Contextualising English Late-Medieval Carved Cadavers;

depicting the pains of purgatory in anatomical art

Othello’s Island, Cyprus 17-20 March 2016

In this paper I will contextualise a sub-set of Northern European cadaver monuments (transi) of the

Late-Medieval era, and explore the extant 40 English carved cadaver memorials (herein ECCMs) dating

from between c1420/25 to 1558; all bar two are carved from a single piece of stone, all bar one

memorialise high ranking clerics or male members of the wealthy land-owning and mercantile classes,

and all image an emaciated and naked (apart from a strategically placed hand or piece of shroud cloth)

recently dead individual, often largely anatomically correct despite pre-dating Vesalius, the father of

anatomy.

By examining late-medieval vernacular theology, and perceptions of purgatory, and speculating on

understandings of the body post-mortem, my paper will support current scholarly writing that these

sculptures were pedagogical in nature, prompting prayers from the living to comfort the deceased in

purgatory. However, I will also suggest that they providing a visual reminder to the living that

purgatorial suffering was not just spiritual, but also physical during the stage that anthropologist Robert

Hertz has described as the ‘wet stage of death’; the stage before the corpse became fully skeletal. Thus,

I will argue then that these are sculptures commissioned to project the spiritual humility of those with

material excess; a necessary quality when ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than

for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God’ (Matt 19:24).

I will also note their potential importance to the study of pre-Vesalian anatomy, a currently marginalized

topic. By examining the viscerality of these often realistic depictions of a cadaver, through Paul Messaris’

concept of iconicity (the emotion elicited from gazing at an image), alongside the medieval Northern

European notion of post-mortem sentience (the concept that the dead can in some sense perceive), I

hope to present the what, why and how of these unusual forms of late-medieval English mortuary art.

Without going into too much detail, I wish to give a general overview of the 40 extant ECCMs before

exploring their theological and anatomical aspects. I should note there are a further 3 of these cadaver

sculptures in Wales (all are single, all are anonymous, 1 is clerical and 2 of the laity) but there are none

in Scotland. Thus in total, there are 43 extant carved cadaver sculptures in Britain, with only 1 known to

have been destroyed; all that remains is the upper effigy of an archbishop.

As can be seen from this slide, the majority of ECCMs were commissioned by, or commemorated clerics.

Although there is no extant information on these sculptures, beyond the sculptures themselves, several,

around 6, predate the death of the individual so we can be sure these were commissioned by them. The

rest are pretty much an unknown quality in that regard, although most are of known individuals; high

ranking clerics, wealthy merchants, and the landed gentry.

As you can see however, 10 are of person’s now unknown, and this does raise questions in terms of

dating.

It is believed that the first cadaver sculpture in England was to Archbishop Chichele’s, erected around

1424. Although the Art Historian Pamela King, has suggested that the first cadaver sculpture in the

country could be to/of John Newton, canon of York Minster; …an important figure in the founding of the

minster’s library through his donation of 40 books at his death in 1414.1 However, the minster claims it

is to Dean Thomas Haxey who died in 1425. Regardless, we can date the start of these sculptures to the

early 1400s. It is worth noting here that this particular genre of mortuary memorial dates only the late

14th century, and is a Northern European phenomenon with England being a very early adopter.

In terms of when ECCMs finish it is important to consider their specific style for Kathleen Cohen in her

seminal work ‘Metamorphosis of a Death Symbol’ (1973) includes skeleton sculpture and two-

dimensional images in her analysis and argues they finish in the 17th century. However, in terms of my

area of interest, three-dimensional emaciated naked figures laying in a burial shroud, then in England

they finish in 1558. By drawing on statistical analysis of the ECCMs with provenance, I argue none date

1 http://www.yorkhistory.org.uk/node/31

to the reign of the Protestant King Edward VI. This then places them within a Roman Catholic framework

and thus to the afterlife belief in purgatory.

