Sex on the Stove.

19
Sex on the Stove
A Fifteenth-Century Tile from Banská Bystrica
Ana-Maria Gruia (Budapest and Bucarest)
By God, I come from fucking!
And it was our host’s daughter, no less!
I took her from the front and from the side;
I breached her wine barrel,
And gave her the ring
From the iron cooking pan!
Jean Bodel,
Gombert and the Two Clerks
(1190-1194)
Sexuality and eroticism have long been a focal point in popular culture.
Academic discourse has, however, only recently begun to free itself from prudery
and prejudice in discussing views of sexuality in past eras.1 In this contribution
I use the results of those studies for approaching one category of medieval
iconography generally labelled as ‘obscenity’, ‘pornography’ or simply ‘sexual
display’.2 “Shocking” images appear on the most diverse media throughout, but
especially towards the end of the Middle Ages: in manuscripts, on capitals and
consoles, misericords, badges, furniture, prints, etc. But what do they mean? No
consensus has yet been reached as to the possible medieval functions and interpretations
of such images. There is evidence supporting several different interpretations,
which will be discussed below, but the overall conclusion is that the
obscene images, although they must have triggered different reactions than ours
today, were multivalent and ambiguous.3
1 Starting with Michel Foucault’s Histoire de la sexualité (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), which set
a series of basic concepts applicable to earlier periods as well, although he dealt only with
the 18th to the 20th century.
2 Jan M. Ziolkowski (ed.), Obscenity. Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European
Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1998); Nicola McDonald (ed.), Medieval Obscenities (York:
York Medieval Press, 2006) (hereafter: McDonald, Obscenities); Malcolm Jones, The
Secret Middle Ages (Stroud: Sutton, 2002), especially chapter 12 (hereafter: Jones, Secret
Middle Ages).
3 Madeline H. Caviness, “Obscenity and Alterity. Images that Shock and Offend Us/Them,
Now/Then?” in Obscenity. Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle
Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 155-175.
20
The ongoing debate concentrates on Western and Northern European
sources. This article expands the discussion towards Central and Eastern Europe,
which the Anglo-Saxon literature has all too frequently ignored. It also draws
attention to another type of ‘strange’ images, namely those on stove tiles. I will
focus on a realistic fifteenth-century depiction of a copulating couple found on a
gren-glazed stove tile in present-day Slovakia (figs. 1–2a).
Stove tiles form a special group of material objects. They have been
preserved in large numbers, can be fairly well dated and connected to different
social groups. Even more, when put together in the ensemble of a stove, tiles
form complex groups of images, creating a rich iconographical context. I have
used a straightforward methodological approach: gathering as much contextual
information on the stove tile as possible and analysing its imagery by comparison
to medieval analogies. The problem is that only limited contextual data
are available and the analogies themselves have received diverging
interpretations. Due to such drawbacks, the present discussion does not reach
definitive conclusions but presents possible interpretations of the image in its
geographical, political, ethnic, chronological, and social context.
Fig. 1: Drawing of the ‘sex tile’ from Banská Bystrica. Out of: Marta Mácelová, “Gotické
kachlové pece z banskobystrickej radnice” (Gothic stove tiles from the town hall of Banská
Bystrica), Archaeologia historica 24 (1999), 409-420, 416, fig. 76.
21
The tile depicting a fully naked copulating couple was once part of a
fifteenth-century stove heating the town hall of Banská Bystrica. Other greenglazed
tiles from several stoves that were found there are decorated with images
of saints, religious symbols, animals, monsters and lay fables. This tile caught
my attention because it was, to the best of my knowledge, the only medieval
depiction of an explicit sexual encounter featuring the woman on top.4 The
available drawing has been published as such in several articles (fig. 1).5
Fig. 2: Copulating couple on the Banská Bystrica tile (courtesy of Stredoslovenské Múzeum v
Banskej Bystrici; by kind permission of Marta Mácelová). Out of: Banská Bystrica á
Stredoslovenské Múzeum v Banskej Bystrici (Bratislava: Bedeker, 2006), 15.
4 Marta Mácelová, “Gotické kachlové pece z banskobystrickej radnice” (Gothic stove tiles
from the town hall of Banská Bystrica), Archaeologia historica 24 (1999), 409-420, here
416, fig. 76 (hereafter Mácelová, “Gotické kachlové”).
5 It appears in the first articles of the archaeologist who made the discovery in 1996: Marta
Mácelová, “Archeologický výskum Mestského hradu v Banskej Bystrici” (Archaeological
research in Mestský hrad, Banská Bystrica), Archaeologia historica 22 (1997), 181-190,
here 187, fig. 6.4 (hereafter: Mácelová, “Archeologický výskum”; eadem, “Gotické kachlové,”
416, fig. 76; eadem, “Ikonografia gotických kachlic z banskobystrickej radnice”
(The iconography of Gothic stove tiles from the town hall of Banská Bystrica), in Gotické a
renesančné kachlice v Karpatoch, ed. Ján Chovanec (Trebišov: Arx Paris, 2005), 205-216
and 264, fig. 3.1 (hereafter: Mácelová, “Ikonografia”). The drawing does not seem to contradict
the photographic black-and white reproduction: Jozef Hoššo, “Gotická keramika na
Slovensku” (Gothic ceramic from Slovakia), in Gotika (Bratislava: Slovenská národná
galéria, 2003), 545-551, fig. 505.
22
After some time I had the opportunity to examine this intriguing stove tile
personally in the collection of the Stredoslovenské Múzeum in Banská Bystrica.6
On closer inspection, it became clear that in fact the male partner assumes the
upper position, in conformity to all medieval canonical and hygienic
prescriptions of sexual positions (fig. 2).7 The drawing is inaccurate in two important
details: the naked breast of the female lying on her back and the erect
penis belonging to the man on top (fig. 2a: detail).8
Fig. 2a: The copulating couple (detail)
The tile depicts a naked couple in the x-position (named after the crossing
of their legs, later known as the missionary position). The man with fashionable
long hair embraces the woman lying on her back on a mattress with tassels. She
6 Thanks to a Central European University Doctoral Research Support Grant and the
generous help of Jan Zachar from the Stredoslovenské Múzeum. I am also grateful to Marta
Mácelová for detailing the archaeological context of the finds for me. Technical data of the
tile: flat tile, 26.5-27 x 22-23cm, fired clay decorated in relief and covered with green glaze,
inventory no. 21469/SV.
7 James Brundage “Let Me Count the Ways: Canonists and Theologians Contemplate Coital
Positions,” in idem, Sex, Law and Marriage in the Middle Ages, Collected Studies Series
397 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1993), 81-93 (hereafter: Brundage, “Let Me Count”).
8 Banská Bystrica á Stredoslovenské Múzeum v Banskej Bystrici (Bratislava: Bedeker, 2006),
15. Another color reproduction was published in Schauplatz Mittelalter, Kärntner Landesausstellung,
2001 (Klagenfurt: Land Kärnten, 2001), vol. II, 264, cat. n. 13.03.08, also
available online at: http://www.uni-klu.ac.at/kultdoku/kataloge/14/html/1211.htm. I thank
Marta Mácelová for this reference.
23
is holding her lover with both hands on his back. The couple seems to lie on a
bed with canopy.
Although the tile has been published in six places9 since 1997, it has not
raised any particular comment. Most scholars have labelled it simply as depicting
an ‘erotic motif’. But even if the first drawing is inaccurate, and the image
does not scandalously show the woman on top, the tile is still quite unusual and
atypical. How did it fit into the general program of tile stoves? How was it
perceived in the context of a public, official space such as the town hall? What
was its function? Before considering such questions, let us examine the context
of Banská Bystrica in the late Middle Ages more closely.
