SOME NON-EXHIBITIONIST ENTERTAINERS


Entertainers of one kind or another are probably the most frequent subjects on Romanesque corbel-tables.
It is no exaggeration to say that they were loathed by The Devout.

Popular or 'profane' music was considered not just to be un-Christian, but probably anti-Christian: the merry road to Hell.
The Church, as proprietor of morals, claimed also to be the proprietor of music,
mostly in the form of dreary plain-chant, hardly enlivened by the academic tedium of Hildegard of Bingen.

Bands of itinerant musicians moving from town to town (via villages) with their 'unholy' instruments
(originating from Muslim Morocco via Spain) encouraged jollity,
drunkenness and 'lewd behaviour'.
If common people were enjoying themselves
the Devil was to blame.

With the musicians came the Jugglers/Joglars/Jongleurs who performed various universal routines,
some of which involved glimpses (or more) of Unholy Parts of the anatomy.
They are not to be confused with the Troubadours.


A little troupe, La Chaize-le-Vicomte (Vendée)

 

Uncastillo (Zaragoza)

 

Aulnay (Charente)

 


photo by Michael Adlem

Acrobatic tongue-sticker, Saint-Gaultier (Indre)

 

Contortionist, Châteauneuf-sur-Charente (Charente)

 

Acrobat or Dancer, Kilpeck (Herefordshire)

 



Dancer and rebec-player, Saint-Hilaire-La-Croix (Puy-de-Dôme)

 

Dancer, Chateauneuf-sur-Charente (Charente).

 

Salome dancing, St-Martin-du-Canigou (Pyrénées-Orientales)

Lintel of the tympanum of the cathedral of Berceto (Parma), with ithyphallic bear playing the harp.



Detail of a pulpit at Gropina (Lazio), which depicts an unsexed acrobatic Luxuria
and a matching two-tailed mermaid with luxuriant hair.

These two figures also echo pre-Romanesque images of Earth and Sea.

 

Charivari from the 14th century Roman de Fauvel (from Nelli, 1979, below)


 

TROUBADOURS

 

Higher up the social scale, the Western French phenomenon of L'Amour Courtois (L'amor fin or Courtly Love),
largely initiated by Duke William IX of Poitou in the eleventh century, was,in the church's view,
a prelude to lasciviousness, lust-in-luxury, adultery and terminal moral rot.

William of Poitiers was celebrated as the first of the Troubadours, literate composer-singers and reciters
of love-poetry who spread through southern France, and, moving north, crossed the linguistic frontier
of the Langue d'Oc, beyond which they were known as Trouvères. They also spread
northwards and eastwards to be come Minnesingers in Germany.

One of the most famous, whose lyrics survive, was Bernart de Ventadorn.




Usually travelling alone, they announced their arrival at a castle or 'stately home' by blowing a horn.

Eleventh-century troubadour with psaltery, announcing his arrival by blowing his horn.
from Nelli, 1979.

 

For readers of French, I recommend wo very good books by René Nelli :

Troubadours & Trouvères (Poitiers, 1979)
and
L'Erotique des Troubadours (Toulouse, 1963)



Bosch: detail from
The Garden of Earthly Delights, circa 1500.