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 purpose of the most enigmatic genre of Romanesque art: the monstrous and ostensibly profane images that intrude upon the garden-paradise of the cloister. After a broader critique of religious art in cathedral and monastery, Bernard asks:

... in 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 and part beast? The striped tigers? The fighting soldiers? The hunters blowing horns? 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. (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 found 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 Pyrenees (Figs. 1, 2) and the Cloisters in New York (Fig. 3), were sculpted in the 1130s, only a short time after Bernard composed his Apologia, and illustrate his text particularly well. Here we find naked dancers interspersed with monstrous mouths either surmounting or devouring human torsos (Figs. 5-7), "filthy apes" seated side by side with naked men (Figs. 12-17), monstrous creatures from antiquity such as the Siren (Fig. 19), and heraldically repeated doublebodied lions and bears joined to a single head (Figs. 20-22). In other cloisters, such as Moissac, where sacred narratives predomi nate, it is easy to dismiss such fantastic subjects as decorative or marginal interludes. (3) Since biblical or hagiographic narratives are entirely absent from Cuxa, however, the viewer is forced to confront the same question that troubled Bernard: Why should such "ridiculous monstrosities" be displayed so prominently in the heart of the monastery, where the monk spent most of his time reading and meditating on Scripture?

Before attempting an answer, it is essential to recall that Bernard's attack on 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 most prominent spokesman, had been founded in 1098 by Robert of Molesme as a reform movement within Benedictine monasticism, dedicated to a more ascetic way of life and a stricter observance of the original spirit of the Benedictine rule. Seeking to flee worldly pursuits by locating their monasteries within remote 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, founded in 910, had developed by the end of the eleventh century into the head of a vast "congregation," or network of dependent abbeys. At the same time it cultivated an ever more elaborate liturgy, complemented by increasingly ostentatious vestment s and liturgical furnishings and imposing architectural structures and sculptural programs. This fondness for the material setting of worship was manifested in the third abbey church of Gluny itself, completed under Abbot Hugh of Semur (1088-1130), and also at other like-minded Benedictine foundations, such as the royal abbey of St-Denis, which was partially rebuilt under Abbot Suger during the late 1130s and early 1140s. For the Benedictine traditionalists who were opposed to the ascetic extremes of the Cistercians, architecture and the figural arts were justified, most famously by Suger, as material aids to the contemplation of the divine and as outward expressions of devotion to God and the saints. (6)

Bernard composed his tract at the request of Abbot William of St-Thierry in order to put to rest Cluniac claims that they were being slandered by the Cistercian reformers, to denounce the excesses of the Cluniacs, and to foster further reform. (7) With these purposes in mind, Bernard deploys the rhetoric of satire to paint a vivid, exaggerated, ofttimes humorous picture of the Cluniacs' overindulgence in food, luxurious personal attire, and ostentatious art and architecture. (8) It is within the context 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 but because they evoke the monk's curiosity and distract him from the higher calling of an interior meditation. Likewise, when we a seek a response to Bernard, we need to take into account the broader current of monastic thought that deployed both mental and material images of the monstrous and deformed as benef icial aids for the monk's meditation in the cloister.