MEDIEVAL MENAGERIE

By Charles LeroyYoumans '20. Seoane, Fernandez y Cia. 224pp.

The Romanesque and Gothic churches of Europe are richly embellished with an astounding amount of sculpture, some of which seems to have very little to do with religious teaching or church ritual. In Medieval Menagerie Mr. Youmans points up the encyclopedic nature of cathedral art and he emphasizes particularly the popular legends and fables, often pagan in origin.

Reyriaud the Fox, Tybert the Cat, King Noble the Lion, Argus of the Hundred Eyes, Beghard the Minstrel, that monster of the deep, The Aspido Chalone, these and manyothers play their roles in church carving: they satirize the rich and the powerful, poke fun at human frailty, and extol all manner of marvels. In the words of the author, "The very least that we can say about these satirical attacks, loosened like a cloud of arrows on animal and man alike, is that medieval society as a whole, willingly and even gleefully, let their sculptors aim their jests and jokes where they would."

The gargoyles and chimeras, the griffins and centaurs, unicorns and dragons, aspics and basilisks, the Sciapods and the Blomyce, they are all part of the medieval mind and they all exist in the cathedral fabric. King Arthur, Tristram, Siegfried, Roland,— they also stand on the Gothic church with Charlemagne and Saint Louis, with Saint Michael and Saint George.

Mr. Youmans' text is accompanied by 300 woodcut illustrations by Leila Quintana that faithfully and effectively reproduce the medieval carvings about which he writes in a popular and non-academic vein. Together the pictures and text make a most interesting introduction to the fanciful side of medieval art.