Monsters, corporeal Deformities, and phantasms in the Cloister of St-Michel-de-Cuxa

Saint Bernard's Cloister

In his celebrated Apologia of 1125 Saint Bernard of Clairvaux questions the final cause of the most enigmatic genre of Romanesque art: the monstrous and ostensibly profane images that intrude on the garden-paradise of the cloister. After a broader critique of religious art in cathedral and monastery, Bernard asks:

in the cloisters, before the organ of visions of the brothers while they read--what is that ridiculous monstrosity doing, an amazing kind of deformed beauty and still a beautiful deformity? What are the filthy apes doing there? The fierce lions? The monstrous centaurs? The creatures, part man and part beast? The striped tigers? The fighting soldiers? The huntsmans blowing horns? You may diocese many bodies under one head, and by conversion many heads on one material part On one side the tail of a snake is seen on a quadruped, upon the other side, the head of a quadruped is upon the body of a fish. above there an animal has a horse for the forehead half and a goat for the back; here a creature which is horned in forehead is equine behind. In short, everywhere for a like reason plentiful and astonishing a variety of contradictory forms is seen that individual would rather read in the marble than in works and spend the whole day wondering at each single one of them than in meditating upon the law of God. (1)

Although Bernard has no particular example in mind, (2) he aptly characterizes the images of monstrous and hybrid beasts, wild animals, and worldly pursuits lay the foundation of so frequently in early twelfth-century Benedictine cloisters of southern France and northern Spain--including Moissac, Toulouse, Silos, Elne Ripoll, Serrabonne, and St-Michel-de-Guxa. The capitals from Guxa, now divided between their original site in the French Pyrenee (Figs. 1 2) and the Cloisters in fresh York (Fig. 3), were sculpt in the 1130 solitary a short time after Bernard compos his Apologia, and illustrate his true copy particularly well. Here we find naked dancers interspersed with monstrous jawss either surmounting or devouring human torsos (Figs. 5-7) "filthy apes" seated side by dint of side with naked men (Figs. 12-17) monstrous creatures from antiquity of that kind as the Siren (Fig. 19) and heraldically repeated doublebodied lions and bears joined to a single head (Figs. 20-22) In other cloisters, of the like kind as Moissac, where sacred narratives predomi nate, it is easy to dismiss of the like kind fantastic subjects as decorative or marginal interludes. (3) Since biblical or hagiographic narratives are entirely absent from Cuxa, however, the viewer is forced to be opposite to the same question that troubl Bernard: on what account should such "ridiculous monstrosities" be displayed in the way that prominently in the heart of the monastery, where the monk wearied most of his time reading and meditating upon Scripture?

Before attempting an answer, it is essential to recall that Bernard's attack upon monstrous imagery in the cloister formed part of a broader polemic concerning monastic lifestyle, ritual, and the arts. (4) The Gistercian order, of which Bernard was the greatest in quantity prominent spokesman, had been grounded in 1098 by Robert of Molesme as a reform motion within Benedictine monasticism, dedicated to a more ascetic way of life and a stricter observance of the original spirit of the Benedictine command Seeking to flee worldly pursuits by means of locating their monasteries within distant valleys, the Cistercians emphasized simplified ritual and inner meditation rather than outward ostentation. (5) In this regard they were particularly critical of the Gluniacs. The Burgundian abbey of Cluny fixed in 910, had developed by dint of the end of the eleventh hundred into the head of a vast "congregation," or network of pendent abbeys. At the same time it cultivated an at any time more elaborate liturgy, complemented by the agency of increasingly ostentatious vestment s and liturgical furnishings and imposing architectural arrangements and sculptural programs. This fondnes for the material setting of worship was manifested in the third abbey temple of Gluny itself, completed beneath Abbot Hugh of Semur (1088-1130) and also at other like-minded Benedictine foundations, of the like kind as the royal abbey of St-Denis, which was partially rebuilt beneath Abbot Suger during the late 1130 and early 1140 For the Benedictine traditionalists who were oppos to the ascetic most remotes of the Cistercians, architecture and the figural arts were justified, greatest in quantity famously by Suger, as material aids to the contemplation of the divine and as outward expressions of devotion to god the father and the saints. (6)

Bernard compos his tract at the entreaty of Abbot William of St-Thierry in order to set to rest Cluniac claims that they were being slandered by means of the Cistercian reformers, to denounce the excesse of the Cluniacs, and to nourish further reform. (7) With these intentions in mind, Bernard deploys the rhetoric of satire to paint a vivid, exaggerated, ofttimes humorous picture of the Cluniacs' overindulgence in provisions luxurious personal attire, and ostentatious art and architecture. (8) It is within the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of this debate that Bernard's condemnation of the cloister capitals is best understood. The contradictory forms of the monstrous hybrids, apes, and centaurs are decried not because they have no meaning on the other hand because they evoke the monk's curiosity and distract him from the higher calling of an interior meditation. Likewise, when we a search for a response to Bernard, we ne to take into account the broader general of monastic thought that expanded both mental and material images of the monstrous and deformed as benef icial aids for the monk's meditation in the cloister.