Finding context
Banská Bystrica (German: Neusohl, Hungarian: Besztercebánya) became
a city through royal privileges granted by King Béla IV of Hungary in 1255. It
owed its significance to copper mines, for the exploitation of which the skilled
German miners enjoyed royal favor. The town became one of the most important
mining centers of Upper Hungary in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.
It was linked by trade routes to all of Europe and merchants from Buda
came to settle and do business there. In 1494 the Ungarische Handel was
founded in the town, a joint enterprise of the affluent Fugger and Thurzo
families, exploiting the copper mines and exporting their products on a
European-wide scale.
The town castle dominated the central area of Banská Bystrica, with its
imposing defensive walls, towers and barbican (1480-1510). The enclosed area
contained a Romanesque church, the Town Hall, the house of King Matthias’
wife and several other buildings. The houses of important merchants and mine
owners surrounded the central square beside the town castle. As for the religious
devotions of the town, one may note those for the Virgin (the main church is
dedicated to her Assumption) and for St. Barbara, the patron of miners (a sidechapel
with an important altar of Master Paul of Levoča is dedicated to her, and
she is also depicted in a fresco from an urban house known as the Thurzo
9 See notes 4 and 5, and Marta Mácelová, “Kachlová pec z 15. storocia z Banskej Bystrice”
(Fifteenth-century stove tiles from Banská Bystrica), Studia Archaeologica Slovaca
Medievalia 1 (1998), 85-96.
24
House10). In 1503 the St. Anne hospital is mentioned as having a lay founder,
and in 1526 a confraternity of the Holy Sacrament appears in documents.11
By the fifteenth century the town was a prosperous German settlement.
Not surprisingly, stove tiles appear in large numbers in archaeological
excavations. A tile workshop has even been uncovered in the town. Tiles
produced in Banská Bystrica spread throughout the region.12 Square flat tiles or
rectangular semi/cylindrical ones decorated with images of St. Peter, St. Paul,
John the Evangelist, St. Catherine, St. Margaret, and St. Barbara are typical for
the workshop in Dolna street 35,13 active around 1480-1500. Tiles created with
identical molds have been excavated as far away as Bratislava castle (St.
Margaret),14 and the fortification of Šintava in Upper Hungary (St. Margaret and
St. Barbara).15 Several products of the workshop are to be found in museum
collections in Budapest, Bratislava, Cervený Kamen, and Kremnica.16
Numerous fragments of tiles, with green glaze, come from two different
locations in the town: the old town hall (inside the walls of the castle) and the
house of Mayor Stefan Jung (in the Central Square, now Slovenské Národné
Povstanie no. 1, in modern times the City Hall). There are altogether hundreds
of fragments in the deposits of the History Museum of Banská Bystrica, still
being catalogued and reconstructed. The tiles from the town castle were
excavated from the destruction area of the Old Town Hall, in secondary deposition.
In the modern City Hall, the remains of at least three stoves were
discovered on the ground and first floors, destroyed during the reconstruction of
the building in the sixteenth century (the ‘sex tile’ was uncovered on the first
10 Other subjects depicted on the wall paintings there (1465-1478) are: the Dance with the
Bear, St. George and the dragon, the legend of Daniel, Susanna and the old men, Christ and
the Samaritan woman, the prayer on the Mount of Olives, the Last Judgment; see Eva Durdiaková,
“Slovenská neskorogotická ornamentálna nástenná maľba v profánnej architektúre”
(Late Gothic ornamental wall paintings in profane Slovak architecture), Ars 1-2/1971,
121-144, 128, fig. 8.
11 Marie-Madeleine de Cevins, L’église dans les villes hongroises à la fin du moyen âge (vers
1320-vers 1490, (Budapest-Paris-Szeged: L’Institut Hongrois de Paris-METEM, 2003), 74,
194, 225.
12 Eva S. Cserey, “Adatok a besztercebányai (Banská Bystrica) kályhacsempékhez” (On the
stove tiles from Banská Bystrica), Folia archaeologica 25 (1974), 205-217 (hereafter:
Cserey, “Adatok”).
13 Štefan P Holčík, “Stredoveká kachliarska dielňa v Banskej Bystrici” (The medieval stove
tile workshop from Banská Bystrica), Zborník Slovenského Národného Múzea 68 (1974),
175-193 (hereafter: Holčík, “Stredoveká kachliarska dielňa”).
14 Ibidem, 177, fig.1; – B. Egyház-Jurovská, Stredoveké kachlice. Katalóg (Medieval stove
tiles. Catalogue), (Bratislava: SNM-Archeologické Múzeum, 1993), cat. 8 (hereafter: Egyház-
Jurovská, Stredoveké kachlice); Štefan P Holčík, Stredoveké kachliarstvo (Medieval
Stove Tiles), (Bratislava: Pallas, 1978), fig. 64.
15 Egyház-Jurovská, Stredoveké kachlice, cat. 11, 12.
16 Štefan P Holčík, “Ešte raz k nálezom gotickych kachlíc v Banskej Bystrici” (Again on the
discovery of the Gothic stove tiles in Banská Bystrica), Zborník Slovenského Národného
Múzea – Historia 17 (1977), 133-138; the author debates with regard to the data published
by Cserey, “Adatok”.
25
floor). The Buda burgher Vit Mühlstein probably bought the house from Stefan
Jung in 1465. The latter, mayor of Banská Bystrica between 1450-1454 and
owner of a mining business, probably commissioned the stoves in both his house
and the Old Town Hall. Other documents show that he had been previously
mayor of Kremnica (Kremnitz, Kömöcbánya) and a member of a wealthy family
owning property in and around Banská Bystrica. One interesting piece of information
tells us that the mayor had a nickname: Schamgrättel or Schweinegretel.
17 Its actual meaning remains obscure, though further research might show
whether it was meant as a commentary on the mayor’s moral faults, as an association
to the medieval image of the vicious pig. It might indicate that the choice
of motifs on the tile stoves discussed here depended on him, but lacking written
evidence this will not clarify much the reasons for such a choice or the interpretation
he gave to the images.
The ‘sex tile’, closely resembling the other tiles it was found with, is the
product of an unknown workshop. They depict the Madonna (fig. 3a), St.
George (fig. 3b), St. Ladislas (fig. 3c), St. Catherine (fig. 3d), the Agnus Dei
(fig. 3e), the Pelican in its Piety (fig. 3f), the two-tailed siren (fig. 3g), the wolf
preaching to the geese (fig. 3h), geometrical motifs (fig. 3i–k), a heraldic lion
(fig. 3l) and another lion, described in bestiaries as bent over its dead cubs and
resurrecting them with its breath after three days18 (fig. 3m).19 According to their
shapes and dimensions, the tiles occupied different positions in the stoves: the
triangular ones were part of a stove’s crown, and the narrower ones part of the
corners. Such corner tiles were preserved and they connected St. Catherine with
the preaching wolf, St. George or the rectangular geometrical motif.
The iconography of this group is very heterogeneous, but technical and
stylistic aspects indicate the hand of the same master. It might be that the stoves
with this mixed iconography were created through a combined public and private
commission. The large number of tiles necessary for building at least four
stoves and the presence of local workshops suggest they were produced locally,
though the work may have been done by a traveling master or with imported
molds.
17 Mácelová, “Ikonografia,” 208.
18 See an analogy with a depiction of the cubs in the lower right corner in Konrad Strauss, Die
Kachelkunst des 15. bis 17. Jahrhunderts in europäischen Ländern, vol. III (Munich: Heydenreich,
1983), table 9, fig. 1.
