Lillian Sellati

Beauties and Beasts: Physical Reflections of an Internal State of Being

Many of the fantastic creatures that populate medieval bestiaries and illuminated

manuscripts have their roots in Classical Greek mythology and artwork. Similarly, the medieval

Christian cultural conception and artistic expression of beauty developed from a preceding Greek

idea. Specifically, early medieval thinkers such as Peter the Venerable of Cluny, Hugh of St-

Victor, and Pope Gregory the Great, explored the notion that the outer state of a person’s body

mirrored the inner state of their soul (Dale 403-08). According to this idea, morally good

individuals looked beautiful, while physical deformity signified a sinner. Despite the fact that

this belief conflicts with St. Augustine’s assertion that all Divine Creation is beautiful, the

perceived connection between beauty and goodness became deeply entwined with Christian

religious doctrine. A similar medieval concept with Classical roots—physiognomy—holds that a

person’s looks, and therefore his character, can be determined by the climate where he lives and

the stars under which he is born. This pseudo-science allowed for the classification of entire

races based on geography, and therefore became an important political tool. Powerful

individuals, such as the Pope, wielded this tool through edifying religious and religiously-

influenced secular artwork. For example, a 15th century illumination titled Health Man by

Bartholomew the Englishman (figure 1) supposedly depicts the perfect representation of male

beauty. However, despite its typically medieval schematic style of drawing and coloring, the

artist still uses Classical Greek proportions to portray ideal beauty. At its heart, the medieval

European belief that physical attributes reflect inner vices or virtues remains attributable to

Classical perceptions of beauty that later individuals adapted to fit Christian ideals.

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Medieval Christians attached moral implications to the features of both humans and

animals. Thus, encyclopedic bestiaries quickly developed from Pliny’s entirely secular natural

histories into a popular method used to convey religious doctrine (Hassig 138). Two fairly

elaborate examples of this practice include the lion and the dragon. These beasts stood as

opposing symbols of good and evil respectively; however, each individually retained positive

and negative implications. The lion, historically a symbol of courage and kingship (Kiilerich

88), was superimposed upon the image of Christ, whom the Bible identifies the as King of the

Jews. Simultaneously, many holy men and women associated the lion’s fanged maw with the

devouring Hellmouth, which serves as the entrance for damned souls into the depths of Hell, due

to the commonly quoted Psalms 22.21 “Save me from the mouth of the lion” (Dale 422). The

dragon had a similarly dichotomous connotation in medieval Europe. In international folklore

dating back to antiquity, the dragon represented the powerful natural forces which deeply

influenced the lives of commoners. However, the Christian association of dragons with the

Devil, and with evil in general, eventually became the most prevalent interpretation of these

creatures during the Middle Ages (Bruckner 32).

Likewise, the Church assigned specific moral characteristics to each monstrous race

included in bestiaries. One such race was the Panotti, a humanoid race with gigantic ears.

Christians saw these ears as emblematic of the Word of God. This gave images of the Panotti

both positive and negative connotations. On one hand, since the Panotti were eminently capable

of hearing God, they often stood as a symbol of piety. On the other hand, the Panotti remained

pagans though they had heard the Word and therefore must be scorned all the more.1 Likewise,

the Cynocephali, or dog-headed men, also had multiple moralizing interpretations. In medieval

artwork, Cynocephali could represent quarrelsome individuals, who did nothing but bark; mute 1 In-class discussion, ARTH 1136, spring 2011.

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individuals, who could not speak the language of humans; or pious individuals, who wore rough

clothing as a form of penance. However, regardless of the many possible meanings, the

Cynocephali most often presented the people symbolized in a negative light. Furthermore,

according to John Friedman, they regularly symbolized Jews in medieval artwork (61),

transferring this negative connotation to the common perception of an entire race of people.

The practice of physiognomy provided another way for medieval leaders to group

together political and/or religious enemies and depict them in a pejorative manner. According to

physiognomy, an individual’s character could be divined based on physical attributes. In turn, a

person’s looks depended on details such as the climate of their homeland, the stars prominent at

their birth, and the balance of humors in their body. For example, the chapter devoted to ears in

Secreta secretorum, a popular medieval volume which contained some physiognomic

information, states: “big ears mark a man robbed of his senses, small ears are a sign of evil,

slightly erect ears (like a dog’s) are the hallmark of the foolish, while ‘sufficiently large’ ears

belong to the strong and virtuous” (qtd. in Strickland 38). Unsurprisingly, the perfect features

only graced those who lived in the same region as the individual citing physiognomy for his or

her political gain. Thus, when Hippocrates first introduced physiognomy and Aristotle referred

to regional stereotypes in his Politics around 350BCE, Greece was the ideal place to live. Later,

during the Middle Ages, this perfect region shifted north to center on western Europe (Strickland

36-37).