Purgatory was the place that all bar the sainted and the damned would go after death. Measured in

thousands of years, it was a place of painful sufferance were venial (forgivable) sins were purged. In

terms of ECCMs I suggest that it was a place where, during the wet stage of death, when the body is

decomposing, these pains were not just sensed spiritually, but understood to be felt physically.

Support for my theory of post-mortem sentience can be found in vernacular sources such as Dante

where ones purgatorial punishment fitted one’s crime; for instance the greedy were forced to eat dust,

while the proud carried heavy rocks keeping their faces toward the ground. The poem was lavishly and

graphically illustrated in all its medieval versions, and was popular, as Werner Friederich in Dante’s

Fame Abroad (1950) has noted, across Northern Europe where post-mortem punishments were

frequent.

Indeed a notion of post-mortem sentience was so common that, in France, death did not save you from

a criminal trial. You were given a lawyer though; assistance that the living were denied. Whilst in

England, during the medieval period, it was believed a murder victim bled in the present of the murder

in effect convicting the said individual; Shakespeare’s Richard III stands as testimony here.

The idea that the dead may not be fully deceased has a Biblical founding with the rising of Lazarus being

a popular medieval narrative; with no infallible test of diagnosing when death actually occurred,

occasionally people did come back to life. Further, the dead and buried could return as revenants, often

warning their relatives of the perils of purgatory and to lead better lives. Although uncommon, and

theologically incorrect, as medieval historian Nancy Caciola has argued, these revenants reinforced the

blurred lines between life and death.

As already noted, purgatory was the main afterlife destination for Catholics, and was a place of severe

punishment. One ecclesiastical sources spoke of its terrors in vividly visceral terms. The 1422

anonymous revelation of an English nun seeing a fellow nun’s after-life suffering; her skin rent and burnt

and fire leaping from her mouth. If this could happen to a nun then the laity must have been concerned!

One could of course ‘buy’ time out of this fearful place by going on pilgrimages and/or purchasing

indulgences (Chaucer’s The Pardoner’s Tale is of course a classic of this particular practice), but if you

had the money, collecting relics would also help. Cardinal Albrecht of Mainz had a relic collection that he

believed guaranteed him 39,245,120 years and 220 days out of purgatory.

As these images demonstrate, purgatory was a place one would wish to spend as little time in as

possible. And this brings me to the sculptures because by praying for the dead, one could also effectively

build up time out of purgatory, and if you were prayed for whilst in purgatory, then your punishments

were believed to be lessened; and this I argue provides some indication as to why these unusual

memorials were sculpted. Because let’s face it, why on earth would someone of wealth and social status

wish to be remembered for eternity as naked and emaciated; as if they had died of dysentery!

These sculptures were hugely expensive costing at least the price of a top of the range luxury sports car

in todays’ money. They may have shown the individual as humble reflecting the piety needed to enter

the Kingdom of God, but in their very existence they also indicated, for posterity, the earthly social

standing and vast accumulation of ‘disposable’ income of the commemorated persons.

That these memorials had an expectation of remembrance for the commemorated is evident from the

inscription once visible on the monument to Archbishop Richard Fleming in Lincoln Cathedral. I should

note that originally the effigy was inside Flemings’ chantry; the current tiered appearance is due to

renovations carried out at the start of the 1900s by an antiquarian; in fact few are in their original

location. Also it appears that the carved cadaver was scrubbed at some point to remove any polychrome

(in fact none retain their original colouring); Fleming’s memorial is one of several in really quite a poor

state. However, it once read:

Reader, whoever comes this way, read for a while. Stand, seeing in me, who is eaten by

worms, what you will be. I, who was once young and beautiful to look on, [and learned]

lie under the thick clods.

Worldly pomp, honour, recognition …whatever heights there are, what were they pray, if

not dreams, folly?.. All things are put to flight by cruel death, like shadows… Brief life is

vain, such glory has this end…I beseech you pray for me (Cohen Metamorphosis p18).