19 The drawings of fig. 3a–3m are out of Mácelová, “Gotické kachlové,” 214, fig. 2, p. 215,
fig. 3, p. 216, fig. 4; the pelican (fig. 3f), found only in the castle area, out of Mácelová,
“Archeologický výskum,” 187, fig. 6.5.
26
Fig. 3a: Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: The Madonna (second half of the 15th century)
Fig. 3b: Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: St. George (second half of the 15th century)
27
Fig. 3c: Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: St. Ladislas (second half of the 15th century)
Fig. 3d: Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: St. Catherine (second half of the 15th century)
28
Fig. 3e: Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: Agnus Dei (second half of the 15th century)
Fig. 3f: Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: the Pelican in its Piety (second half of the 15th century)
29
Fig. 3g: Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: the two-tailed siren (second half of the 15th century)
Fig. 3h: Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: the wolf preaching to the geese (second half of the 15th century)
30
Fig. 3i: : Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: geometrical motifs (second half of the 15th century)
Fig. 3j: Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: geometrical motifs (second half of the 15th century)
31
Fig. 3k: Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: geometrical motifs (second half of the 15th century)
Fig. 3l: Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: heraldic lion (second half of the 15th century)
32
Fig. 3m: Stove tile from the same finding context in Banská Bystrica
as the ‘sex tile’: lion (second half of the 15th century)
The issue of erotic art and medieval sexual positions
The ‘sex tile’ can be interpreted within its social context and by reference
to iconographic analogies. It is therefore relevant to discuss the issue of sexual/
erotic/obscene/pornographic art up to the Middle Ages, especially those images
depicting copulating couples as on the tile.
Erotic art is as old as humankind. Classical Antiquity is better studied in
this respect, if only because nudity and sexuality were more freely depicted.20
Copulation scenes are not at all infrequent in ancient Greek and Roman art, but
again their function has been debated, although a frequent interpretation leans
towards a protective role.21 A Roman oil lamp shows an erotic image very similar
to that on the stove tile: a copulating couple in the x-position (fig. 422). There
are close similarities: the fully naked and uncovered couple, the man on top, and
the mattress on the bed. The antique image is, however, more erotic: the bodies
are more relaxed and the couple is kissing. Hansmann and Kriss-Rettenbeck
20 Amy Richlin, Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992); McDonald, Obscenities; see the introduction for a discussion of
terminology and definition of obscenity.
21 Catherine Johns, Sex or Symbol. Erotic Images of Greece and Rome (London: British Museum,
1989).
22 Out of: Liselotte Hansmann and Lenz Kriss-Rettenbeck, Amulett und Talisman. Erscheinungsform
und Geschichte (Munich: Georg D.W. Callwey, 1966), 209, fig. 684 hereafter:
Hansmann and Kriss-Rettenbeck, Amulett).
33
have suggested that it had an apotropaic function, similar to Roman phallic
amulets.23
Fig. 4: Roman oil lamp decorated with sex scene.
In medieval art the representation of sexual encounters is generally much
more veiled. Christian theological discourse had an impact, although it was
sometimes nuanced or even contradicted by medical studies or courtly literature.
24 By the thirteenth century, the ‘standard’ position with the man on top was
strongly established and sexuality was associated with shame (as result of the
Fall). Representations of copulation occur mostly in manuscripts until the fifteenth
century. When not allusive or euphemistic, they show the couple in bed
‘sleeping’, covered or even fully dressed.25 As a general characteristic of medieval
representations of copulating couples, note that the man is always on top.
The couple is dressed or covered in the matrimonial bed; there is rarely any nudity.
There might sometimes be bare breasts, but never erect penises; the accent
is not on pleasure but on procreation. With the man almost always ‘on top’,
women’s bodies are perceived literally beneath men: of a different complexion,
23 Ibidem.
24 Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset, Sexualité et savoir médical au Moyen Age (Paris:
PUF, 1985) (hereafter: Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexualité).
25 Michael Camille, “Manuscript Illumination and the Art of Copulation,” in Constructing
Medieval Sexuality, ed. Karma Lochrie, Peggie McCracken, James A. Schultz (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 58-90 (hereafter: Camille “Manuscript Illumination”);
idem, The Medieval Art of Love. Objects and Subjects of Desire (London:
Laurence King, 1998), subchapter “Doing it,” 140-155 (hereafter: Camille, Art of Love).
34
biologically, ontologically and socially inferior and secondary. In figure 5,26 illustrating
a medical treatise of the thirteenth century, the x-position can be
guessed under the covers. Figure 627 shows sex through a legal perspective. The
observers of the dressed couple hidden by curtains in the matrimonial bed are
probably fathers ensuring that the marriage was properly consummated and
therefore valid. Even when the scene is labeled as feminine seduction and appears
in a purely lay context such as the story of Alexander the Great, the man is
still on top and the couple covered. Figure 728 shows the crowned Alexander
having sex with the Queen of Nubia, to the accompaniment of female musicians.
Fig. 5: Aldobrandino of Siena, Le Regime du Corps, Lille, c. 1285.
London, British Library, MS Sloane 2435, fol. 9v.
26 Out of: ibidem, 143, fig. 130.
27 Out of: ibidem, 140, fig. 127.
28 Out of: Régine Pernoud, La femme au temps des cathédrales (Paris: Stock-Pernoud, 2001),
152.
35
Fig. 6: Bartholomeus Anglicus, Livre des Propriétez des Choses, Paris, c. 1400.
Wolfenbüttel, Herzog-Augustus-Bibliothek. 1.3.5.1 Aug.2 fol. 146r.
Fig. 7: Alexander the Great seduced by Candace, Queen of Nubia, England, c. 1308-1312
The rare representations of ‘sinful sex’ can be recognized through a series
of indications: It takes place in some location outside the marital bed (outdoors,
on the ground, etc.), in a hurry (the partners still have some clothes on), with
signs of pleasure (visible or caressed breasts, the man looking up, the woman
smiling), or in an unusual position. Canonists criticized the ‘woman on top’
position on moral grounds as a reversal of the normal subjected female role, but
also as health hazard and contraceptive due to the reversed position of the
womb. Probably as a discouragement, the canonists even warned that such a
position might result in less pleasure.29 It was also viewed as dangerous since the
29 Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages. Medicine, Science and
Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 245-247.
36
female seed might fall into the penis, causing various diseases.30 According to
Avicena, lesions of the male organ could be caused by the effort to expulse the
sperm.31 Other positions criticized were lateral, seated, standing, from behind
(retro), oral, anal (a tergo or in terga) or any position with the woman facing
away from the man.32 They were condemned on the grounds that they attracted
God’s wrath, offended the natural laws, and could lead to the birth of monstrous
creatures.33
Fig. 8: Copulating couple devoured by monsters; Psalter, Northern France, c. 1275-1300
Some twelfth- and thirteenth-century representations depict a rare and
rather acrobatic position obviously deemed as sinful since the partners are de-
30 Jean Verdon, Le Plaisir au Moyen Age (Paris: Perrin, 1996), 43-46 (hereafter: Verdon, Le
plaisir).
31 Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexualité, 129.
32 Brundage, “Let me count,” discussing the variation in time on the meaning of “unnatural
sex” and the penance imposed; Joyce E. Salisbury, “Sexuality,” in Medieval Folklore: an
Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs, ed. Carl Lindahl, John
McNamara, and John Lindow (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2000), 902-906, here 903 (hereafter:
Salisbury, “Sexuality”).
33 Jacques Rossiaud, “Sexualitatea” (Sexuality), in Dicţionar tematic al Evului Mediu
Occidental, ed . Jacques Le Goff, Jean-Claude Schmitt (Iaşi: Polirom, 2002), 722-733, here
724 (trans. of Dictionnaire raisonné de l’Occident médiéval [Paris: Fayard, 1969]) (hereafter:
Rossiaud, “Sexualitatea”).
