The Ganymede Capital at Vézelay
Author(s): Ilene H. Forsyth
Source: Gesta, Vol. 15, No. 1/2, Essays in Honor of Sumner McKnight Crosby (1976), pp. 241246
Published by: International Center of Medieval Art
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/766772
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The Ganymede Capital
at V6zelay
ILENE H. FORSYTH
University of Michigan
Six years before Sumner Crosby began his life-long association with Saint-Denis-an enterprise which did so
much to develop American interest in Romanesque Franceone of the iconographic enigmas among the sculptures
at Vezelay was seemingly solved. Jean Adhemar identified
the subject of the capital on the south face of the southwest
pier of the nave as the Rape of Ganymede (Figs. 1-2). He
demonstrated its association with the passage in Virgil's
Aeniad which recounts the abduction of the handsome
young hunter by Jupiter in the form of an eagle: "The
royal boy [Ganymede] with javelin and speedy foot, on
leafy Ida tires fleet stags, eager, and like to one who pants;
him Jove's swift armour bearer has caught up aloft from
Ida in his talons; his aged guardians in vain stretch their
hands to the stars and the savage barking of dogs rises
skyward" (Aeniad, V, 255-257). The text accounts for
the presence of the boy, the eagle, the barking dog (the
attribute of Ganymede) and the vainly protesting, aged
guardians; it explains everything except the grotesque devil,
so prominently placed under the right volute of the capital.
Adhemar interpreted the demon as a macabre witness to
the event; the distention of his mouth with his two
fingers was seen as a diabolic expression of joy at the
fate of the boy. Adhemar suggested further that the iconographer intended to stigmatize moral turpitude.1 His solution to the capitals iconographic puzzle is generally accepted, but I hope to show that besides reflecting the interest of the twelfth century in Classical literature, the total
meaning of the capital is more complex and has a direct
relevance to contemporary monastic life at Vezelay. References in texts of Romanesque date seem to clarify the
significance of this exceptional work.
Surprisingly the Romanesque interpretation of the myth
is closer to Virgil's account than to renditions of the
theme in Classical art. The subject was a favorite with
both Greeks and Romans and many examples survive. In
early versions Zeus himself carries off Ganymede. Later,
the boy is shown abductedby an eagle representing the god.
This version predominates, and examples survive in many
media and from all periods and parts of the ancient world.
FIGURE 1. Vezelay, La Madeleine, capital, Rape of Ganymede.
The disposition of figures varies, but the nude Ganymede
shown standing or reclining and being lifted heavenward
by the eagle is particularly common. Influential in this
iconographic tradition was the bronze group of Ganymede
and the Eagle attributed to the Athenian sculptor Leochares, c. 350 B.C. Probably his work is represented in
a number of copies, such as the famous marble version
in the Vatican, and there are dim reflections of it in
Gallo-Roman art. In the Roman period the theme took
on sepulchral symbolism and appeared frequently on
tombs and sarcophagi.2
A particularly arresting example of the older, Greek
portrayal of the myth in which Zeus himself carries off
his minion, is the terracotta group of c. 470 B.C. at
Olympia (Fig. 3).3 It contrasts markedly with our Romanesque work. In the Olympian sculpture a boyish prettiness
pervades the slight, nude form of Ganymede's body. He
yields easily to the firm embrace of Zeus and places his
right hand very trustingly-the fingers are still visible-on
the powerful arm which grasps him; with his left he
happily clutches the love gift of a cock. The radiant faces,
241
FIGURE 2. Veelay, La Madeleine, capital, Rape of Ganymede, detail.
the snug fit of the forms and the suggestion of fleet
movement in them express elation and the anticipation
of pleasure. The play between the mature assertiveness of
the adult and the innocent submission of the boy, evoked
by incipient versus developed masculine shapes, conveys the
essence of the relationship.
In our Vezelay sculpture, this emphasis upon splendid
nude bodies and a close physical relationship is totally
eclipsed by the terrifying interpretation given the event.
