File:The grotesque in church art (1899) (14778317911).jpg

Identifier: grotesqueinchurc00wild (find matches)
Title: The grotesque in church art
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Wildridge, Thomas Tindall
Subjects: Grotesque Christian art and symbolism Church decoration and ornament
Publisher: London, W. Andrews & co.
Contributing Library: PIMS - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: University of Toronto

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us to recognizethat the carnivorous animals must always have had the rightto be the symbols of physical power. Therefore, the idea ofpower, originally conveyed by the horns, is that carried by thepossession of riches in the shape of flocks and herds. Thepecunia were the means of power, and their horns the symbolof it. With the Egyptians, the ox signified agriculture andsubsistence. Pharaoh saw the kine coming out of the Nilebecause the fertility of Egypt depends upon that river. Sothat it is easy to see how the ox became the figure of the sun, 72 THE GROTESQUE IN CHURCH ART. and of life. Similar significance attached to the sheep, thegoat, and the ram. Horus is met as Orus, the Shepherd.Ammon wore the horns of a ram. Mendes was worshippedas a goat. The goat characteristics are well carved on a seat in AllSouls. A eoat fiorure of the thirteenth centurv at Chichesterhas the head of a man with a curious twisted or tied beard,clutched by one of the hands in which the fore feet terminate.
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A CHERISHED HEARD, CHICHESTER. The clutching of the beard is not uncommon among Gothicfigures, and has doubtless some original on a coin, or otherancient standard design. At St. Helens, Abingdon, Berk-shire, in different parts of the church, three heads, one beinga king, another a bishop, are shewn grasping or strokingeach his own beard. It is to be remembered that thestroking of the beard is a well-known Eastern habit. Of close kindred to the goat form is the bull form. Justas Ceres symbolized the fecundity of the earth in the matterof cereals, so Pan was the emblem by which was figured itsproductiveness of animal life;. Thus Priapus was rendered in SATANIC REPRESENTATIONS. 73 goat form, as the ready type of animal sexual vigor ; but notless familiar in this connection was the bull, and that animalalso symbolizes Pan, who became, when superstition grew outof imagery, the protector of cattle in general. An old Englishsuperstition was that a piece o^ horn, hung to the stable orcowhouse

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