Castus castor (the chaste beaver): some reflections on the iconography of the southern portal of Santa María de Uncastillo

Abstract

The Romanesque church of Santa María de Uncastillo (Aragon) presents us with a rich and elaborate sculptural program. Particularly intriguing is the imagery of the southern portal’s archivolts. Avoiding repetition, each voussoir is carved with a unique depiction. Animals, hybrids, and fantastic creatures are dispersed among humans engaged in various activities. The apparent iconographic incoherence has led scholars to dismiss the archivolts’ imagery as mere drollery, or alternatively, to view it as a collective image of the community. None of the previous interpretations explained the relation of the archivolts’ imagery to the sacred substrate on which it resides – the church wall. In this article, I propose a new reading of a prominent portion of the archivolts’ imagery, namely, the central vertical axis of the archivolts. I argue that the four voussoirs that are aligned along this axis generate a reference to castration. Castration in the High Middle Ages was a double‐sided cultural phenomenon. On the one hand, castration was a common and institutionalized social practice, especially in twelfth‐century Aragon. On the other, castration and its outcome served as an important religious metaphor for chastity.

Keywords:

• Romanesque architecture
• Uncastillo
• castration

Acknowledgements

While I worked on the paper, Herbert L. Kessler and Marcia A. Kupfer offered full‐heartedly their guidance, insightful comments, and support, for which I am deeply grateful. I would also like to thank the Medieval Academy of America for giving me an opportunity to present an early version of the paper in the annual meeting of 2008, and for choosing me as a recipient of the 2008 Graduate Student Award.

Notes

¹For a general survey of the village’s history and monuments see Abbad Ríos, El románico en Cinco Villas; Canellas‐López and San Vicente Pino, Aragon Roman, 349–62; Sancho, Codesal, and Sobradiel, Uncastillo; and Giménez Aísa, Guía de Uncastillo.

²On the different possible designations of fortified medieval settlements see the discussion and references in Maxwell, The Art of Medieval Urbanism, 9.

³Lacoste, Les grandes oeuvres, 186.

⁴Lacoste, “La décoration sculptée,” 165–6.

⁵For the date of the church see Lacoste, “La décoration sculptée,” 149–52; for the cartulary see Martín Duque, “Cartulario de Santa María de Uncastillo.”

⁶Lacoste, Les grandes oeuvres, 185–200.

⁷Toman and Bednorz, Romanesque, 293; Durliat, España Románica, 134–5. The authors of Aragon Roman went as far as to declare that “il ne faut pas chercher un argument iconographique continu pour les figures qui illustrent les voussures [there is no need to search for iconographic continuity in the figures of the voussoirs].” See Canellas‐López and San Vicente Pino, Aragon Roman, 354.

⁸Bartal, “The Early Representations.”

⁹There are numerous examples of such inadvertent observations. Thus, for example, Bartal sees a fishmonger where in fact the creature carrying the fish is definitely a hybrid; see Bartal, “The Early Representations,” 116 and footnote 10.

¹⁰In the most thorough iconographical description of the southern portal of Santa María de Uncastillo, David is identified simply as a violinist. See Canellas‐López and San Vicente Pino, Aragon Roman, 357.

¹¹See, for example, the David slab on the Puerta de las Platerías of Santiago de Compostela, or the David and Musicians capital from Jaca’s cathedral which now supports the church’s south porch.

¹²See Schapiro, “Themes of Action.”

¹³See, for example, Angheben and Verzar, Les chapiteaux romans de Bourgogne, 390–1; Valdez del Álamo, “The Saint’s Capital,” 118–22; and Leclercq‐Marx, La sirène, 41–64, 103–11. Some scholars oppose such a rigid reading of Romanesque imagery in general, and of the siren motif in particular; see, for example, Nicklies, “Cosmology and the Labors of the Months,” footnote 40; and Weir and Jerman, Images of Lust, 49–50.

¹⁴Leclercq‐Marx, La sirène, 72, 194.

¹⁵Österreichische Nationalbibliothek (ÖNB), Cod. Med. gr. 1, fol. 2v. For a reproduction see Dioscurides: Codex Aniciae Iulianae.

¹⁶Leclercq‐Marx, La sirène, 72, 194. Interestingly enough, post‐medieval folklore of the British Isles contains accounts of mermaids offering herbal and floral cures. See Briggs, Encyclopedia of Fairies, 288–9.

¹⁷Loewenthal suggests that the siren of Uncastillo actually represents the zodiacal sign of Virgo. See Loewenthal, “Amulets in Medieval Sculpture,” 5–6.

¹⁸For the act of deflowering as injury and the preceding state of virginity see the seminal discussion in Freud, “The Taboo of Virginity.” The source of the modern Castilian verb desflorar (to deflower) is the Latin verb deflorare and its subsequent variations in Romance vernaculars. Therefore, a medieval Iberian audience was probably familiar with the association of flowers with virginity.