In the Greek work the handsome Zeus grasps the boy
protectively; in Hellenistic, Roman or even Gallo-Roman
examples, the wings of the eagle provide a gentle support
for him, and he is wafted heavenward as if in a feathered
chariot.4 The tone is expectant. At Vezelay the wings of
the vulturous bird are harshly vertical, his pose rapacious,
tensed for attack; enormous talons clutch at the young
hunter's snarling dog, and the beak of the bird, like that
of a falcon, has a cruel sharpness as it snatches and crushes
the child. The scene becomes an image of childhood terror.
Vainly pleading and lamenting, the frantic parents rush
242
toward the boy from the left.5 The fear of the child is
graphically conveyed: he presses his hands together desperately as if in prayer; his eyes bulge in panic; his hair
literally stands on end, and his mouth opens to utter a
hideous scream as the twisted, slight body disappears
above. An hysterical family watching its innocent child
snatched from them by the attack of a brutish, aggressive
monster instigated by a demon becomes a tragedy as horrible as the attacks of birds of prey upon small, helpless
creatures in open fields. Here Ganymede, the young hunter
of the Classical myth, is himself the hunted one.
Although the Romanesque work contains the Classical
components of the Ganymede myth, its meaning is antithetical to the concept underlying the ancient story.6 Instead of a joyous apotheosis to an eternal life of youth,
beauty and erotic pleasure among the gods on Olympus,
the Romanesque boy appears at the very brink of damnation. The unwitting plaything of a brute, demonic force,
he is suspended, upside down, in a position of perpetual
agony. The eagle is the animal agent of this horror, but
the monstrous, horned devil at his side is clearly its creator. Occupying the prominent portion of the capital's field,
he and the eagle are hardly counterbalanced by the helpless figures on the weaker left side. Adhemar was concerned about the composition of the scene which he
considered unbalanced and poorly adjusted to the capital's conical surface-weaknesses which he ascribed to the
artist's effort to accommodate the text's unfamiliar subject. The position of the eagle vainly "striving" for the
focal center of the capital particularly disturbed him. An
academic demand for static symmetry around a central
vertical axis ignores the conscious, and very sophisticated,
intention of the artist to create an asymmetrical, dynamic
composition of open, deeply-cut and richly-textured forms.
Thrusting overpoweringly to the left, they express the
violent assault which is the theme of the capital.
This analysis brings us closer to an understanding of the
capital's serious meaning. While using the Ganymede story
in his discussion of hunting perils in the Polycraticus (c.
1159), John of Salisbury, the humanist who became Bishop
of Chartres, also indicated his awareness of the boy's role
on Olympus: "they record that the Trojan hunter [Ganymede] was carried into the heavens by an eagle to serve
as cupbearer, from which to go on to illicit and unnatural
embraces."' His words reflect the deep anxiety of the
Church earlier in the Romanesque period concerning pederasty.
St. Peter Damian devoted an entire book, aptly entitled
the Liber Gomorrhianus (c. 1049), to problems of sexual
perversions among the clergy, especially homosexuality.8
He described in surprising detail four types of such vices,
delineated their various refinements, from auto-eroticism
to unnatural types of intercourse, and classified them
downward from the degree of vileness which is least
culpable to that uttermost viciousness contrived by the
devil, homosexuality, as "grades of descent down to the
luckless soul thrust into the depths of Gehenna's hellfire
FIGURE 3. Olympia, Museum, Zeus and Ganymede, terracotta
abyss" (c. I).9 But Damian reserved the vials of his extreme
wrath for those villainous ecclesiastical fathers who pollute
their spiritual sons: O scelus inauditum! 0 facinus toto
lacrimarum fonte lugendum! He went on to ask what
kind of torture would be appropriate for those guilty of
such wrong, punishable by damnation, and further, what
kind of offspring could be expected in the flock, when the
shepherd is plunged with such headlong descent into the
belly of the devil. Who, he asked, would submit to the
authority of one he knows to be thus estranged from God.