37
voured by monsters (Fig. 834). One might note that even if logic indicates that
both partners are in fact lying on their backs, the text still presents the man on
top from the perspective of the reader.
A marginal manuscript illumination from around 1320 depicts a man performing
cunnilingus on a woman while attacked by a red bird which pierces his
anus with its large beak (Fig. 935). The manuscript is a Franco-Flemish Book of
Hours. In this religious context the image might have been intended to associate
oral sex with sodomy or to warn against the alleged dangers of performing such
a deed.
Fig. 9: Morgan Hours M 754, second half of the “Marguerite de Beaujeu Hours”,
Franco-Flemish, c. 1320. New York, Piedmont Morgan Library MS M 754, folio 16v.
A final example of condemned sex comes from an Arthurian Vulgate
Romance manuscript (fig. 1036). Besides a rich marginal decoration including
women with churns, knightly jousts, musicians and animals, in the bottom right
corner of the page one can see a hooded man on top of a nun under a tree. This
copulation scene is clearly ‘bad’: it involves a nun, it is done in a hurry (he has
his pants on and her habit is lifted up to her waist) and in nature. The position
nevertheless remains classic, with the man on top, in the x-position.
Attitudes on the topic varied through time, but even by the end of the
Middle Ages it seems that no general consensus has been reached on the
seriousness of such deviations. Popular opinion held that no sexual contact
inside marriage could be sinful, and several made excuses for deviations (like
illness, obesity, pregnancy, etc.). Some texts, like the unusual Catalan sex manual
Speculum al foder, written by an anonymous late-fourteenth-century author
34 Out of: Ruth Mellinkoff, Averting Demons. The Protective Power of Medieval Visual
Motifs and Themes (Los Angeles: Ruth Mellinkoff Publications, 2004), fig. VI.21
(hereafter: Mellinkoff, Averting Demons). The same position can be found on reliefs
outside churches in Italy and France; see ibidem, figs. VI.77 and VI. 78; Claude Gaignebet
and J. Dominique Lajoux, Art profane et religion populaire au moyen âge (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1985), 198, fig. 1, 199, fig. 4 (hereafter: Gaignebet and Lajoux,
Art profane). In these cases the couple is depicted horizontally, with the man either on the
right or on the left.
35 Out of: Mellinkoff, Averting Demons, fig. VI.24.
36 Out of: Mellinkoff, Averting Demons, fig. I.55 (full folio), fig. VI.47 (detail).
38
and influenced by similar Arab and Indian texts, describe an entire series of
positions.37 The Speculum lists 24 ways of lovemaking. The man on top is considered
the best because it is healthier and produces more pleasure. The woman
on top might result in lesions of the sexual organs and similar afflictions.38 It
seems that this unique text did not enjoy wide dissemination, but some authors
believe it might represent a larger group of now-lost texts closer in content to the
oriental ars erotica. But as far as we know, the Speculum is the only treatise
explicitly describing sexual positions before the Renaissance.39
Fig. 10. Nun having sex with a monk. Arthurian Vulgate, Northern France, 1316.
London, British library MS Add 10294, folio 1r (detail)
Another danger hovering in popular mentality was that of the pregnant
man. It was believed that whoever was ‘under’ his or her sex partner would be
inseminated. The story is to be found in a fourteenth-century text playing on the
fears of a young cleric initiated by a woman.40 The return to a more rigorous
view came with the Reformation, when one moral writer suggested that the
Biblical flood had been sent by God to cure the perversion of having sex with
the woman on top.41 There are very few representations of the woman on top,
and even then the action takes place under the sheets. A manuscript illumination
37 Le Kamasutra catalan. Le miroir du foutre, translation et introduction by Patrick Gifreu
(Paris: Éd. Le Rocher, 2000).
38 Ibidem, 68.
39 Jacquart and Thomasset, Sexualité, 187-192.
40 Ibidem, 186.
41 Brundage, “Let me count,” 87.
39
depicting David and Bathsheba in bed shows her on top, probably alluding to
her dangerous desire to rule over him (fig. 1142).
Fig. 11: Bathsheba on top of David, Psalter, Arras, France, late 13th century
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, sexual display became more frequent in
public media like secular badges,43 furniture (misericords),44 consoles and capitals,
prints,45 etc. These minor arts feature copulation scenes (human or animal),
male and female sexual organs, exhibitionists, or sexual and scatological dis-
42 Out of: Camille “Manuscript Illumination,” fig. 4.10.
43 Jan Baptist Bedaux, “Laatmiddeleeuwse sexuele amuletten,” in Annus Quadriga Mundi, ed.
J. B. Bedaux (Utrecht: De Walburg Press), 1989, 16-30 (hereafter: Bedaux, “Amuletten ;”
H.J.E. van Beuningen, and A.M. Koldeweij, Heilig en Profaan. 1000 laat-middeleeuwse
insignes uit de collectie H.J.E. van Beuningen, Rotterdam Papers 8 (Cothen: Stichting
Middeleeuwse Religieuze en Profane Insignes, 1993) (hereafter: Beuningen and Koldeweij,
Heilig en Profaan); H.J.E. van Beuningen, A.M. Koldeweij, and D. Kicken, Heilig en Profaan
2: 1200 laatmiddeleeuwse insignes uit openbare en particuliere collectivess), Rotterdam
Papers 12 (Cothen: Stichting Middeleeuwse Religieuze en Profane Insignes, 2001);
Jos Koldeweij, “The Wearing of Significative Badges, Religious and Secular: The Social
Meaning of a Behavioural Pattern,” in Showing Status: Representation of Social Positions
in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Wim Blockmans and Antheun Janse (Turnhout: Brepols,
1999), 307-328 (hereafter: Koldeweij, “The Wearing”); Tomáš Velímský, “K nálezům středověkých
potních adznaků v českých zemích” (On the medieval pilgrim badges found in
Bohemia), Archaeologia historica 23 (1998), 435-455; . Bruna, Enseignes de pélerinage et
enseignes profanes (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux., 1996).
44 C. Elaine Block, Misericords in the Rhineland (Rives Junction: R.D. Shelden Enterprises
Inc., 1996); Christa Grössinger, The World Upside-Down: English Misericords (London:
Gordon & Breach Publishing Group, 1997).
45 Christa Grössinger, Humour and Folly in Secular and Profane Prints of Northern Europe,
1430-1540 (London and Tournhout: Harvey Miller Publishers, 2002).
40
plays.46 Belonging to a more popular context, the sexual images in the minor arts
are more obscene (possibly offensive or of a cruder type of humor and satire).
They can be studied in parallel with the popular types of fabliaux, satires and
puns that express the same explicit/ironic attitude towards sexuality.47 Some of
the popular images even depict the forbidden positions, like the fourteenth-century
French wooden casket whose lid depicts a couple having sex while standing
(fig. 1248).
Fig. 12: Couple having sex standing, France, 14th century, lid of wood casket, Cluny.
Patis: Musée du Moyen Âge
An almanac from 1483 illustrates the months of the year and the
corresponding occupations and pastimes in colored woodcuts. The image
reproduced here (fig. 13a and b49) shows the pleasures of bathing, lovemaking,
eating and listening to music. The personification of the planet Venus, ruling
over the signs of Taurus and Libra, governs the opposite page and the activities
depicted. The copulating couple is unusually explicit and morally ‘bad,’ since
the lovers are fully naked and lying on the ground. Even more, the woman
exposes her naked breasts and her pubic hair and she wears an ankle bracelet.
46 Mellinkoff, Averting Demons, chapter VI: “Sexual and Scatological Display” (123-143);
Brian Spencer, Pilgrim souvenirs and secular badges (London: Museum of London, 1998);
McDonald, Obscenities; Gaignebet and Lajoux, Art profane.