¹⁹Kelly, Performing Virginity, 17–39. It is interesting to note that virginity in the Middle Ages, as Kelly presents it, is more an effect of various discourses and cultural practices rather than a finite physical fact. Moreover, the distinct, separate, and modern dichotomy between body and soul is not applicable to the Middle Ages where the distinction between these two concepts was far more blurred and open. Therefore, disease (and virginity) were understood as both moral and somatic phenomena.

²⁰Kelly, Performing Virginity, 32–3.

²¹There are numerous examples of luscious sirens in Romanesque sculpture. Sirens are frequently shown “topless,” while exposing their intimate parts (e.g., the cathedral of Lescar), or spreading sideways their bifurcated tail (e.g., Saint‐Michel‐de‐Cuxa). For a contemporary example of the gradual censorship of the erotic features of the siren in the Starbucks’ logo see http://www.deadprogrammer.com/starbucks-logo-mermaid.

²²In addition, assuming a vertical trajectory, these three anomalies begin and end with clear references to music – at the top King David and his musical entourage, and at the bottom a siren. It is tempting to read these two references as hierarchical or dialectical – King David being a representative of “good” music while the siren represents “bad” music. However, I believe that the dynamics in Uncastillo are more complicated. King David is escorted not only by musicians but also by dancers, jongleurs, and acrobats, thus relegating the pure ecclesiastical music of the Psalms to a somewhat more profane spectacle. As for the siren, it is true that her flawless otherworldly singing may delude sailors into taking catastrophic navigational decisions. Yet, both the song of siren and the unfortunate navigational decisions were perceived neither morally nor religiously. For a more or less contemporary literary description of the siren and her musical qualities see for example Tilbury, Banks, and Binns, Otia Imperialia, 680–3.

²³Murray, “Castration Anxiety,” 260.

²⁴The English translation is taken from Barney, Etymologies, 252, and corresponds to XII.ii.21 of the original.

²⁵Semple, “The Male Psyche and the Female Sacred Body,” 174.

²⁸Van Eickels, “Gendered Violence,” 588.

²⁶See for example Murray, “Castration Anxiety,” where most of the case studies given by Murray refer either to Late Antiquity or to the High Middle Ages; see also Kuefler, “Castration and Eunuchism,” 289.

²⁷Van Eickels, “Gendered Violence.”

²⁹Michael and Strobl, Stained Glass of Canterbury Cathedral, 134.

³²Powers, The Code of Cuenca, 88.

³⁰Changes in the sexual discourse of the eleventh and twelfth centuries are discussed extensively in the literature. See for example Baldwin, The Language of Sex, and especially the introduction, in which Baldwin summarizes the state of the question.

³¹Dillard, Daughters of the Reconquest, 204. On the close similarity between Castilian and Aragonese fueros see Davis, “Forum Conche,” 169.

³³Murray, “Castration Anxiety,” 255.

³⁴In the Vulgate: “sunt enim eunuchi qui de matris utero sic nati sunt et sunt eunuchi qui facti sunt ab hominibus et sunt eunuchi qui se ipsos castraverunt propter regnum caelorum.”

³⁶English translation from Barney, Etymologies, 215, and corresponding to X.C.33 of the original.

³⁵Kuefler, “Castration and Eunuchism,” 284–5.

³⁷PL vol. 145 col. 0769

³⁸Murray, “Mystical Castration,” 82.

³⁹For Pelagius see Jordan, The Invention of Sodomy; for Ildefonsus see Kuefler, “Castration and Eunuchism,” 283, footnote 70.

⁴⁰Connolly, “Three Peninsular Versions of a Miracle of St. James,” 38; and Scarborough, “The Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.”

⁴¹On castration anxiety in the Middle Ages see Murray, “Castration Anxiety.” Traditionally, the memories of Guibert of Nogent formed a departure point for a scholarly debate regarding castration anxiety in the Middle Ages. On this point, see Kantor, “A Psycho‐Historical Source;” Benton, Self and Society in Medieval France; and Archambault, A Monk’s Confession.

⁴²Somewhat similar ideas regarding the effect achieved by Romanesque art by means of semantic mechanisms of reversal is recently discussed in Kessler, “Evil Eye(ing).”

⁴³Castration as punitive practice was frequently combined with blinding (see for example the story of Eilward of Westoning, footnote 29). Therefore, for contemporary viewers, a representation of castration probably triggered associatively the notion of not seeing, or stopping to see. In that sense metaphorical castration further stresses the idea of disengagement or departure from visual in general, and art in particular.

⁴⁴It is interesting to note that Wheeler describes similar literary structures which lead from somatics to effect in Abelard’s account of his own castration. See Wheeler, “Origenary Fantasies,” especially 111.