In Damian's opinion, it was more tolerable to sink into
shame with an animal because less severe judgment is
passed upon a person who sins alone than one who
drags another with him to damnation (c. VI).10 Damian's
vigorous condemnation of such vices matched the stern
penalties he recommended for them. In his opinion no
one in holy orders, so attainted, was suitable to conduct
divine service. As to clerics or monks who seduced youths
and children, the recommended penalties were harsh indeed: public shame and scourging, loss of the tonsure, fetters of iron, imprisonment for six months, fasting three
days a week until vespers; thereafter for another six months
life under the custody of an elder ecclesiastic in an isolated cell, with manual labor and prayer punctuated by
vigils and orisons, always in the custody of two devout
brethren and never in improper discourse or association
with young men (c. XV).11 Damian addressed the book to
Pope Leo IX, a keen supporter of Cluniac reform, who also
deplored the four kinds of foulness classified by Damian and
meted out degrees of punishment from programs of penance for those who have "not done it often" or "with
many" to the removal of all hope of recovering their
ecclesiastical rank for those of extreme perseverance.12
These problems were obviously perennial. With the
growth of monasticism in the eleventh and early twelfth
centuries bringing the press of numbers into outmoded
accommodations, the problems must have enlarged accordingly. Although particularly acute in Damian's time of
broadly championed reform, they were still current within
the Cluniac network during the first decades of the twelfth
century when our sculpture was conceived. The reforming
Cluniac decrees of Peter the Venerable (abbot of Cluny,
1122-1156) attended to the most mundane details of monastic life, regulated diet, dress, labor, activities in the
cloister, and imposed restraints in numerous ways. Two of
his statutes dealt with the oblate children of the cloister
(pueri scholari).13
The practice of oblation or the commitment of very
young children by their parents to a monastic life was at
its height during the time of Damian's Liber Gomorrhiana.
Mary McLaughlin has recently discussed this practice by
which for centuries cloistered communities enlisted recruits.
She argued persuasively that these children became a vital
part of their c mmunities. This proved so, despite the
obvious negative factors such as the distress of separation
from parents and siblings, the rigor of a firmly constrained
life, the questionable motivation of the parents-which
was often a matter of mere convenience-and especially
the involuntary and often irreversible manner of effecting
the association which filled the monasteries with a "conscript army." Their residence, often in large numbers,
raised problems resolvable only through the development
of skills in the rearing of children that would foster their
religious and intellectual education as well as their physical
well being. McLaughlin says " ... the presence of children
in these communities fostered in, or forced upon, many
that sense of distinctiveness of childhood as a stage of
life with its own needs and capacities."14
243
marized: "Entrusted to the care of masters, one of whom
was to remain between two boys wherever they went,
they were always to sit apart from one another 'in such
In their
a way as to prevent any physical contact'....
relations with each other and with older monks they were
not to hand anything to anyone or receive anything from
anyone except the abbot, prior or masters and no one
but these was ever to 'make a sign to them or smile to
them.' None of the other monks was to enter their school
or speak to them anywhere without the permission of the
abbot or prior."16McLaughlin concluded: "Plainly intended among other things, to prevent sexual activities among
the children and the development of dangerous intimacies
with their elders, this rigorous watchfulness reflected, and
no doubt enhanced, fears that were evidently well-founded.
Testimony to the facts and fantasies of sexual temptations
of every variety abounds in the monastic sources of this
period."17
The custom of oblation was on the wane in the late
eleventh century as criticism of the practice grew. Citing
the Rule of Benedict on their behalf, Peter the Venerable
urged greater kindness to the boys and more restraint
in the disciplining of them. He appeared concerned about
their number, which he apparently limited to six oblates at
Cluny.18In liberalizing attitudes toward the oblates and in
providing for more individual treatment of them his purposes reflect a genuine interest in their well-being and
concern for their security.
The story in Peter the Venerable's De Miraculis about
the sexual assault of a monastic schoolmaster upon a boy
reveals much:
Once upon a time, moreover,during the hours of night
a certainother brother,a carpenter,was lying in a place
a little apart from the rest. As is the customin monastic
dorters,a lighted lamp illuminatedthis place. Then while
he lay in bed, not yet asleep, he saw a frightfulvulture,
with difficulty supporting the weight of its immense
body on wings and feet, run up panting as if from exertion and stand at his bedside. As the brother gazed
upon it with astonishment,lo and behold, two other
demonsarrivedin the form of men, and addressedthemselves to that vulture,in realitya demon, as follows:They
said: "What are you doing here? Are you able to effect
anythinghere?" "I can do nothing," he said, "because,
by the protectionof the cross, the aspersionof holy water
and the murmuringof psalms,I am repelledby everyone.
