porcheresse (Charente) is far more surprising. It features a phallusless Cernunnos (celebrated by place-names beginning with Bel- in SW France) and a tongue-sticking female exhibitionist. What is one to make of it ?

click to enlarge

Another source for megaphallism is the Feast of Fools, deriving from the Roman Saturnalia and Kalends of January, and widely celebrated until the puritanical imperative of protestantism. This was the period when the established order was reversed, Roman slaves dressed as their masters and (ritually) ordered them about. Festivities included raucus fancy-dress parades (rather like some Carnival or Gay Pride parades today) which included huge penises strapped onto dwarves and so on.

Saint-Georges-de-Montagne (Gironde):
in this scene the man (on the right) seems to be carrying a huge phallus,
while the crudely-exhibitionist woman is holding something up, possibly a mask or an animal head.
It is thus a kind of moralistic lampoon.

An apparently more positive meaning is attached to male exhibitionism on a remarkable corbel which shows a clothed couple embracing, each with a halo, and the woman's left hand feeling for size or hardness the man's penis which pokes out from underneath his tunic.

click for another

Maillezais (Deux-Sèvres), France

If it is not a bizarre depiction of the early Christian 'sacred marriage' of two holy males in Brotherly Love, this could refer to St Augustine's only justification for the sexual union and marriage of Christians: in order for two saved souls to create another soul that is likely to be saved. Compare the above on the one hand with the fornicating couple on a rustic French capital,

Monbos (Dordogne), France

or a frankly obscene couple at Santillana del Mar near Santander in Northern Spain; and, on the other hand with a more demure couple not so far away from Maillezais.

Marignac (Charente-Maritime), France

In the picture below, the male has been smashed, probably by post-mediæval re-roofers: during modern re-roofing the corbel-table was cleaned.

Manéglise (Seine-Maritime), France

 

Sometimes one or both of a pair is an acrobat.

Cervatos (Palencia), Spain

Some embracing couples are almost certainly male.

Vérac (Gironde), France

Mosnac (Charente-Maritime)

Others are more ambiguous.

Puynormand (Gironde)

Such huggers may well be based on one or other of the several Roman sculptures of the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian, who ruled the Western and Eastern empires respectively, and who may have been mistaken for male lovers by fanatics ignorant of the subject.

For other huggers see the pages on Saint-Contest and Studland.

The unequivocal sin of Sodomy (usually taken to be anal penetration) is a rare subject: I know of only a few examples - all male-in-male, a rare practice (though a common calumny) until recently. There is at least one at the collegiate church of Cervatos - where two corbels resemble exotic illustrations to the Kama Sutra.

click for more

Cervatos (Palencia), Spain

Another is on the celebrated Last Judgement tympanum of the Pilgrimage church of Conques, where a devil with a club sodomises a sodomite into the beastly jaws of Hell. (The Jaws of Hell are yet another Christian borrowing from Classical mythology: Virgil's "Jaws of Tænarus", the "High Portals of Dis" which are echoed - and challenged - by the high portals of salvation which are the churches of stone.)

Conques (Aveyron), France
click for a high-resolution enlargement

On the well-known frieze of Lincoln cathedral the two sodomites are are attacked by fantastic snakes while a devil pulls them by the hair. To their left a naked Avaritia and another pair of sinning males are similarly attacked by demons and snakes.

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Lincoln, England

In another example, the sodomy is portrayed as occurring in the daily lives of travelling entertainers, anathematised by the mediæval Church. The penetrator is a monkey.

La Chaize-le-Vicomte (Vendée), France

At Sémelay (Nièvre) both males are human, while a remarkable capital at Vézelay portrays the rape of Ganymede by Zeus (in the form of an eagle) as described by Virgil - except that a typically toothy Romanesque demon pulls his mouth and sticks out his tongue 'off-stage' to indicate a serious carnal sin to the viewers below.