When physiognomy or bestiaries compared a group of humans to an animal, such as a

dog, it was a profound insult with deep religious implications. According to the Christian

Church, men must comport themselves in a manner befitting a pious and civilized human. Hugh

of St-Victor, a 12th century French theologian, describes the reason for this restriction in his

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manual, De institutione novitiorum, “Just as inconstancy of the mind brings forth irregular

motions of the body, so also the mind is strengthened and made constant when the body is

restrained through the process of discipline . . . . The perfection of virtue is attained when the

members of the body are governed and ordered through the inner custody of the mind” (qtd. in

Dale 407). Therefore, anyone who slouched or acted with undue exuberance put himself in

danger of succumbing to sinfulness and more terrifyingly, of becoming a monstrous beast.

This fear resonates in artistic form on a series of early 12th century CE cloister capitals in

the Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa in southwestern France. One particular capital shows the

horrifying degeneration of a man into an ape. The first side of the capital shows a clothed,

athletic-looking man standing upright (figure 2). Moving clockwise, the man squats naked with

his hands planted on his knees (figure 3). Next, the man is shown in the same pose but with the

addition of a long tangled beard. Finally, the male figure has completely transformed into a

hairy-chested ape, squatting in the same lewd position as the previous two sides (figure 4).

Despite their apprehension, medieval viewers were in no danger of actually turning into

wild animals. However, they were in danger of their inner virtue being judged based upon their

outer features. This idea that the body could function as a “map” of the state of one’s soul,

asserted by Peter the Venerable of Cluny (1092-1156) among others, when combined with the

older notion that goodness was intrinsically connected with truth and beauty, became very

detrimental to certain members of the laity. For example, people in the middle ages shunned and

scorned those afflicted with leprosy because they believed the deformity stemmed from the

victim’s sinful nature (Schelberg 35-50).

This association among beauty, truth, and goodness as opposed to ugliness and evil

nature began much earlier than the early 12th century outpouring of thought regarding the

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reflection of the soul’s state by physical features. Jan Aertsen points out that Pseudo-Dionysius

the Areopagite, who wrote in the late 5th and early 6th century CE, contributed significantly to this

concept. Elaborating upon an earlier idea by the Greek philosopher Plato, Pseudo-Dionysius

explored the connection between good, light, beauty, and love in respect to the Divine. His

conclusion stated that all good things are beautiful and all beautiful things are good (Aertsen

421). He also suggested that beauty is the ratio of splendor or light to clarity or proportion and,

in turn, the religious thinker Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) equated clarity with truth (Aertsen

426). Thus, medieval Christians saw beauty, goodness, and truth as fundamentally entwined.

Even though everything created by God was considered beautiful, some things looked ugly in

comparison to others—as St. Augustine said, “The beauty of an animal is deformed in

comparison to the beauty of man”—and some people became deformed by sinful thoughts and

actions.

Like the triad of beauty, truth, and goodness, the idea that people’s vices and virtues

reflected onto their physical form also evolved from a Classical source. The idea originated in

Archaic Greece, with the production of the kourai.2 According to Larissa Bonfante, these statues

represented the young aristocrat, the epitome of beauty and nobility (549). The smooth, serene

features of the kouros type also came to symbolize eternal youth, strength, vigor, and divinity

(Kiilerich 87). The leonine type evolved from the kouros type and became closely associated

with Alexander the Great. Alexander’s court sculptor, Lysippus, likely chose that type for

Alexander’s portraiture deliberately because the Greeks believed it depicted the perfect male

beauty. Common facial features associated with the leonine type include a clean-shaven face,

2 Kourai (singular = kouros) were statues of nude, athletic looking, young men with serene facial features. The body movement – one foot in front of the other, caught in the act of striding forwards – was influenced by contemporary Egyptian sculpture. Kourai were made of stone and were used as funerary markers or votive offerings. Their size varied depending on their function.