I have workedhere all night, as you see, and I have expended my energy in vain. Not having the power to
succeedin anything,I came hither from that place, exhausted But tell me of your journey, and if it yielded
somethingfortunateto you."
They said: "We have come from Cabilone where we
inciteda certainGaufredusof Donziaco,to fall into adultery with the wife of his host. Moreovergoing througha
244
certain monastery we brought it about that the master of
the school committed fornication with one of the boys. But
what is your business, you idler? Stand up and at least cut
off the leg of the monk who looks at us; he extends it
beyond the bed in disorderlyfashion."19
The devils who induced the schoolmaster to seduce the
boy recall our capital; for they play the same role as the
demon in our sculpture. In the context of the monastic
customaries and contemporaneous writings, particularly
those of Peter the Venerable, the capital's message becomes clear. As an admonishment to the Benedictines at
Vezelay and with all the concentrated force of Romanesque
art it taught that the crime symbolized by the Ganymede
scene was the devil's own handiwork. His prominence in
the capital and his position on its right side, both carefully
calculated, allowed him to glare and gesture obscenely at
the monks as they left the church through the south aisle.
The devil is the protagonist of the drama, and fear of his
assault is its theme; Ganymede is thus analogous to the
typical oblate in the abbey, and the eagle a metaphor for
those clerics and monks who would wantonly prey upon
a boy's vulnerability. The Classical myth, put to a Christian
purpose, alerted the community to the incitements of the
devil in an effort to deter any monk or cleric afflicted with
a roving and concupiscent eye. Were concerns regarding the
sexual abuse of children not rife at the time, the ancient
story would have been a hollow quotation from the lore
of the past, its Virgilian reference understood only by the
learned. The intensity of its expression indicates a typical
Romanesque tour-de-force, in which a Classical literary
form becomes the vehicle for a strongly felt, contemporary,
Christian message.20
The Ganymede myth was not yet "moralized" in our
capital as Ovid's fables were to be in the Ovide moralise
of the late Middle Ages, or "spiritualized" as in Dante's
Purgatorio (canto IX, 11. 13-33) and other late medieval
and early Renaissance literature. From the fifteenth and
subsequent centuries it appeared in works of art such as
Filarete's doors for St. Peter's and in the emblem books
of Alciati, Bocchius and others. With their mingling of
Christian and revived pagan sentiments, these late portrayals commonly allegorized the enraptured soul in its
ascent to God.21
Although we have not sufficient evidence to claim Peter
the Venerable as the iconographer of the capital, his role
as prior at Vezelay in his years there before 1122, when
he was called to Cluny as abbot, does suggest that he
himself might have conceived the idea of using the pagan
Ganymede myth in sculpture as a constant warning to the
Christian community to resist the fearsome temptation
ever set before them by the devil's wiles.22
NOTES
1. J. Adhemar, "L'Enlevement de Ganymede sur un chapiteau de Vezelay," Bulletin monumental, 91, 1932, 290-92; idem, Influences antiques dans l'art du moyen age francais, Recherches sur les sources
et les themes d'inspiration, Studies of the Warburg Institute, 7,
London, 1939, 222-23. Cf. F. Salet, La Madeleine de Vezelay ("etude
iconographique" by Jean Adhemar), Melun, 1948, no. 12, 182-83,
pl. 31. The subject was considered unknown in earlier publications:
M. Aubert, Les richesses d'art de la France, La Bourgogne, La sculpture, Paris, Brussels, 1927, I, 17, pl. 39; E. Male, L'Art religieux du
XIIe siecle, Paris, 1922, 368 (cf. p. 444 in revised editions); C.
Poree, L'Abbaye de Vezelay, Paris, s.d. [1909], C. Poree, "Vezelay,"
Congres archeologique de France, 74, Avallon, 1907, Paris, 1908,
2444, pl. II foll. p. 30. The earlier literature is given by Salet, op.
cit. For the Loeb edition of the Aeniad, see Virgil, ed. H. Rushton
Fairclough,London, 1927, I, 462-63.
