Gargoyles And Other Monsters in Norman And Gothic English Style

They are everywhere. You do not see them unless you look for them, they seem to fuse with their surroundings. When you see them, they pretend to threaten but they do no harm: High above our heads on churches, but also on the lower floors. If you go through London, you can see them populate Westminster Abbey, Houses of Parliament, and other sights. They also perch on their seats in Oxford College, on skyscrapers in American cities, on cathedrals, and secular buildings in England and all over the world. Some of them were carved in ancient times, some of them (mainly in the New World) were created in recent years, medieval sculptors did most of the work. Gargoyles are widespread remains of the past, which can – with their expressive gestures, their expressions – fascinate everyone. One tries to find out the general meaning behind those shapes which see everything every time.

It is necessary to know the background of this Age of Faith to understand gargoyles at least a bit, for we cannot understand them completely anymore, hundreds of years after the first medieval gargoyles were raised into their aerial position.

The Middle Ages are usually dated as beginning with the migration of the peoples in the fifth and sixth century and ending with the Renaissance in the sixteenth century. The Roman Empire had collapsed not a too long a time ago, and Germanic tribes were forced to go west and south (the ultimate origin for this was the expansion of tribal areas by Asian peoples). Although they were ultimately converted to Christianity, they retained many of their customs and traditions. But many of the areas having been influenced by the improvements of Roman civilization fell back into their pre-Roman state of development. Road networks, whole Roman towns (as for example Bath) decayed under the Germanic tribes as well as arts and science declined, because the Germanic tribes neither had a cultural unity, nor centralized governments. The only thing they had in common providing a base for social unity was the Roman Catholic Church. So the society attempted to structure itself politically on a spiritual basis. The idea of a large European church-state, Christendom, to consist of the sacerdotium, an ecclesiastical hierarchy, and the imperium, secular leaders, arose. In theory complementing each other, the two distinct groups never really worked together, were constantly disagreeing, sparring, or openly warring with each other.

In that time in England the first state was founded, uniting several Germanic tribes, when Alfred the Great (871-899), an important Anglo-Saxon king, founded the first "united" kingdom. He obtained his power by beating off attacks of the Vikings, which were common in those times. After some Danish kings between the years 1016 and 1066 William the Conqueror (1066-1087), Duke of Normandy, introduced the Norman feudal system. He controlled the church, divided secular and ecclesiastical jurisdiction. His son Henry I (1100-1135) reformed the governmental system. Later on, starting in 1154 with the coronation of Henry II of Plantagenet, the church lost power, whereas the king gained more and more of it. During the fourteenth century the population decreased from 6 million to 2.5 million: due to famines between 1315 and 1317 a twelfth of the populace of England died, in 1348/49 and in the 1360s the plague killed more than one half of the inhabitants of London and other areas. Despite this, the towns gained financial power.

During the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) between the houses of Lancaster and York one century later, most of the higher aristocracy were killed, and a new aristocracy had to be formed by the country gentry and the bourgeoisie. The Tudor age begins with the coronation of Henry VII (1485-1509). It can be said that the Tudors, and the change in the structure of the society caused by the Wars of the Roses, ended the Middle Ages.

The people of the Middle Ages, also called the Age of Faith, were highly religious, having a powerful belief in God. The manifestation of their faith were the cathedrals and churches. Every person in the community had to contribute something to the building, either working power or money. The cathedral had to become the most beautiful structure on earth, a present for and at the same time a glorification of God. It should also be a "sermon in stone", which the illiterate people were able to read. The carvings should be a reminder of the things the people had heard inside the building, illustrating religious themes.

Christians were also very preoccupied with the eternal fate of their souls. Evil was an ab- stract idea as well as concrete fact. Its omnipresence and everlasting watchfulness played a major role in Church, and so it is likely to have been reflected in medieval art. (Online 1)

Features of the Romanesque (Norman) and Gothic Styles,
and especially their decoration, in English Architecture

The Norman style, beginning in the 11th century and ending about one century later, was characterized by the imitation of certain features of the architecture of the Romans. The features of Romanesque church buildings were their thick, resistant walls, and small windows, for the vertical walls had to support the heavy stone vaults. Their ground plan was similar to the Roman basilica, as well as many of the architectural features were adopted from Roman architecture. Ornamentation was very important in that time, because the illiterate people should be taught the stories of the Bible as well.

The first stone sculptures and carvings in English churches did not appear until the 10th century. Before that, painting seems to have played a major role. The motives were strongly influenced by the Viking style of ornamentation. Rich ornamentation was more important than designs bound to a special content.

The Norman conquerors, coming to England after 1066, could not contribute to the development of stone masonry, because they had no influential traditions. The traditions of the Saxon tribes were older and more developed. At the end of the 11th century, under the influence of Southwest and East French art, efforts were made to use less Viking-influenced ornaments. (Allgemeine Geschichte der Kunst 419ff.)

Stone states that from many of the depicted figurative scenes no didactic meaning can be extracted. Many of the "animals seem more like propitiatory representations of pagan demons, a reversion both to the old religion and to a persistent barbaric taste for savage dragons" (54).

The Gothic era, where most of the gargoyles were made, lasted about 300 years, beginning in the middle of the thirteenth century, and ending with the beginning of the Renaissance, variously dated to the 15th or 16th century. The term "Gothic" is derived from the name of a Germanic tribe, the Goths, who, in the opinion of Italian writers of the Renaissance, invented the Gothic style with its non-classical "ugliness".

It can be divided into three periods, Early English (1200-1300), Decorated (1275-1377), and Perpendicular Gothic style (1327-1500). Feature to all Gothic periods is the new form of vault, the ribbed vaults, and later the fan vault, which both allowed the architects to build higher rooms than ever seen before. In contrast to Romanesque architecture the walls were less robust, and many high lancet arch windows made the church a light place. There was no need anymore to protect the church through architectural devices, because city walls took over this function, but English churches had thicker, heavier walls than their continental counterparts. Other stylistic features also showed differences: they had accentuated, repeated moldings on the edges of interior arches, a sparing use of pinted lancet windows, and others. In English architecture height played a minor role in contrast to length. (Encyc. Brit. 382ff.)

The architects were also able to give their buildings new, more complicated ground plans. Flying buttresses, tracery windows, and pinnacles are other common features of the Gothic era. In Decorated Gothic style, churches and cathedrals abounded with ornaments and other decorations. (Piltz 34ff.) The ogee, creating flowing, flamelike forms, became the basis for tracery. In the Perpendicular style vertical lines predominated in the stone tracery of windows. Windows were enlarged, and fan vaults replaced the pointed vaults. That was the time when gargoyles became the preferred method of drainage. The art of the Gothic era was more realistic and graceful than that of the Romanesque period, "with exception of the Gothic gargoyles, which seem to perpetuate the characteristically Romanesque fascination with grotesque and monstrous creatures" (Benton 15), which could be a revival of the Romanesque spirit.

Gothic stone sculpture and carving used naturalistic foliage (earlier "stiff-leaf"-foliage was used, a type of stylised foliage decoration). That the historiated capital did not disappear, and figure sculpture was kept, was due to the adherence to Romanesque decorative systems by the local sculptors. Roof bosses, carved projections of stone or wood placed at the intersections of ribs in vaults, as a field for sculpture were developed, and figure heads for corbels and moulding stops were common. Little of another major form of medieval art, wood sculpture, survived, because most of it was destroyed at the Reformation. (T&H 231ff.)

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