47 Arnaud de la Croix, L’érotisme au moyen âge. Le corps, le désir et l‘amour (Paris:
Tallandier, 2003), chapter “Sexualité populaire“ (115-136).
48 Out of: Camille, Art of Love, 146, fig. 133.
49 Out of: Allmuth Schuttwolf (ed.), Jahreszeiten der Gefühle. Das Gothaer Liebespaar und
die Minne im Spätmittelalter (Ostfieldern-Ruit: Hatje, 1998), 101, fig. 40.
41
She might be a prostitute, even more since communal bathing and bathhouses
were regularly associated with prostitution.50 Still, the man is on top. This should
be related to the preserved data that indicates that the most frequent sexual
position practiced by medieval prostitutes was the standard ‘missionary’.51
Fig. 13a: The Garden of Love, Almanac, 1483, colored woodcut, place of origin unknown
50 W. F. Ryan, The Bathhouse at Midnight: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in
Russia (Stroud: Sutton, 1999); Rossiaud, “Sexualitatea,” 722-733, 731; idem, Medieval
Prostitution (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988).
51 Verdon, Le plaisir, 44: about the prostitutes in 15th-century Dijon who mostly used the
‘natural position’.
42
Fig. 13b: The Garden of Love, Almanac, 1483, detail: the copulating couple
An Italian copper plate from the end of the fifteenth century depicts a
couple having intercourse sitting on a bench. A winged phallus with a bell stand
beside them (fig. 1452). The copper plate has another sexual allegory engraved
on the recto entitled “Various Occupations” and both sides are worn and
probably re-engraved, testimony to an intense use. The verso of the plate
reproduced here shows what is certainly a morally sinful scene. The couple is
having sex in a forbidden position, sitting on a tasseled pillow very similar to the
mattress on the stove tile. They are kissing, a sign of pleasure condemned by the
Church; the woman has long, untied hair, showing that she is not married. The
winged phallus and the inscription, however, are essential to the interpretation.
The winged phallus, with tail and bell, has close analogies to Roman fascina
(charms) with tintinabula (small bells) and to medieval badges presumed to be
apotropaic. The inscription reads: PURINEGA TI[EN]E DURO, and it has not
been satisfactorily translated so far (Purinega has it hard?), but it suggests a
reference to some narrative.
52 Out of: Thomas Fusenig, Liebe, Laster und Gelächter. Komödienhafte Bilder in der
italienischen Malerei im ersten Drittel des 16. Jahrhunderts (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag,
1997), fig. 22. See also Jay A. Levenson, Konrad Oberhuber, and Jacquelyn L. Sheehan,
Early Italian Engraving from the National Gallery of Art (Washington: National Gallery of
Art, 1973), 526-527; Arthur M. Hind, Early Italian Engravings, vol. 1 (London: Quaritch,
1938), 260, no. E.III.30; Malcolm Jones, “Phallic Imagery,” in Medieval Folklore: an
Encyclopedia of Myths, Legends, Tales, Beliefs, and Customs, ed. Carl Lindahl, John Mc-
Namara, and John Lindow (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2000), 778-782, here 779 (hereafter:
Jones, “Phallic Imagery”). I thank Thomas O’Callaghan and Barbara Wood from the
National Gallery of Art for the useful details concerning the item.
43
Fig. 14: North Italian copper plate, 1470-1480
A sixteenth-century woodcut of a young witch copulating with a man
depicts her being ‘unnaturally’ on top, in the title page of the Neu Layenspiegel
(New Mirror for Laymen, Augsburg, 1511).53 The allusion in this case might be
that the woman on top is like the witch on the broom.54 Another print from the
end of the fifteenth century is even more explicit on the presumed sexual habits
of witches (fig. 1555). A witch embraced by the devil is depicted in the foreground,
with her on top, and another witch is riding a goat in the sky above. It is
interesting to note that the ultimate evil sex is that with the woman assuming the
upper position. Even more, the image presents them in the x-position. However
illogical that might be in reality, the purpose of the image is to show that the
witch assumes the upper and ‘active’ position and that this is a devilish practice.
Taking the argument even further, it seems that the devil, depicted here as an old
man, is not the one perverting the woman, but rather she is the one engaging
actively in the embrace.
53 Jones, “Phallic Imagery,” 510.
54 Verdon, Le plaisir, 45.
55 Out of : Hans Biedermann, Knaurs Lexikon der Symbole (Munich: Droemer Knaur, 1994),
190.
44
Fig. 15: A witch embraced by the devil and another one flying on a goat;
print by Hans Schäufelein, c. 1480
Probable interpretations of the ‘sex tile’
One hypothesis which would make intricate interpretations futile is that
the images on the tiles from Banská Bystrica had no particular meaning, that
they were simply a collection of representations deemed interesting and put
together for sheer availability. But, as previously shown, they are all the creation
of one master and they were probably produced locally, under the express
commission of Stefan Jung. It is therefore hard to believe that the selection of
images depended only on their sheer availability.
One should keep in mind that the same images were seen in the public
context of the city hall and in the private home of the mayor. But without
knowing the exact function of the rooms heated by these stoves, both spaces can
be labeled as semi-private (or semi-public). Perhaps they did not reflect the
values or devotions of the community but the private taste of the mayor.
Alternatively, they may have been commissioned for the town hall and then
used by the mayor in his own house just because they were available. In either
way, what values, views or devotions did this selection of images express?
45
If they were meant to represent the devotions in Banská Bystrica, it is
strange that St. Barbara, patron of miners, should be missing. The Madonna was
the most popular saint of the later Middle Ages and patron saint of the parish. St.
Ladislas, Hungarian royal saint, could indicate loyalty to the crown, St. Catherine
of Alexandria may have enjoyed some popularity in the town. The wolf
preaching to the geese may have shown the public condemnation of foul preachers56
and the ‘sex tile’ may have been a condemnation of vice.
Several sex scenes that appear in religious contexts, such as manuscripts
(illustrated bibles, psalters, etc.) or on church capitals, consoles, and misericords,
have been interpreted as representations of vices: fornication or luxuria.57
Presumably, seen through the discourse of the Church, these images were meant
to ridicule and condemn the pleasure of such encounters. In the case of Romanesque
examples, the couples seem ‘caught in the act’. Their crossed legs
might represent the x-position or they may refer to some unidentified popular
story (fig. 16 and 17).58 A French relief is very explicit in representing the man
on top of a woman and his erect penis (fig. 18a and b59).
Fig. 16: Relief on the exterior of the apse, church of St. Cybald, Vérac, France, 12th century
56 Zdeněk Měřinský, “Iterum ‘Ad lupum predicantem’”, in Život v archeologii středověku,
sborník příspěvků věnovaných Miroslavu Richterovi a Zdeňku Smetánkovi (Prague: Archeologický
ústav, 1997), 459-466 (hereafter : Měřinský, “Iterum ‘Ad lupum predicantem’”).
57 Camille, Art of Love, 19.
58 Fig. 16 out of: Anthony Weir and James Jerman, Images of Lust. Sexual Carvings on Medieval
Churches (London: Batsford, 1993), 84, fig. 53a (hereafter: Weir and Jerman, Images
of Lust); Fig. 17 out of Camille, Art of Love, 18, fig. 10.
59 Out of: Weir and Jerman, Images of Lust, 84, fig. 53a; and http://www.art-roman.net/melle/
melle2.htm).
46
Fig. 17: Apse corbel, church of Saint-Julien in Cénac-et-Saint-Julien, Dordogne,
France, 12th century
Fig. 18a: Drawing after the relief, church of Saint-Savinien, Melle (Poitou).