2. For Ganymede in ancient art see: K. Schauenburg, "Ganymed und
Hahnenkampfe auf romischen Sarkophagen," Archaeologischer Anzeiger, 1972, 501-516; M. Bieber, The Sculpture of the Hellenistic
Age, rev. ed. New York, 1961, 62f; H. Sichtermann, Ganymed,
Mythos und Gestalt in der antiken Kunst, Berlin, 195-; R. Engemann, "Ganymed," Reallexikon fur Antike und Christentum,
Stuttgart, 1950ff, 1039f; R. Herbig, "Ganymed und der Adler,"
Ganymed, Heidelberger Beitrage zur antiken Kunstgeschichte,
Anlisslich der 100-Jahr-Feierder Sammlungen des Archaeologischen
Instituts der Universitit Heidelberg, ed. R. Herbig, Heidelberg,
1949, 1-9; E. Esperandieu, Recueil general des bas-reliefs de la
Gaule romaine, 14 vols. Paris, 1907-1955, nos. 328, 360, 487,
897, 2758, 2863, 3033, 3229, 3272, 4066, 5152, 5223, 5268, 6256,
6426, 6931, 7673, NB 360 (Vienne), 5268 (Igelsaule near Trier); M.
Heron de Villefosse, "Le Ganymede de Cherchel," Bulletin archeologique du Comite des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1914,
264-69, pl. XVIII; Pauly-Wissowa, Real-encyclopadie, ,cols. 73749; C. Daremberg, E. Saglio, Dictionnaire des antiquites grecques
et romaines, Paris, 1896, col. 707; W. H. Roscher, Ausfihrliches
Lexikon der griechischen und r6mischen Mythologie, Leipzig, 1890,
cols. 1595-1603. In the late antique period Ganymede was thought
of as Aquarius.
Gallo-Roman pavements with portrayals of the Rape of Ganymede include the following: Orbe (A. Blanchet, Inventaire des
mosaiques de la Gaule, II, Lugdunaise, Belgique et Germanie, Paris,
1909, no. 1382); Vienne, Museum, from Sainte-Colombe (G. Lafaye,
Inventaire des mosaiques de la Gaule, I, Narbonnais et Aquitaine,
Paris, 1909, no. 209; A. Blanchet, Etude sur la decoration des edifices de la Gaule romaine, Paris, 1913, p. 85). Cf. K. Phillips, Jr.,
"Subjectand Technique in Hellenistic-Roman Mosaics: A Ganymede
Mosaic from Sicily," The Art Bulletin, 42, 1960, 243-62.
3. R. Lullies, M. Hirmer, Greek Sculpture, New York, 1960, no. 105,
pls. V, 105; Sichterman, Ganymed, no. 81.
4. E.g. Esperandieu, Recueil, NB nos. 360 (Vienne), 2863 (Sens), 3272
(Langres). Pliny makes a point of the gentleness of the eagle bearing
the precious Ganymede; Natural History, XXXIV, 79.
5. Salet and Adhemar describe the figure of a woman, now mutilated,
on the left side of the capital, which suggests that the boy's parents
are intended; Salet, Vezelay, 183. A third figure at the far left appears
to be a hunter. Note the similarity of the eagle on the capital to the
eagle which figured as the symbol of John the Evangelist in the
main tympanum of the Abbey Church at Cluny; Musee National du
Louvre, Description raisonnee des sculptures du moyen sge, de la
renaissance et des temps modernes, I, Moyen age, ed. M. Aubert,
M. Beaulieu,Paris, 1950, no. 24.
6. In spite of the fact that Ovid's writings were acquiring even greater
popularity in the twelfth century than Virgil's, particularly in the
schools, the Ganymede fable in the Metamorphoses (X, 155-161)
is more distant from the Vezelay interpretation of the subject. "The
king of the gods once burned with love for Phrygian Ganymede, and
something was found which Jove would rather be than what he
was. Still he did not deign to take the form of any bird save only
that which could bear his thunderbolts. Without delay he cleft
the air on his lying wings and stole away the Trojan boy, who even
now, though against the will of Juno, mingles the nectar and attends
the cups of Jove." Ovid's Metamorphoses, Loeb Classical Library,
ed. F.J. Miller, Cambridge, Mass., 1916, II, 74-75. See note 21
below.
7. Polycraticus, Lib. I, c. IV; J. P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, Paris,
1844-1904, 199, col. 390; Adhemar, Influences, 223, n.2.
