Protecting not defacing?
Archæologists have largely ignored the ancient graffiti in Britain’s churches and castles, so a new and open-minded work is welcome – though with reservations
The ancient graffiti of Britain’s churches and castles gives glimpses into the lives of people barely known from any other cultural form, even folklore. The only other major study of England’s ancient graffiti was published in 1967, since when the subject has flickered weakly in local archæological journals. Now, finally, another dedicated researcher appreciates mediæval graffiti’s mysteriousness and significance, but does he realise just how important it is, and – more urgently for us forteans – how sometimes strange?
After researching Knights Templar prisoner graffiti in France ( FT:259), I found mediæval graffiti abounding in central and southern English counties. Most examples are pictographic and symbolic. The most interesting of the relatively rare texts often deal with the Black Death, the subject of one of the best chapters. Much graffiti known to me is not within Champion’s purview, possibly due to his working out from northeastern Norfolk, amassing what he could before being thwarted by a publication deadline. This is a key strength – and weakness – of this look at a field that still has much to reveal.
Country magic and superstition were in the Norfolk air between the 13th and 17th centuries, leading to apotropaic signs – geometric symbolic graffiti meant (Champion supposes) to repel or entrap evil. He recognises “a level of folk belief that permeated the whole of mediæval society.” Scratching these ‘witchmarks’ were “everyday reactions to a common and well-recognised threat... a place full of dangers, both physical and spiritual”. These markings were “the front line in the defence of the soul.” The prevailing notion on the conjoined V marks that are among the most common, is they signify the Virgin Mary, even though the ‘M’ is inverted.
Champion wonders whether the symbol’s meaning changed over time, but offers no alternative theory. What if some, or any, of the ‘witchmarks’ were made not against but by witches to fortify a charm or curse? If a devout Christian is making an ‘M’ that stands for ‘Mary’, why is the sign so often inverted? Curiously, this is not considered and the one-good-theory-fits-all approach prevails. The chapter on charms and curses provides a lot of good general background from the Middle Ages, but quotes only one graffito.
If the idea of England’s easterly churches riddled with magical protection marks sounds like Witchfinder General with extra psychic warfare, it is an aspect that risks being overstated in Medieval Graffiti, where the theory extends to the widely depicted ‘hexafoil’ (Flower of Life or Daisy Wheel) and its curvilinear variants. “Its origins as a ritual protection mark,” Champion tells us,“are unclear”, and this is true – as far as the study of ancient marks goes. But I had hoped that a more adventurous interdisciplinary approach would discover the message of the symbol to close this knowledge gap. Champion would then have to mention a few of its major stages of progress from Mycenean antiquity, to the Hellenic followers of Pythagoras, Judaic kabalists, Neo-Platonic and Pythagorean schools of mysticism, Gothic architecture, mediæval Sufism, English Catholic recusants, and European and North African folk art, to add weight to Patrick Reutersward’s 1986 discovery of what eventually became a “forgotten symbol of God” in the sign of the hexafoil.
The large hexafoil arrays at Leighton Buzzard’s All Saints church are parsed by a Latin inscription that affirms Reutersward’s discovery. This hints, too, at a dangerous gnosticism at a time when the symbol was displayed with pride in Sufi shrines in eastern Europe and India, influenced by the Sufic absorption of Pythagorean cosmo-numeric-philosophy. Before the Late Mediæval resurgence of Hermeticism, the philosophy represented by the hexafoil is perhaps the only ‘underground’ mystic system to have genuinely influenced social elites.
While only acknowledging this background in English Romanesque fonts, where the hexafoil sometimes occurs, Champion realises that it is also a template tool by which a building structure can be raised purely by using geometry, with no measurements needed. However, he neglects to explore the fascinating symbiosis between this practical use and the philosophical system attributed to it, instead discrediting at length the mediæval mason origin theory of circular graffiti, which given the wider background is marginally significant.
Even less sound is lumping another geometric symbol, the Solomon’s Knot, in with the hexfoil as a ‘demon trap’, the endless circuits enticing then imprisoning an evil spirit. Its scarcity in graffiti counts against its use purely as an apotropaic mark.
With historic roots running much deeper than the hexafoil, it was also a cross-cultural symbol, signalling specialist knowledge networks delineated by craft skills. Roman artisans used it as an emblem for their guild secrets involving the production of mosaics and glass, for example. Another graffito in Leighton Buzzard supports this idea. While singling-out the location, however, Champion neglects this example, understandably, as I still find them in oft-visited churches. It’s a doubly-elusive art, visually and to research.
This is the work of a mediævalist rather than an art historian, and would have benefitted from a more international perspective; instead
“What if some ‘witchmarks’ were made not against but
by witches to fortify a charm or curse?”
it ignores everything except Anglocentric references. The quasi-heraldic ‘house’ emblems, with their initials and numerals (a class of mysterious mercantile symbols), share a major European dimension in their most enigmatic ‘Sign of Four’ symbol (bound now with the question of Shakespeare’s face, FT:331).
Given the vastness of mediæval writing about animals, astrology and magic, the writing surely need not be so waffly. Chunks of text grindingly reiterate the uncertainties about these rather than getting stuck into extra primary sources that would throw them into relief. The author is open-minded enough to realise how much there is left to know, though, and his numerous questions should galvanise a new army of graffiti detectives.
The author’s strength is in the standard pipe-rolls-and-parishregister school of research that brings up specific names and places. However, he ignores alternative sources, and this text-reliant approach lacks roundedness. He stands on the shoulders of many researchers, so the lack of footnotes or even a bibliography is inexcusable. Pritchard’s English Medieval Graffiti has many more than the 40-odd images here, and is better presented and cited. At least most of Champion’s are in colour.