France, 12th century
47
Fig. 18b: Relief, church of Saint-Savinien, Melle (Poitou), France, 12th century
During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries confessors were instructed
not to describe perverse sexual practices, for fear of stimulating those very desires.
60 Paradoxically, an explicit description of a sexual encounter, such as that
on the French relief, could have been meant to show what one should not do.
In the case of the stove tile, the image could be a representation of a vice,
condemned by the public authority, although this would not really account for
the extremely explicit character of the depiction. But if in other church contexts
the sexual imagery appeared in hidden places or in marginal decoration, what
was the position of the ‘sex tile’ in the complex of the stove? Was it in a peripheral
or hidden position? Did it appear less frequently than the other tiles? One
cannot answer these questions until the final catalogue of the preserved fragments
and the hypothetical reconstruction of the stove become available. Still, it
can be noted that most of the tiles have the same dimensions on one side (22-23
cm), therefore they could have been easily combined in horizontal rows. This
indicates that the ‘sex tile’ might not have been ‘rarer’ than the tiles with the
other twelve representations.
* * *
The ‘sex tile’ could reflect a popular story. In trying to decipher the reception
of ‘unusual’ images in popular artistic media, including the sexual ones, one
has to consider possible literary models. One of such courtly stories is that of the
Chatelaine of Vergi,61 probably depicted on a secular badge discovered in the
60 Camille, “Manuscript Illumination,” 77-78.
61 The Chatelaine of Vergi, trans. Alice Kemp-Welsh (reprint, Cambridge, Ontario: In Parantheses
Publications, 1999); the book is also available online at: http: //www.yorku.ca/ inpar/
vergi_kemp.pdf.
48
Netherlands and dated to about 1375-1425 (fig. 1962). The Lady of Vergi meets
her secret lover after her little lapdog gave him the sign that the way is clear.
The duke follows the scene from behind a tree. The banderole spells AMORS.
The story is actually tragic, since in the end both lovers die. The image can
represent the tragic outcome of love betrayed. Other fifteenth-century badges
from the Netherlands (Niewlande) representing copulating couples might
equally refer to different stories. Unfortunately, the inscriptions accompanying
them are often unreadable. Such items show couples in the x-position having sex
in taverns,63 sitting or even lying down on what seems to be a plate.64
Fig. 19: Secular badge, Netherlands, 1375-1425
Other popular stories, fables (fabliaux) or riddles65 could be the source for
such representations. The stove tile does not offer enough details to make such a
connection possible. There are not enough clues for whether the image was symbolic
or narrative. One cannot even decide if the image was valued positively (as
‘proper sex’) or the act was being condemned as sinful. The position of the man
on top and the presence of the bed stand as arguments for a positive valorization.
The complete nakedness of the couple, the visibility of breast and penis, the lack
of indications of a married status (in coiffure or headdress) count for a negative
valorization.
Considerable scholarship, discussing the possible meanings of various
marginal decorations66 (also called grotesque, drôleries, babuini), suggests that
62 Out of: Koldeweij, “The Wearing,” 314, fig. 5; see also Camille, Art of Love, 121, fig. 107.
63 Bedaux, “Amuletten,” 25, fig. 12.
64 Beuningen and Koldeweij, Heilig en Profaan, 254-256, figs. 610-615.
65 Howard R. Bloch, The Scandal of the Fabliaux (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1986); Fabliaux, trans. Robert Hellman (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1965).
66 Michael Camille, Image on the Edge. The Margins of Medieval Art (London: Reaktion
Books, 1992); Steen Schjødt Christensen, “Mysterious Images – Grimacing, Grotesque,
Obscene, Popular: Anti- or Commentary Images?” Medium Aevum Quotidianum 39 (1998),
55-75; Jean Wirth, “Les marges à drôleries des manuscripts gothiques: problèmes de
méthode”, in History of Images. Towards a New Iconology, ed. Alex Bolvig and Phillip
Lindley (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), 277-300; Lillian Randall, Images in the Margins of
49
these representations must have had an apotropaic function.67 Some of them
have a sexual content, and much ink has been spilled on how sexual images and
gestures avert evil or bring good-luck, wealth, or fertility. Even more has been
written on erotic magic, especially for the Middle Ages.68
This paradigm suggests that the Banská Bystrica stove tiles bear protective
images. They could reflect several belief systems: official religion (through
the representation of the saints, the Agnus Dei and the pelican in her piety), as
well as images of lay magic charged with power against evil (the two-tailed siren,
in a way sexual, as a representation of Luxuria and as an exhibitionist and
aquatic symbol probably used to counter-act a fire-related danger, that of the
stove; the copulating couple. The sex scene could, on a symbolic level, have
sought to bring prosperity to the town and its inhabitants. The theory of apotropaions
is based on a presumed universal belief. Even if one is skeptical about
beliefs shared by people across cultures and historical eras, there still remains
the hypothesis of shared beliefs inside one society during a certain period of
time. If the image of copulating couples were such a recognized apotropaion,
however, it would appear more frequently. I do not believe that the amuletic use
of the phallus (presumably also of images of vulvas) can be extended to cover
the much more rare scenes of copulating couples.
Another medieval interpretation might be analogies with alchemical
imagery. In alchemical language, “the conjunction (mixture or union of elements
or substances) was figured as marriage, copulation, uniting of male and female
or brother or sister or king and queen sometimes to form an androgyny”.69 Alchemical
texts linked the creation of the philosopher’s stone to human conception;
therefore the moment of the intercourse was a powerful symbol for the
fusion of elements. Most frequently the alchemical conjunction took the form of
fusion of the male semen or red sulphur, symbolized by the sun, with the female
element or mercury, symbolized by the moon. Conjunction could therefore be
Gothic Manuscripts (Berkley: University of California Press, 1966); Gaignebet and Lajoux,
Art profane; Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Le moyen âge fantastique (Paris: Armand Collin, 1955);
review of Andrew Otwell’s “Medieval Manuscript Marginalia and Proverbs,” 1995,
available at: http://www.heyotwell.com/work/arthistory/marginalia.html.
67 Mellinkoff, Averting Demons; Jones, Secret Middle Ages; Christa Suttlerin, “Universals in
Apotropaic Symbolism. A Behavioral and Comparative Approach to Some Medieval
Sculptures,” Leonardo 1 (1989), 65-74; L. J. A. Loewenthal, “Amulets in Medieval Sculpture:
I. General Outline,” Folklore 1 (1978), 3-12; Hansmann and Kriss-Rettenbeck, Amulett,
208-218; Bedaux, “Amuletten”.
68 Richard Kickhefer, “Erotic Magic in Medieval Europe,” in Sex in the Middle Ages. A Book
of Essays, ed. Joyce E. Salisbury (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1991), 30-55;
Hubertus Lutterbach, Sexualität im Mittelalter: Eine Kulturstudie anhand von Bußbüchern
des 6. bis 12. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 1999), for erotic magic see 195-214.
69 Gareth Roberts, The Mirror of Alchemy. Alchemical Ideas and Images in Manuscripts and
Books from Antiquity to the Seventeenth Century (London: The British Library, 1994), 105
(hereafter Roberts, Mirror).
50
depicted as the red king (Sol) and the white queen (Luna) copulating in the
mercurial sea70 (fig. 2071).
Fig. 20. Conjunctio sive coitus in Rosarium philosophicorum, Frankfurt/Main, 1550
In support of this argument, one can observe that the famous alchemist,
Sir John Dee, visited Banská Bystrica in the second half of the sixteenth century
with his medium, Kelly.72 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries alchemy enjoyed
great popularity throughout Europe. More and more manuscripts, and after
1500 also prints, of alchemical treatises and collections were circulating in upper
social contexts. Alchemical information appeared in various other types of texts,
from medicine, dialogues and correspondence to cosmetics.73 As early as 1317
70 Jonathan Hughes, “Alchemy and the Exploration of Late Medieval Sexuality,” in Medieval
Virginities, ed. Anke Bernau, Ruth Evans, and Sarah Salih (Cardiff: University of Wales
Press, 2003), 141-166.