8. Opusculum VII. Migne, Pat. Lat., 1445, cols. 159-90 OJ Blum,
St. Peter Damian, His Teaching on the Spiritual Life, Washington,
D.C., 1947, 201 (following the chronology of Franz Neukirch). Cf.
I Rom. 1: 26-27; I Cor. 6: 9-10; I Tim. 1: 10.
9. Migne, Pat. Lat., 145, col. 161.
10. Ibid., cols. 166-167.
11. Ibid., col. 174.
12. Ibid.,col. 160.
13. Ibid., 189, cols. 1040, 1043f; Dom D. Knowles, "The Reforming
Decrees of Peter the Venerable," Petrus Venerahilis, 1156-1956,
Studies and Texts Commemorating the Eighth Centenary of his
Death, ed. G. Constable, J. Kritzeck, Studia Anselmiana, XL, Rome,
1956, 1-20, NB p. 18; J. Leclercq, Pierre le Venerable, Saint-Wandrille,
1946, passim.
14. M. Martin McLaughlin, "Survivors and Surrogates: Children and
Parents from the Ninth to the Thirteenth Centuries," The History
of Childhood, ed. L. deMause, New York, 1974, 132. See also G.G.
Coulton, Life in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, 1967, IV, 80, 99-101;
idem, Five Centuries of Religion, Cambridge, 1923, I, 81ff, 222-30,
326-27. The fifty-ninth chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict explains
it thus: "If any nobleman shall offer his son to God in the monastery, let the parents, if the child himself be under age, make the
petition for him, and together with the oblation wrap the formal
promise and the hand of the boy in the altar cloth and thus dedicate
him to God. ... In the same way let those who are poorer act. But
such as have nothing whatever shall simply make the promise
and offer their son before witnesses with the oblation." The Rule
of Saint Benedict, trans. Cardinal Gasquet, New York, 1966, 102103. McLaughlin notes the forthcoming work by Pierre Riche,
"L'Enfant dans la societe monastique aux XIe et XIIe siecles,"
Actes, Colloque international, Pierre Abelard-Pierre Venerable,
Paris, 1974, not yet available to me.
15. B. Albers, Consuetudines monasticae, 4 vols., Stuttgart, Vienna,
Monte Cassino, 1900-1912; Consuetudines Bernardi, ed. M. Herrgott
in Vetus Disciplina Monastica, Paris, 1726; Consuetudines Udalrici,
L. d'Achery, Spicilegium, Paris, 1728 and Migne, Pat. Lat., 149, cols.
741-47; Corpus Consuetudinum Monasticarum, ed. Kassius Hallinger, Rome, 1963-. For excerpts from the Constitutions of the
monastery at Hirschau, c. 1000 (Migne, Pat. Lat., 150, cols. 939ff)
and the Custumal of St. Benigne, Dijon, see Coulton, Life, IV,
99-101. McLaughlin has drawn un all of these in her discussion,
"Survivors and Surrogates," 129-32, nn. 180-87; cf. N. Hunt, Cluny
under St. Hugh, 1049-1109, London, 1967, 86, 96-99; Paul
Meyvaert, "The Medieval Monastic Claustrum,"Gesta, 12, 1973, 54.
16. McLaughlin, "Survivors and Surrogates," 130, nn. 183-84. Familiarity
between youths was discouraged with a number of specific proscriptions such as: "When they sit in cloister or chapter, let each
have his own tree-trunk for a seat, and so far apart that none
touch in any way even the skirt of the other's robe." . . . "Let the
245
masters sleep between every two boys in the dormitory, and sit
between every two at other times, and if it be night, let all the
candles be fixed without on the spikes which crown the lanterns,
that they may be plainly seen in all that they do;" Coulton, Life,
IV, 100, from the Custumalof St. Benigne, Dijon.
Raby's discussion of a lyrical satire on a medieval French prelate
("Qui sedet hac sede ganimedior est Ganimede; / . . ."), A History
of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages, Oxford, 1934, II, p.
289; F. von Bezold, Das Fortleben der antiken Gotter im Mittelalterlichen Humanismus, Bonn, 1922, 101 n. 174.