Perhaps the most remarkable illustration of sodomy is on a doorway capital of the rural Rouergat church of Verlac. One devil sodomises another whose scrotum is in the jaws of a wolf. This represents not the earthly deed, but the goings-on in Hell - which, no doubt, many might secretly look forward to.

photo by Jacques Martin

Verlac (Aveyron), France

A capital at Conzac (Charente) more discreetly and decoratively suggests mutual fellatio in its use of rinceaux (abstract tendrils of foliage), emanating from mouths and passing between legs in a manner redolent of a rite of Spring.

Slightly less rare - and with no ambiguity at all - is the motif of disembodied male organs, which were carved to show the source of carnal sin, rather than any celebration of sexuality - though of course the sculptors might well have enjoyed the execution of the motif, and the illiterate peasantry might well have enjoyed the results of their craft.

Corbel, Sainte-Colombe (Charente), France
click for a post-Romanesque Irish example

The survival of such corbels to the present day is remarkable, given their vulnerability to puritan attack. Figures whose genitals have been smashed are surprisingly uncommon, given their accessibility, religious wars, and the violence of iconoclasts and misguided prudes. A dramatic French example can be seen on an internal capital of the parish church at Bommiers (Indre).

A little less rare is the variant of the very common 'tonguesticker' whose tongue is long enough to reach his genitals; this motif is not quite the same as the genital-licker or -sucker illustrated on the previous page. The example at Mere in England combines several sinful motifs: the acrobat, the anal exhibitionist, the monster - and possibly even the vagina dentata, a feature of some Irish female exhibitionists.

Interior corbel at Mere (Wiltshire)
photo by John Harding

Less rare again is the ithyphallic spinarius or thornpuller, attempting to extract St Paul's "thorn in the flesh" generally thought to be sexual desire. These are inspired by (but bear little resemblance to) a Roman bronze of a naked boy-athlete notorious in mediæval times.

Saint-Léger-en-Pons (Charente), France
click for a high-resolution enlargement

 

By contrast, here are three clay vessels from Roman times which are completely different both in function and message...

click for more

and Roman images in stone which proclaim a piety
which monotheisms have never tolerated...

Stone at Chesters Roman Fort (Northumberland)
photographed by Tina Negus

Vulvular phallus recently found at Raglan (Monmouthshire)
photographed by John Harding

...and one of many phallic statues which were widespread in pre-Christian Europe - this one from a once-remote island in a remote lake in Ireland.

Male side of back-to back double figure, Caldragh graveyard,
county Fermanagh - compared with a Gallo-Roman herm.

From Roman times also ex voto statuettes in clay, bronze etc. (the doubtless far more common wooden and waxen ones have inevitably disappeared) were offered at healing-shrines to cure sexual malformation or dysfunction. These, like Baubo figurines must have been produced in large numbers. In the 15th century, Thomas More reported that at the shrine of St Valéry in Picardy the walls were hung about with "none other thynge but mennes gere and womens gere made in waxe" (i.e wax models of penises and vulvas).

Much more grand, and erected at the end of the 14th century to commemorate the diuretic qualities of the local water of the wild crags of the Monts de Lacaune since Roman times, this fountain - La Fount dels Pissaïres - at Lacaune-les-Bains (Tarn) is a remarkable testimony to mediæval attitudes - with an antique flavour.

photo from the Lacaune-les-Bains website

A more Romanesque fountain, from the 13th century, much farther East at Forcalquier (Alpes de Haute-Provence), is, however, richer in symbolism, more ambiguous - and enigmatic.

click for more pictures

For a book-length discussion on the survival of Roman antiquities see Michael Greenhalgh's
"THE SURVIVAL OF ROMAN ANTIQUITIES IN THE MIDDLE AGES".
Professor Greenhalgh has expressed the view that this website
(and, presumably, Romanesque corbel-tables, etc.) is mere "smut"!

A hairy (and of course bearded) Greek Satyr with fantastic cock and balls.
The hairy pelt suggests a link with bear-totemism, once widespread in Europe.