71 Out of: Roberts, Mirror, fig. 43; See also Lyndl Abraham, A Dictionary of Alchemical
Imagery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 36, fig. 8, s. v. “chemical wedding”;
Salisbury, “Sexuality,” 904.
72 Nicholas Clulee, John Dee’s Natural Philosophy: Between Science and Religion (London:
Routledge, 1988). I thank Benedek Láng from the University of Technology and
Economics, Budapest, for this and other bibliographic references.
73 Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1934-1941), vol. 3, ch. 3, vol. 4, ch. 53, and vol. 5, ch. 24 (hereafter:
Thorndike, History).
51
the papal bull Spondet quas non exhibent had outlawed alchemy.74 Nevertheless,
this did not lead to any consensus in contemporary and immediately subsequent
legal opinion. The popular attitudes towards alchemy were much more lenient,
even favorable.75
One might wonder whether some alchemical interest may have existed in
the town even a century before Dee’s visit. The intensive mining in the area and
at least the familiarity with metalworking could have created or supported such
an interest.76 Alchemical representations on stove tiles are known from German
areas,77 dated to the sixteenth century: they were discovered in an alchemical
laboratory in the castle of Oberstockstall (today’s Lower Austria). They are
highly symbolic, depicting an open door with different symbols decorating the
portal, and a male head flanked by a humanized sun and the moon.(a fragment).
Iconographically, they belong to the Renaissance style, but they show that
alchemical imagery was also applied to the medium of stove tiles.
Still, the Banská Bystrica tile does not conform entirely to an alchemical
schema: the partners do not wear crowns nor are they accompanied by representations
of the sun and moon. Nothing indicates their value as symbols. Also, images
of the alchemical conjunction do not depict the scene in such realistic detail.
Furthermore, none of the other depictions on the same stoves can be interpreted
as containing alchemical symbols.
* * *
What if the tile was simply pornographic? Cutting across cultural
differences, one could suspect that our interpretation of a sexual image could
have been a medieval one as well. In Italy towards the end of the fifteenth and
during the sixteenth, century certain prints certainly fit this genre. The most
famous are the prints illustrating Pietro Aretino’s sonnets, the so-called I modi
(The Postures). Created in the early 1520s and modeled on classical sources,
they were almost all destroyed by the order of the papacy, so only fragments of
the original prints have survived (fig. 21).78
74 William Newman, “Technology and the Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages,” Isis
3 (1989), 423-445.
75 Thorndike, History, vol. 3, 48.
76 Mircea Eliade, The Forge and the Crucible. The Origins and Structure of Alchemy
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979).
77 Sigrid von Osten, Das Alchemistenlaboratorium Oberstockstall. Ein Fundkomplex des 16.
Jahrhunderts aus Niederösterreich, Monographien zur Frühgeschichte und Mittelalterarchäologie
6 (Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 1998), 61-62, 66, fig. 38, table 42,
fig. N1, fig. 12.
78 Lynne Lawner, I Modi: the Sixteen Pleasures: An Erotic Album of the Sixteenth Century
(London: Peter Owen, 1988). Image out of http://www.libidomag.com/nakedbrunch/archive
/europorn01.html.
52
Fig. 21: One of the positions illustrating I modi, 16th century
But how could a pornographic image find its way into the company of the
saints on a public stove? I suspect this is not the case, particularly since the Italian
examples represent another mentality. They belong to the spirit of the Renaissance
and to the rediscovery of ancient erotica.
Other allusive tiles
Even if not so explicit, other images on stove tiles may allude to sexual
positions. The representation of a woman riding a man, referring to the story of
Aristotle and Phyllis, may be as much a reference to deviant sexual positions as
to dominating women. According to the text, Aristotle, the old and wise advisor
of Alexander the Great, accepted being ridden like a horse out of lust for the
young Phyllis. The scene, with multiple analogies in various media, from
textiles, misericords, capitals, household items, secular badges, prints, and
playing cards, is also found on stove tiles from Austria (Salzachtal) and Hungary
(Buda) (fig. 22a and b).79
79 Alfred Walcher-Molthein, “Die deutschen Keramiken der Sammlung Figdor,” Kunst und
Kunsthandwerk 12 (1909), pp. 301-362, here 321, fig. 94; Imre Holl, “Középkori kályhacsempék
Magyarországon III” (Medieval Stove Tiles from Hungary), Archeológiai Értesíto
110 (1983), 201-228, here 219, 220, fig. 36, 221; Imre Holl, “Spätgotische Öfen aus
Österreich. Mittelalterliche Ofenkacheln in Ungarn IX,” Acta Archaeologia Academiae
Scientiarum Hungaricae 52 (2001), 353-414, here 361, fig. 10.
53
Fig. 22a: Stove tile decorated with the scene of Aristotle and Phyllis (the Mounted Aristotle):
Salzachtal (Austria, around 1500)
Fig 22b: Fragment of the Aristoteles and Phyllis scene
from the Royal Palace in Buda (Hungary, 16th c.)
54
An image on a tile from Banská Stiavnica (Schemnitz, Selmecbánya) is
very similar, except that the man being is very young; the narrative reference to
the story of Aristotle had been lost (fig. 23).80 Still, the image preserves its full
connotations, of men being made fools of and being under the power of women.
Fig. 23: Woman riding and whipping a man on a tile from Banská Stiavnica,
aristocratic residence. Slovakia, 15th century
The image of women beating men (on their naked behinds, to their full
humiliation) is another scene used in the decoration of stove tiles and other
popular media. (fig. 2481).
80 Out of: Jozef Labuda, “Zanjímavé kachlice z Banskej Stiavnice a Sitna” (Interesting Stove
Tiles from Banská Stiavnica (Schemnitz) and the Castle of Sitno), in Gotické a renesančné
kachlice v Karpatoch, ed. Ján Chovanec (Trebišov: Arx Paris, 2005), 175-182, here 180,
fig. 4; see also Holčík, “Stredoveká kachliarska dielňa,” fig.10; Sprievodca po expozíciách
Kammerhofu Slovenské Banské Múzeum Banská Stiavnica (The Kammerhof House. The
Slovak Mining Museum in Banská Stiavnica) (Bratislava: Bedecker, 2006), 24.
81 Out of: Eva Roth Kaufmann, René Buschor, and Daniel Gutscher, Spätmittelalterliche reliefierte
Ofenkeramik in Bern (Bern: Verlag Paul Haupt, 1994), 146-147, cat. 104
(hereafter: Roth Kaufmann et al., Ofenkeramik); see also Konrad Strauss, Die Kachelkunst
des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts in Deutchland, Österreich und der Schweiz I (Strassburg:
Heitz, 1966), fig. 3, table 25.
55
Fig. 24: Woman beating a man with a broom. Stove tile excavated in Bern, Switzerland,
end of the 15th century
Still related to the subject is another tile depicting a wife beating her
husband (fig. 2582). It reflects the fear/derision/power discourse involved in such
domestic fights and it also features in marginal art.
These images are part of a larger group elaborating on the topos of the
power of women. As Susan Smith has shown,83 according to the context,
intention and reception, the topos has received several diverging interpretations
fort the Middle Ages. A representation such as the mounted Aristotle could have
been ‘read’ along a misogynist line, or symbolically, as showing the power of
love, or even as being subversive, inerting women to rebel. Whatever the
purpose such images of gender reversal, another aspect of the carnivalesque
‘world turned upside-down’, do tell us something about the norm and its opposites.