From this we can see that the sculpture acted in a number of ways, and it is clear ECCMs acted as

memento mori, as a visceral reminder to onlookers that they would die and go to purgatory. By drawing

on the concept of iconicity as developed by Paul Messaris, we can read these sculptures as a form of

persuasive visual imagery that utilises the viewer’s emotional response. As the sculptures were usually

polychromed, then the just dead look would have been quite a sight. One ECCM has been conserved by

the V&A who found traces of flesh coloured paint, and red and green veins. Lying in an open burial

shroud with eyes slightly open and muscles in tension, these figures occupy a liminal space between life

and death, and thus between this-life and the after-life; a liminality that echoed the betwixt and

between place of purgatory.

ECCMs also typically appear to have petitioned prayers to aid the individual in purgatory. Fleming is

explicit in his request – pray for me. Most have lost their inscriptions but petitioning prayers would have

been a potent part of their visceral power, and the wills of those whose provenance is known were fairly

insistent that they were prayed for after death; at least 2 function as an Easter Sepulchre ensuring the

commissioners were central during the four most important days of the liturgical calendar, many of the

memorialised endowed chantries with priests saying obits, and several even endowed alms houses

and/or schools or colleges. Being prayed for was important and the more money one had, the more one

could afford to be remembered.

John Fitzalan’s family could afford a lavish memorial. Fitzalan died in 1435 at the age of 27. As his effigy

shows he was a knight, and indeed was quite the David Beckham of his day; dashing, daring, and also a

fashion icon. Holder of the prestigious Order of the Garter he was a favourite of King Henry VI attending

him at his coronation in France. He was a favourite of the ladies, known for his jousting prowess, and

because of his surprise attacks, he was known by the French as the English Achillies. Plus, the tabard he

wears over his armour, is as Gardner argues in Alabaster Tombs (1940) an early example of a heraldic

fashion that only became popular at the close of that century.

But what interests me most about this memorial is the highly sophisticated level of sculpting. This work

was done by a sculptor who was not just an expert craftsman, but who had a very high level of

anatomical knowledge. Every detail of Fitzalan’s physique bar his genitals, is on show. You can see the

veins on his arm, and the bones in his fingers. His face has wrinkles and his open mouth shows his teeth.

His anorexic body defines every rib and even shows the Xiphoid process; the bit of cartilage at the base

of the sternum. And this was done about around 75 years before Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564), the

father of anatomy was born. These sculptures are not idealized in the normal way, and thus they not

only add something to the history of anatomy, but to Art History also.

During this period of history, anatomical drawings of the body were quite crude. These images are from

Pseudo-Galen, Anatomia, in English dated 1491. As you can see the front of the skeleton isn’t too bad

but the illustrator clearly hasn’t had a good view of the back; the pelvic bones look more like a shoulder

blades and the clavicles don’t come far enough down the back of the body.

However, these inaccuracies are nothing compared to this drawing of the interior of the female human

body, from the same work.

The Wellcome state of this work that ‘The illustrations, though of poor quality, are of interest as being

the prototypes of those found in Ketham's Fasciculus medicinae, first printed in 1491’.

Ketham's medicinae is a collection of medical treatise covering much of European medical knowledge,

and is notable as the first printed book to contain anatomical illustrations2. Amongst the illustrations is a

woodcut of a dissection. However, here we see a much earlier illustration of a dissection.

2 https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/historicalanatomies/ketham_bio.html

The history of dissections suggests that they date from at least as early as the 1280s in Italy, although in

Northern Europe records indicate they were somewhat later, possibly the early 1400s. However, rather

than a dissection this image may show an evisceration. The removal of the internal abdominal organs

was an early form of corpse preservation allowing the body to be moved from the place of death to the

place of burial. Without this, the fast decaying soft viscera would make transportation of the corpse

somewhat unpleasant, especially in warm weather. And remember this was a time when water was

unsafe to drink, so beer and wine was ones’ usual thirst quencher. As the body decomposes,

fermentation of the alcohol in the stomach would occur adding to the usual bloating, and potentially

causing the stomach to erupt; evisceration helped against this rather nasty occurrence.

