Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Since the mid-nineteenth century, the interpretation of the monstrous in Romanesque and Gothic art has been significantly influenced by a single text: St Bernard of Clairvaux's Apologia composed in 1125 for Abbot William of St Thierry. After a broader critique of religious art, Bernard asks: [I]n the cloisters, before the eyes of the brothers while they read – what is that ridiculous monstrosity doing, an amazing kind of deformed beauty and yet a beautiful deformity? What are the filthy apes doing there? The fierce lions? The monstrous centaurs? The creatures part man part beast? . . . You may see many bodies under one head, and conversely many heads on one body. On one side the tail of a serpent is seen on a quadruped, on the other side, the head of a quadruped is on the body of a fish. Over there an animal has a horse for the front half and a goat for the back; here a creature which is horned in front is equine behind. In short, everywhere so plentiful and astonishing a variety of contradictory forms is seen that one would rather read in the marble than in books, and spend the whole day wondering at every single one of them than in meditating on the law of God. Without describing any particular cloister, Bernard evokes beautifully both the diversity of the monstrous and the complex reactions to it. His account highlights three categories that defined the monstrous for Christian ... log in or subscribe to read full text