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shining deep-set eyes, and hair in the anastolé style, which included short, riotous curls falling

partially over the forehead, considered reminiscent of a lion’s mane. In addition to this, most

statues of Alexander looked up and over the left shoulder. These details represented youth and

vitality; courage and kingship; bravery; and a connection to the divine (Kiilerich 88). Due to

these inherent associations, Alexander’s portraiture carried a wealth of meaning to its viewers

and the leonine type remained a popular symbol of male beauty, heroic courage, greatness, and

Alexander himself until the fall of Classical civilization.

Although the leonine type did not survive in medieval art, other Classical artistic

expressions of beauty did. These persisting influences included the standard dimensions used to

portray the perfect human. During the transitional stage between the Archaic and Classical

periods of art history, Greek artists discovered that in order to create the most realistic and

visually pleasing human form, the artist must elongate the body and make the head smaller

(Perdley 309). These same dimensions, which made the sculptures of the High Classical period

some of the most popular and aesthetically pleasing in history, also appear in the medieval

illumination Health Man by Bartholomew the Englishman (figure 1). This image depicts what

medieval European artists considered to be the quintessential representation of male health and

beauty. The image consists of a fair featured man with an attenuated figure and small head in the

foreground; he is bare except for a diaphanous white loincloth and he clearly has no genitals.

Showing a continued awareness of physiognomy, the man’s surroundings depict the temperate

forest climate of north-western Europe, where all those with ideal features reside.3

In contrast to Health Man, the Greek epitome of male beauty culminated in the heroic

nude. Beginning in the Archaic period, Greek culture viewed male nudity as a sign of strength

instead of shame. Men who exercised, fought, or competed in athletics while nude, far surpassed 3 Strickland, 39

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any barbarian contender because the Greeks participated in a supremely vulnerable state. The

courage and fortitude associated with this practice became a source of extreme pride for the

Greeks (Bonfante 556). Therefore, during the Archaic age, Greek artwork began to show the

Greeks in the heroic nude and their opponents in feminizing costumes. The western pediment of

the Archaic Temple of Aphaia at Aegina clearly demonstrates this trend: the darkly tanned nude

Greek heroes contrast sharply with the pale skinned, brightly clothed Persians in their phrygian

caps (figure 5). This artistic trend continued into the Classical and Hellenistic periods when

young male leonine type figures such as Praxiteles’ Apollo Sauroktonos became the vogue

(figure 6). Like the kourai of the Archaic period, these statues symbolized the vitality, courage,

and power of a young male warrior or athlete. It should be noted that until the Hellenistic period,

all Greek representations of beauty were young and male. The first full-scale statue of a nude

female, Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos, did not appear until around 350BCE and even then the

woman stands in a vulnerable pose, trying to grab her clothes and hide her genitals (Pedley

308).4 Furthermore, outside of art, females never went unclothed unless for a religious or ritual

ceremony (Bonfante 559).

Although medieval Europe assimilated many Greek ideas about beauty, they never

admired the nude human form. Like all of those ancient cultures except for Greece, medieval

Christians saw nudity as a sign of poverty, shame, slavery, and humiliation. In the Book of

Genesis in the Old Testament it states that after Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge,

their first action was to create loincloths out of leaves to hide their shameful nudity. Ancient

civilizations also discouraged nudity because they believed it had magical implications. For

4 It should be noted that there is some precedent for nude depictions of fertility goddesses in the Ancient world (Ishtar and smaller depictions of aphrodite). If it were a mortal woman shown in the nude there would likely have been even more controversy over the statue than there was (the government who commissioned the statue refused to accept it because the woman was nude).

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example, many Roman fauces5 included wall paintings of an engorged phallus in order to ward

off the evil eye. This image also served as to promote fertility, prosperity, and luck when

depicted in other rooms of the house (Bonfante 544).

Contrary to the bifurcated implications of nudity and genitalia in other cultures, medieval

Christians always viewed both with distaste bordering on horror. In medieval artwork, nudity

symbolized sinful and animalistic behavior, as a return to the cloister capitals of Saint-Michel-

de-Cuxa will show. When depicting entertainers or other sinful figures, artists displayed them as

grotesquely naked individuals in the throes of raucous merriment (Dale 412). As for genitalia,

medieval artists never include it in religious artwork, even when depicting a sinful individual.

The closest that medieval European religious artwork gets to scandalous nudity is in the figure of

luxuria, a bare-breasted female anthropomorphic personification of lust.6 Luxuria often appears

within scenes of the Last Judgment. She stands among the naked figures of damned souls who

have been devoured by the gaping Hellmouth (figure 7). This treatment of nudity in art, the

saved – richly clothed and the damned – shamefully naked, starkly contrasts with the Greek use

of heroic nudity in temple pediments, such as in the Temple of Aphaia mentioned previously.

