The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #157638   Message #3723478
Posted By: Jack Blandiver
14-Jul-15 - 04:53 AM
Thread Name: BS: Church V State
Subject: RE: BS: Church V State
Norwich Cathedral is a particular favourite of mine; York Minster likewise, though for me its generally about the details - the medieval minutiae so beloved of the Pre-Reformation Catholic Church and so readily promoted / dismissed as pagan by their latter-day Anglican custodians without a wider understanding of the essentially dualist theology of the time. Here's a one from the Norwich Cloister, though fully integral to the Passion sequence, viewed out of context it's easy to see why such notions might take hold, but we mustn't forget where we are, much less when...      

Norwich Cathedral, East Walk Cloister Boss

Ribaldry abounds too - in keeping with the clerical fascination for such things, didactic or otherwise, as in the songs collected in the celebrated Carmina Burana ms. One might, therefore, ponder the symbolic purpose of this delightful little scene from York Minster in which a monkey buggers a boar with what appears to be a piece of narwhale tusk:

Column Capital, North Choir Aisle, York Minster

Sadly, Christianity just doesn't seem to have the same sense of humour or humanity anymore!