84
82 Out of: http://www.imareal.oeaw.ac.at/realonline/.
83 Susan L. Smith, The Power of Women: A “Topos” in Medieval Art and Literature (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995).
84 Malcolm Jones, “Folklore Motifs in Late Medieval Art II: Sexist Satire and popular
Punishment,” Folklore 1 (1990), 69-87, here 71-72.
56
Fig. 25: Wife beating her husband, tile from Upper Hungary,
Banská Bystrica?, 15th century
I would place at the end of a series which could certainly be extended further,
a stove tile from Bern depicting a woman being ridden by a devil (fig.
2685). It suggests that women usurping the authority of men are in their turn
ruled by devils. The most interesting detail is that on this stove tile the demon is
also feminine (it has visible breasts). So besides being a visual gloss to images
of ‘women on top’, this particular tile seems to indicate that a similar gender
division extends to the underworld.
85 Out of: Roth Kaufmann et al., Ofenkeramik, 124, cat. 60.
57
Fig. 26: Woman mounted by a she-devil. Bern, Switzerland, second half of the 14th century
Closing thoughts
The copulating couple depicted on the medieval stove tile from Banská
Bystrica can support several interpretations. There must have been some particular
interpretation of it, since it was created by the commission of Mayor
Stefan Jung in a town with at least one tile workshop. In such conditions the
selection of stove tiles for the Town Hall and the urban house of the mayor did
not simply depend on the sheer availability of tiles, since a certain variety must
have been available. But what could the interpretation of the image be? Why
was a sex scene placed beside religious images in, at least, semi-public contexts?
It seems to me that the copulating image was neither alchemical, nor
apotropaic and certainly not pornographic. It could have been a didactic representation
of a vice or a sin, just like another tile from the same stoves,
depicting the two-tailed siren, could have been a representation of Luxuria. The
‘sex tile’ could also have had an explanation based on literary texts or on
popular culture. If fables such as that of the preaching wolf were transposed to
tiles from the same stoves,86 some other medieval narrative could have been be-
86 For the fable represented on stove tiles see Měřinský, “Iterum ‘Ad lupum predicantem’”;
Zdenek Smetánka, “Ad lupum predicantem. Reliéf pozdně gotického středověkeho kachle
jako historický pramen” (Late Gothic medieval relief stove tiles as historical sources),
Archeologické rozhledy, 36 (1983), 326-360; Adrian Andrei Rusu, ”Cahle din Transilvania
58
hind the creation of the ‘sex tile’. It could also have been part of the ‘popular’
local culture which made its way to a more elevated context, that of the town
hall.
To the present state of research, however, it is just a multivalent sign. Until
further information becomes available, the ‘sex tile’ of Banská Bystrica remains
an ambiguous, unique, and partly unexplained medieval representation.
Some scholars have reached similar conclusion when speaking of marginal images
in manuscripts. Andrew Otwell believes that “marginal illustration stands
in a ‘proverbial’ relationship to both reader and text …, carrying meaning in a
way similar to a proverb, and at an equivalent distance from its iconographic
origin and from its recipient”. According to him, “marginal images exist in the
middle state between meaning and meaningless …, open to interpretation.” 87
This might well be the case, or it might just cover the fact that we have not yet
identified the literary stories behind such images and are at lost among the multiple
meanings they seem to carry.
III. Trei motive decorative medievale” (Stove tiles from Transylvania III. Three medieval
decorative motifs), Acta Musei Napocensis 39-40 (2002-2003), 107-114.
87 http://www.heyotwell.com/work/arthistory/marginalia.html.
M E D I U M A E V U M
Q U O T I D I A N U M
55
KREMS 2007
HERAUSGEGEBEN
VON GERHARD JARITZ
GEDRUCKT MIT UNTERSTÜTZUNG DER KULTURABTEILUNG
DES AMTES DER NIEDERÖSTERREICHISCHEN LANDESREGIERUNG
Titelgraphik: Stephan J. Tramèr
Herausgeber: Medium Aevum Quotidianum. Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der
materiellen Kultur des Mittelalters, Körnermarkt 13, 3500 Krems, Österreich.
Für den Inhalt verantwortlich zeichnen die Autoren, ohne deren ausdrückliche
Zustimmung jeglicher Nachdruck, auch in Auszügen, nicht gestattet ist. –
Druck: Grafisches Zentrum an der Technischen Universität Wien, Wiedner
Hauptstraße 8-10, 1040 Wien.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Vorwort ……………………………………………………..…………….…… 4
Matthias Johannes Bauer, Extra muros.
Systemimmanente grundherrschaftliche Probleme
im mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen städtischen Ziegeleiwesen
am Beispiel der Stadt Erding (Oberbayern) ……….….……………… 5
Ana-Maria Gruia, Sex on the Stove.
A Fifteenth-Century Stove Tile from Banská Bystrica ……………… 19
Thomas Kühtreiber, „Raum-Ordnungen“. Raumfunktionen und
Ausstattungsmuster auf Adelssitzen im 14.-16. Jahrhundert.
Ein Forschungsprojekt am ‚Institut für Realienkunde’
der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften ………………… 59
Matthias Johannes Bauer, Die unbekannte illustrierte Fechthandschrift
des Hugold Behr. Vorbemerkungen zur Edition
von Rostock UB Mss. var. 83 ….…..…………………….………….. 80
Buchbesprechungen ……..……………………………………………….…….. 86
4
Vorwort
Der vorliegende Band von Medium Aevum Quotidianum beschäftigt sich vorrangig
mit einem Bereich des historischen Alltags, welcher seit dem 19. Jahrhundert
für die kultur- und sozialgeschichtliche Forschung immer wieder von
besonderem Interesse gewesen ist: mit Wohnkultur im weitesten Sinne, vom
Bauwesen bis zu einem Detail spätmittelalterlicher häuslicher Innenausstattung.
Eine solche Konzentration steht im Zusammenhang mit einem Projekt am ‚Institut
für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit’‚ welch letzteres
eng mit Medium Aevum Quotidianum zusammenarbeitet. Dieses Forschungsprojekt,
‚Raum-Ordnungen’ widmet sich vor allem den Raumfunktionen und
häuslichen Ausstattungsmustern im adeligen Wohnbereich Mitteleuropas vom
14. bis zum 16. Jahrhunderts und wird in diesem Heft von Thomas Kühtreiber
kurz beschrieben.
Das genannte Forschungsvorhaben sieht auch die internationale Kooperation
von ausgesprochener Bedeutung. Erste Ergebnisse dieser Zusammenarbeit
sollen zwei weitere Beiträge dieses Heftes vermitteln. Matthias Johannes Bauer
beschäftigt sich für den oberbayrischen Raum mit Fragen des spätmittelalterlichen
städtischen Ziegeleiwesens, welches natürlich eine wichtige Rolle gerade
in Bezug auf jedwede öffentliche und private Bautätigkeit spielte. Ana Maria
Gruia setzt sich dagegen mit einem Detail des häuslichen Innenraumbereiches
im spätmittelalterlichen Oberungarn auseinander, und zwar mit den Bildprogrammen
glasierter Kachelöfen. Es geht ihr dabei besonders um den Versuch
einer Erklärung und Entschlüsselung des Kontextes der Darstellung eines Kopulationsaktes
auf einer Ofenkachel des 15. Jahrhunderts aus der heute slowakischen
Stadt Banská Bystrica. Gerade diese Abhandlung zeigt die Varietät von
zu berücksichtigenden Analysemöglichkeiten, welche akribische Detailuntersuchungen
zu Fragen der mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Wohnkultur eröffnen
können.
Gerhard Jaritz