Until 2007 I had thought that there were no post-Romanesque exhibitionists in France apart from a female at Cleyrac (which might even be Romanesque, though it doesn't look it), and a pair at Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val on a 16th century window. However, my colleague Jacques Martin sent me a photograph of a very fine male exhibitionist apparently contemporaneous with the early 14th-century House of the Master of Venery at Cordes-sur-Ciel (Tarn) not far from Saint-Antonin. There may well be more: it is simply a matter of continuing the assiduous search which Jørgen Andersen initiated on the European mainland in the 1970s.

click for more

The Old Testament book of Habakkuk, chapter II, verse 4: Yea also, because he transgresseth by wine, he is a proud man, neither keepeth at home, who enlargeth his desire as hell, and is as death, and cannot be satisfied, but gathereth unto him all nations, and heapeth unto him all people... verse 11: For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber shall answer it. verse 11: Woe to him that buildeth a town with blood, and stablisheth a city by iniquity. verse 15: Woe unto him that giveth his neighbour drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness. verse 16: Thou art filled with shame for glory, drink thou also, and let thy foreskin be uncovered: the cup of the Lord's right hand shall be turned unto thee, and shameful spewing shall be on thy glory... verse 18: What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and the teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols ? verse 19: Woe unto him that saith to the wood, Awake; to the dumb stone, Arise, it shall teach...

Serious and justified worries about the loose morals of the rich account for the scenes of lasciviousness and concupiscence amongst other sins on capitals and tympana. Modern minds, however, find it difficult to understand why the highly-exaggerated corbel-carvings were put up on churches - pieces of sculpture sometimes far more graphic than was doctrinally necessary. A likely explanation, less fanciful than it might seem at first, and able to account for both the Romanesque and most post-Romanesque corbel-figures, is an anthropological one. The carving of an exhibitionist (male or female) or any daring or dodgy motif on a corbel-table might well have been the culmination of the apprenticeship of a sculptor, literally a licence granted to him by his fellow-sculptors who certainly were the inspiration of the Freemasons in their confraternity. Masons' marks occur on churches all over Europe, and especially in Spain where the Romanesque movement invaded with the Christian reconquistà.

Even today, masons and sculptors form exclusive teams and (like many co-operative tradesmen who feel undervalued) perform scabrous rites. In Romanesque times, to be a sculptor was as prestigious as being an international architect today. It is possible that sculptors were more powerful than priests on the ground, because they could simply take off from a site and find employment elsewhere without difficulty. So the carving at Girona (below) might have a different meaning than that which I advanced earlier in Images of Lust. The bishop may well not be overseeing the sculptors like some kind of art commissar, but merely skulking. The sculptors or masons take prominence in the scene, which might be telling us not that nothing went up on a church without ecclesiastical approval, but that what was sculpted went up on a church despite ecclesiastical qualms.

So, in this theory, sculptors who met with the artistic approval of their fellows, had the privilege of carving one or more startling corbel - a kind of satire on the exhibition-piece which is required of skilled craftsmen in wood and stone even today, which then was either slipped past ecclesiastical approval or was placed defiantly or by right and rite. Some (very few) might have had to be placed very high or out of sight to avoid local trouble. But it is pertinent to this theory that many churches in Spain were not properly finished: unfilled scaffolding-holes abound, so teams of masons could up and off with an impunity very similar to the propensity for strike action enjoyed by trades unionists in post-War France and Britain.

The drawback of the theory of initiation-, prentice- or master-pieces of sculptors fully received into their teams, guilds or confraternities is that a few of the Romanesque males are extremely crude efforts. These exceptions might well be simple imitations on churches whose sculptors were not master-craftsmen..

Cloister capital, Girona (Spain)

Male exhibitionists are not magical. Nor are they simply ancient survivals from an imagined, invented "Celtic" or Classical-pagan past, but sculptures which fitted into their Christian context by dint of - on the one hand - widespread and uncontrollable concupiscence amongst the peasantry and to an extent amongs the lowliest clergy who were drawn from that peasantry. On the other hand, they might very well have been not only exhibitionists but exhibition pieces, proudly and lewdly displayed by master-craftsmen as quasi-pious jeux d'esprit.

Orpheus as Adam, Lord of the Beasts in Eden on a 5th century ivory in the Bargello Museum, Florence. click to enlarge

 

Anti-copyright Anthony Weir, January 2007

 

 

A nineteenth-century French brothel-token.