17. McLaughlin,'Survivors and Surrogates," 130-31. Early medieval penitentials prescribed stringent punishments for sexual transgressions
by boys as well as clerics: J. McNeil, H.M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance: A Translation of the Principal libri poenitentiales
and selections from related documents, New York, 1965, passim,
N.B. 103,113,185,250, 254, 302,309.
For the text of the debate between Helen and Ganymede as champions of hetero-and homosexual love, a twelfth-century poem conceived as a moralizing deterrent for clerics, see W. Wattenbach,
"Ganymed und Helena," Zeitschrift fur deutsches Alterthum, 18,
1875, 124-35; M. Manitius, Geschichte der lateinische Literatur
des Mittelalters, III, Munich, 1931, 947-48; Raby, op. cit., 289-90.
Erwin Panofsky wrote some pithy paragraphs on the subject, including the startling parallel drawn in the late Middle Ages between
Ganymede and St. John the Evangelist with his eagle: Renaissance
and Renascences in Western Art, Stockholm, Uppsala 1965, 78;
idem. Studies in Iconology, New York, 1962, 213-18.
For a similar blending of Classical and Christian concepts, see the
author's forthcoming article on the cockfight theme in Burgundian
Romanesque sculpture. In Roman sarcophagi the Ganymede iconography has taken on the meaning of a personal apotheosis, allegorizing the hopes of the dead; see Schauenburg, "Ganymed und
Hahnenkampfe auf romischen Sarkophagen,"and note 2 above.
18. Statures 56, 66, Migne, Pat. Lat., 189, cols. 1040, 1043f. Knowles,
"The Reforming Decrees," 18, n. 53; Coulton, Five Centuries of
Religion, I, 327; Hunt, Cluny, pp. 96-97. In the time of Ulrich,
who harshly criticized the practice of oblation (c. 1083), the number
did not extend beyond six; according to Dom Knowles, loc. cit.,
"this would be a reasonable number in a community of sixty and
was perhaps never raised."By the time of Peter the Venerable there
were 300 monks at Cluny. Other monasteries appear to have taken
in far larger numbers of oblates.
19. De miraculis, Lib. I, c. XIV; Migne, Pat. Lat., 189, cols. 877-78.
To satisfy the curiosity of readers, the story concludes as follows:
the vulture, thus goaded by the demons, snatched up the carpenter's
axe which was lying under his bed. He raised it with all his strength
for a blow, but the brother pulled his foot back just in time. The
axe missed its mark. As it struck the end of the bed the demons
disappeared. For the manuscripts of the De miraculis, see G. Constable, "Manuscripts of Work by Peter the Venerable," Petrus
Venerabilis, 1156-1956, 219-36. The work enjoyed wide popularity during the Middle Ages and was frequently used as a source
for exempla in medieval sermons, op. cit., 231. Cf. McLaughlin,
"Survivors and Surrogates," n. 186. Jean Leclercq discussed the purpose of the De Miraculis in Pierre le Vgngrable,131-34, N.B. 133.
20. The image of Ganymede was featured in the writings of a number
of other Romanesque literati, e.g. Bernard of Cluny (also known as
Bernard of Morlaix), a poet at the abbey under Peter the Venerable.
In a well known poem, notable as a beautiful example of Romanesque internal rhyme, he used the Classical figure of Ganymede as
the vehicle of his attack on bestial sodomy in high places in his
own day (De Contemptu Mundi, III, 191ff, ed. H.C. Hoskier, London,
1929, 77, "Faex sodomae patet, innumerus scatet, hue! Ganymedes,
/ Dum scelus exhihet, haec fera quaslihet incolit aedes. / Prima sedilia,
culta cubilia sunt Ganymedis. / Juno relinquitur, et capra subditur
-o furor! haedis, / .. ."). Baudryof Bourgueil (Baldricus Burguliensis,
Benedictine abbot of Bourgueil and later Archbishop of Dol), turned
repeatedly to the Ganymede story in his poetry; see Phyllis Abrahams, Les oeuvres poetiques de Baudri de Bourgueil (1046-1130),
Edition critique publiee d'apres le manuscrit du Vatican, Paris, 1926.
He used it to illustrate his praise of the beauty of youth (no. 38, p.
24) and to characterize the hedonistic excesses of the Greeks;
he wove it into a dialogue on love between Paris and Helen (nos.
