Guardian of Yosemite
Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2019 10:06 am
http://www.thebluedot.com/gargs/g2.html
"What are these fantastic monsters doing in the cloisters under the very eyes of the brothers as they read?....What is the meaning of these unclean monkeys, these savage lions and monstrous creatures?" - St. Bernard of Clairvaux
It was a fitting question St. Bernard posed in asking how and why these "unclean monkeys" - these gargoyles and grotesques - came to inhabit man's monuments to God and beyond. Look up in the concentric center of town in almost any ancient city today and meet the gaze of these nightmares in the sky.
How does one reconcile the anonymous, hallucinatory images - many of which are effectively hidden from view in remote recesses of their edifices - with the sacrosanct mission of the Church and the mathematical precision of Gothic architecture? How did they travel from country to country, erupting like tumors on buildings throughout Europe and, much later, America? They are not to be explained away as mere decorative whimsy.