ANIMAL SYMBOLISM IN ARCHITECTURE. 193 



is a wild animal witli two powerful horns, witli whicli it saws 

 trees asunder and fells them. . . . The two horns are the books 

 of the Old and New Testaments, with which the believer can 

 resist the adversary and push him to the ground, and can cut 

 down all growing sins and vices." Mingled with this statement 

 are a number of subordinate lessons. 



Very curious among these developments of the pious mediae- 

 val imagination are the barnacle geese, as described in the Bes- 

 tiaries. It is declared that " they grow on trees by the seaside, 

 and hang from the boughs by their beaks until they are covered 

 with feathers and fall like ripe fruit. If they reach the water, 

 they swim and live ; but if they remain on the dry ground, they 

 perish," Naturally, this illustration was used with great force to 

 prove the efficacy of baptism in saving the soul, and Gerard of 

 Wales made a curious use of it to prove the doctrine of the Im- 

 maculate Conception. 



Very justly and aptly does Prof. Evans call attention to the 

 fact that some of the dogmas which have long obscured and even 

 supplanted Christianity, and which are still insisted upon as sub- 

 stitutes for the Christianity taught by Christ himself, were devised 

 and handed down to us by the very thinkers who developed these 

 legends and made this pious use of them. 



But another very interesting field is opened by the use of 

 mediaeval sculpture for satirical purposes. The growth of it in 

 this direction begins to be especially evident in the thirteenth 

 and fourteenth centuries, and it culminated about the time of the 

 Reformation. Monkeys appear as choristers, swine as monks, 

 asses as priests, sirens as nuns, wolves as the father confessors of 

 lambs. In one painted window a fox is represented preaching to 

 a flock of geese from the text, " God is my witness how I long 

 for you in my bowels." In Ely Cathedral a fox is represented 

 arrayed as a bishop. Here comes in what has so astounded many 

 travelers the apparent obscenity of some of these representa- 

 tions. Gentlemen who have visited some of the greater cathe- 

 drals are hardly likely to forget the leer with which the sacristan 

 sometimes raises the wooden seats of the choir, or points to a bit 

 of carving in a corbel, which seems the result of the grossest 

 license. It was really the outgrowth of the same bitter feeling 

 against the growing corruptions in the Church, which led such 

 pious preachers as Geyler of Kaisersberg to speak in the plainest 

 terms against the same evils. 



Various writers in these days have found fault with Luther 

 for the grossness of some of his utterances, but as we note these 

 earlier representations in art and Christian literature we see that 

 his diatribes were but a natural evolution out of an earlier Cath- 

 olic phase of thought. 