42, 43, pp. 32, 43, cf. no. 196, p. 202). In Baudry's letter to Gerard of
Loudon, celebrating the peace of the cloister, he noted the dangerous
attractions of the Ganymede-like youth but asked why such a liaison,
like that of Jupiter with Ganymede, should so please a man and
ended with a truly Classical terseness: "He keeps aloof from a
whore, making a man a whore" ("Multus homo lascivius adhuc
vult Juppiter esse. / Cum Ganimede suo requiescit Juppiter alter;
/ Ecce sibi sperat audere licentius ista, / Haec indulgere sibi vult
commercia carnis./ . .. Quid sibi complacuit ut pauset cum Ganimede? / A meritrice vacat, faciens hominem meritricem?" no. 139,
p. 112). Ernest Curtius devoted several important pages to this
subject (European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, Bollingen
Series, XXXVI, New York, 1953, 113-17; N.B. Baudry's contemporaries Marbod and Hilary on pederasty, pp. 115-16). Cf. F.J.
246
Many examples of the Ganymede image survive in France from the
Gallo-Roman period, chiefly in bas-reliefs and mosaics. Although
these would have provided readily available models for the sculptor of the capital at Vezelay, the inventive Romanesque treatment
of the iconography makes such a dependence unlikely. See note
2 above.
21. For the Ovide moralise, see C. de Boer, Ovide moralise, poeme du
commencement du quatorizieme siecle, publia d'apres tous les
manuscrits connus, Amsterdam, 1915-1938 (Verhandelingen der
Koninklijke Akademie van Vettenschappen te Amsterdam, 37), 2829 (X, 11. 724-52 correspond to Metamorphoses, X, 148-61).
For the inspiration of Ovid in medieval poetry from the eleventh
century on, among others see: C. Lord, "Three Manuscripts of the
Ovide Moralise," The Art Bulletin, 57, 1975, 161-75; D. Robathan, "Ovid in the Middle Ages," Ovid, ed. J. Binns, London, 1973,
191-209; D.C. Allen, Mysteriously Meant, The Rediscovery of Pagan
Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance, Baltimore, 1970, 163-67; M.D. Chenu, Nature, Man and Society in the
Twelfth Century, Chicago, 1968 ('On the symbolist mentality'),
109-10; J. de Ghellinck, L'Essor de la litterature latine au Xlle
siecle, Brussels, 1955, 284-85, 433-34, 471-72; L.P. Wilkinson,
Ovid Recalled, Cambridge, 1955, 374-84; G.G. Coulton, Five
Centuriesof Religion, I, pp. 183 n. 1, 543.
For examples in the art of the Renaissance and later: H. Roeder,
"The Borders of Filarete's Bronze Doors to St. Peter's," Journal of
the Warburg-Courtauld Institute, 10, 1947, 153; Emblemata,
Handbuch zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. und XVII. Jahrhunderts, ed.
A. Henkel, A. Schdne, Stuttgart, 1967, cols. 1726-1727; A. Pigler,
Barockthemen, 2nd ed., Budapest, 1974, II, 93-95; A. Seznec,
The Survivalof the Pagan Gods, New York, 1953, 101, 103.
22. According to Giles Constable, The Letters of Peter the Venerable,
Cambridge, Mass., 1967, II, 39, the Classical authors best known to
Peter the Venerable were Horace and Virgil. For his familiarity
with the Aeniad, see loc. cit. Peter of Poitiers lauded Peter the
Venerable in a panegyric as "in verse, a Virgil;" op. cit., 38. Cf. H. de
Lubac, Exegese medievale, II, 2, Paris, 1964, 237ff ("Virgile, philosophe et prophete"). For the extensive comment on Virgil by John
of Salisbury in Policraticus, Lib. VIII, see Migne, Pat. Lat., 199,
cols. 709-822.
Cf. the comments on Peter the Venerable by Adolf Katzenellenbogen,
"The Central Tympanum at Vezelay, Its EncyclopedicMeaning and Its
Relation to the First Crusade,"The Art Bulletin, 26, 1944, 141-51.
Foto Marhourg);
Photograph credits: Figure 1 (Courtesy of Bildarchi
Figure 2 (Combier Imp. Macon), Figure 3 (Courtesy of Hirmer Fotoarchiv
Miinchen).