In light of the general aversion to nakedness in world cultures, it is unsurprising that

Health Man wears a loincloth. Furthermore, the long-held belief in the magic associated with

genitalia explains the lack thereof in medieval Christian artwork. Genitalia were simply too

powerful a symbol to be permitted in a religion which condemned the practice of magic.

Nevertheless, other remnants of the Classical world survived into medieval times, the connection

between beauty and goodness, the Classical dimensions of beauty, and the association between

5 The fauces is the first room in a Roman house (the transitory space between the outside and the inside where people were especially vulnerable to evil magics). 6 Medieval Christians considered female sex to be the root of all sin and therefore the most tempting and dangerous for both men and women.

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bodily features and the state of the soul included. Medieval Christian thinkers innovatively

adapted these concepts to shape the cultural and artistic perception of beauty to convey religious

doctrine. However, it remains unquestionable that the seminal ideas, especially the notion that

outer physical attributes mirror inner characteristics, originated in Ancient Greece.

Figures

Figure 1: Health Man. MS fr. 135, p. (detail), Livre des propriétés des choses. Western France,

second quarter of the 15th century CE

(Strickland 39)

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Figure 2: cloister capital, Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa. Southwestern France, early 12th century CE

Figure 3: cloister capital, Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa. Southwestern France, early 12th century CE

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Figure 4: cloister capital, Abbey of Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa. Southwestern France, early 12th century CE

(Dale 414-15)

Figure 5: Archer from west pediment of Aphaia Temple. Aegina, Greece, c. 500-480BCE. Reproduction from Munich, 2004CE.

The figure shows a modern recreation of what a Persian figure would have looked like when the temple was first erected; the colors are based on traces of pigment remaining on the

sculpture. (Pedley 159)

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Figure 6: Praxiteles’ Apollo Sauroktonos. Louvre, Paris, France, 2nd century CE Roman copy of

early 4th century BCE Greek original

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Figure 7: Outside Tympanum. Abbey of Ste. Foy at Conques, France. c. 1130CE.

(Dale 420)

Works Cited

Aertsen, Jan A. “The Triad: True-Good-Beautiful. The Place of Beauty in the Middle Ages.”

Intellect and Imagination in Medieval Philosophy. Ed. Maria Cándida Pacheco and José

Francisco Meirinhos. E.U.: Brepolis, 2006. 413-435.

Bonfante, Larissa. “Nudity as a Costume in Classical Art.” American Journal of Archaeology. 93.4

(1989): 543-570. Accessed April 9, 2011. http://www.jstor.org.

Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn. “Fierce Lions, Clever Foxes, Diabolical Dragons: Animals Tell Tales

in Medieval Arts and Letters.” Secular/Sacred: 11th-16th Century Works from the Boston

Public Library and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Ed. Nancy Netzer. Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 2006. 19-42.

Dale, Thomas E. A. “Monsters, Corporeal Deformities, and Phantasms in the Cloister of St-

Michel-de-Cuxa.” The Art Bulletin. 83.3 (2001): 402-436. Accessed April 9, 2011.

http://www.jstor.org.

Friedman, John. The Monstrous Races in Medieval Art and Thought. New York: Syracuse

University Press, 2000.

Hassig, Debra. “Beauty in the Beasts: A Study of Medieval Aesthetics.” RES: Anthropology and

Aesthetics. 19/20 (1990/1991): 137-161. Accessed April 9, 2011. http://www.jstor.org.

Kiilerich, Bente. “The Public Image of Alexander the Great.” Alexander the Great: Reality and

Myth. Ed. Jesper Carlsen, Bodil Due, Otto Steen Due, and Birte Poulsen. Rome:

“L’Erma” di Bretschneider, 1993. 83-92.

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Pedley, John Griffiths. Greek Art and Archaeology. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2007.

Schelberg, Antje. “The Beauty and the Beast? Mediaeval Ideas on Physical Appearance and

Their Psychological Meaning with Regard to Leprosy Sufferers.” The Myths of

Mediaeval Leprosy: A Collection of Essays. Ed. Antje Schelberg. E.U.: Brepolis, 2006.

35-50.

Strickland, Debra Higgs. Saracens, Demons, & Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.