Interestingly one of the ECCMs shows an evisceration. The sculptor of this piece does appear to have

seen an eviscerated corpse first-hand; notice the pectoral muscles on the ribs and the details on the

neck. This is not a skeleton but a carved dissected corpse. Whilst the overall level of carving is somewhat

poor, this now anonymous priest, is interesting for his accurate internal anatomy.

Not all the ECCMs are anatomically so good. This one has his intestines the wrong way round. Also his

jaw is from a male skull whilst the cranium is from a female – note the smooth browline.

These ECCMs have a paucity of ribs, and a barrel body.

However, of the 42 sculptures in England and Wales, only a minority are so poorly carved, and indeed

several are astonishing in their level of detail such as Fitzalan, and also Bishop Fox whose sculptures are

separated by almost 75 years. The timeframe here covers at least 3 generations so the early excellent

sculptures are not isolated examples.

Typically art historians, such as Kim Woods, have asserted that medieval sculptors must have worked

from pattern books, but I assert that the ECCMs show otherwise, with the poorly detailed ones

demonstrating a lack of a real life-model.

In 1857 the artist Ford Maddox Brown gained access to a hospital morgue so he could accurately sketch

a human corpse.3 Compare the sketch to the Fitzalan sculpture and you can see that the person who

carved Fitzalan had been up close and personal with a real body. The work could not be done from a

contemporary 2- dimensional illustration. It took Maddox Brown 2 days of unfettered access in a

Victorian hospital morgue to make this detailed drawing, a luxury that is unlikely to have been available

to our medieval sculptor.

However, I don’t believe that the sculptor was accessing corpses anyway, because at death the feet

splay outwards and tension is lost – you can see this on the Maddox Brown illustration, but we don’t see

this on the sculpture.

Thus I argue that live emaciated bodies were used as models. Most likely prostitutes for whom the

sinfulness of nakedness was not such an issue as their work made hell their after-life destination

regardless, so their making life a little easier by working for a sculptor seems a reasonable assertion.

Notably, the best stews (brothels) were in Southwark, which is also an area noted for its high quality

sculpture work. Outside the Guild boundaries of the city of London, it was home to continental artisans

who may well have had access to anatomical training; something that appears to have been unavailable

in England until the early 1500s.

3 http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illustration/fmb/cooke.html

Possible evidence for the use of female models can be seen here; the pelvis looks more female than

male.

This aspect of the sculptures is one I cam currently working on, and has implications to other pre-

Reformation English sculpture, such as the recumbant Christ at the Mercer’s Hall in London. You can see

here that his muscular legs are not consistent with his soft belly and lack of pectoral muscles; his six

pack. The abdomen looks decidedly female to me, but I will be working with a forensic pathologist to

confirm my own amateur inspection.

We can see a similar feminization of a male body with Chichele’s tiered memorial. If we look at the

hands from the effigy, and the hands on his carved cadaver, it is clear that they are not the same hands,

and that whilst the effigy hands are clearly masculine, the cadaver hands look remarkably feminine,

although of course some men, and male youths can have long slender fingers - again the assistance of an

anatomical specialist will aid my work.

But given Chichele commissioned his memorial and spent around 20 years in regular contact with it, the

difference in hands throws up some fascinating questions about verism, and symbolic representation.

So where does this leave us. Well, anatomically there is more to discover, but it is clear ECCMs provide

good evidence to show that the better carved sculptures were sculpted by carvers with good, and

sometimes excellent, anatomical knowledge, and that they were sculpted from life models rather than

from pre-existing drawings, or corpses.

Theologically they show-off the inner piety of the wealthy mercantile and land-owning classes who were

very concerned over their immediate post-mortem destination and the horrors of purgatory, which I

believe were understood to be physical rather than just spiritual. However, this is another area that

requires further development.

Overall though, I firmly believe these sculptures deliberately used iconicity to elicit a visceral response

from the viewer/pray-er, that goes beyond the usual memento mori prompt of consider one’s death,

and reminds the viewer about the pains of purgation, and the vital importance of prayer in relieving

post-mortem suffering both for the imaged individual, and the person doing the prayers.

All photographs © to Welch unless otherwise specified