"...and all but Lust will turn to dust in Humanity's Machine." - Oscar Wilde: The Ballad of Reading Gaol SATAN IN THE GROIN male exhibitionist carvings on mediæval churches _________ This page will take longer to download than others on this site - but your short wait will be richly rewarded. Interior corbel, church of Sainte-Radegonde, Poitiers (Vienne), France In 12th century Europe the two most dangerous and pernicious sins were considered by the pious to be WEALTH (Avaritia) and the SPENDING of wealth on goods, services and sensuality (Luxuria) . These were the two most tangible manifestations of the overriding sin of VAIN-GLORY (Vanitas). Nine hundred years later, these most insidious sins, so widely condemned by both offical and heterodox Christianity, have ousted every god and virtue to become the two pillars of Capitalism, the thronged portal of Mammon's New Jerusalem Mall.

The Wealthy Man clutching and weighed down by his moneybag on the right-hand side of the church-doorway at Jazeneuil (Vienne), France. The twelfth century was the most prodigious period of building in human history, with tens of thousands of churches built (in the style called Romanesque) across the length and breadth of Europe from Norway to Sicily, and Ireland to Hungary and Dalmatia. Tens of thousands of trees were felled to provide scaffolding and structural timbers. Skilled sculptors and masons could move from a contract on the shores of the Mediterranean to another on the shores of the Baltic within a fortnight, bringing new motifs and improved techniques with them. This energy reflected, and further contributed to, an economic boom that led to the rise of cities, the export of criminals on Crusades, and the decline of the monasteries which had generated wealth by their greatly-increased land-cultivation and output.   Interior corbel, Poitiers Cathedral, France Many of these churches presented to illiterate parishioners 'sermons in stone' through carved glimpses of Heaven and Hell on their doorways, and images of sin (and, occasionally, virtue) on the stone corbel tables which supported their rooves. Saint-Contest (Calvados), France Some very important churches (for example, on the Pilgrim Roads across Europe and the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela, which were tramped by millions of feet and hooves every year) had whole façades wonderfully carved with apocalyptic and heavenly scenes designed to instruct the pilgrim. Tuscania (Viterbo), Italy

Some collegiate churches attached to important monasteries featured hundreds of figures illustrating and warning against all sorts of sin from gluttony and drunkenness, dancing and lewd behaviour to calumny, simony and sodomy. Béceleuf (Deux-Sèvres), France Guzzlers of wine from barrels, acrobats and musicians (for in the 12th century no instrumental music could be 'sacred') rub shoulders with beasts such as pigs and dogs and bears who, even when not ithyphallic, represent lusts and degradation. Annaghdown (Galway), Ireland Mauriac (Cantal), France: absidiole corbels and detail of a sinful variant of the Ourobolos Apes, coming from Barbary, represented the barbaric and blaspheming (if not demonic) Moors, and, to emphasise the point, displayed their circumcisions. Droiturier (Allier), France As well as fabulous beasts, beard-pullers, foliage-spewers, mouth-pullers , tongue-stickers and column-swallowers are also well-known from hundreds of churches. T he megaphallic cake-eater is, however, a rare motif. Champagnolles (Charente-Maritime), France Absidal corbel, Graimbouville (Seine-Maritime), France Megaphallic glutton, Barahona (Segovia), Spain Even some remote and rustic churches feature remarkable figures in frozen demonstration of mortal sins - especially the sins of carnality, wealth and consumption - to be avoided on pain of eternal punishment. Saint-Contest (Calvados), France If wealth was always represented by a moneybag, often weighing the carrier down, sins of the flesh were variously represented by grotesque figures, usually naked and displaying or indicating their long hair or beards, symbolic of rampant sexuality. Many of these are exhibitionists, both male (displaying and sometimes licking oversized apparatus of masculinity) and female (often showing huge vulvas). Some exhibitionists have since had their important messages hacked by uncomprehending prudes.   San Pedro de Tejada (Burgos), Spain Damnation was vividly represented, most frequently by monsters grabbing or swallowing human figures (often naked) - representing Satan's Realm claiming and swallowing up the souls of sinners. Maillezais (Vendée), France Puypéroux (Charente), France The sin of Luxuria (the depravity of the rich) was typically punished by Hellish snakes or toads attacking the breasts of long-tressed naked women, while Concupiscentia (lust) in men was punished by serpents biting their balls or beards or moustaches. Mauling by huge demonic beasts was also a common symbol of the fate of sinners. The blowing of horns into the ears of the damned suggests the Last Judgement. Passirac (Charente), France For hundreds of years neither sex nor marriage were endorsed by the Western Church. St Augustine had said that the only sex that was not a passage to Hell was the carnal union of two Saved Souls for the sole purpose of creating another soul to be saved. Thus most marriages were considered to be at least potentially sinful (unlike sacred marriages between holy men), and it was not until the the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 that the Church declared marriage to be a sacrament - with a prescribed ritual - and ensured its eventual demise by espousing the 'family values' so despised by the first Christians.   Saint-Front-sur-Nizonne (Dordogne), France

Female exhibitionists have been illustrated in various books, notably in Images of Lust * by Anthony Weir and James Jerman,

Solignac (Haute-Vienne), France

but few people are aware that there are at least as many male exhibitionist carvings on churches across the length and breadth of Europe - from Bohemia to Galicia, and Denmark to Sicily - an enticing selection of which are illustrated here.
They appear also on castles and even stranger places in Britain and Ireland.

Post-mediæval gate-pillar, Ballycloghduff (Westmeath), Ireland

The pictures above are taken from a Book in Progress ( 'The Silent Orgy ') which has not so far found a publisher with the means to print and distribute it.

* Images of Lust, by Anthony Weir and James Jerman, was published by Batsford (London) in 1986, and re-issued as a paperback in 1994. It was re-published in paperback by Routledge (London) in 1999, and is due to come out in the United States this year.

This web-page is dedicated to the late Martha Weir,
who was amazed but unfazed by these carvings,
and without whom "Images of Lust" and " The Silent Orgy "
would never have been researched or written.