Below the cauldron is a group of figures, much larger in scale than those already described, appearing above flames which extend along the bottom of the stone. Two large grinning devils, one on either side, are holding down with two-pronged forks the naked body of a soul, probably a woman, lying in the flames, one tongue of which is directed towards her loins. Between them are two devils, apparently helping to support the cauldron. Between these two is another hideous devil, pushing down into the flames the naked soul just mentioned, and the ear of this last is being bitten by a lizard from below. Under the leg of the large devil on the left angle is another figure of a soul in the flames, with left arm outstretched, and another appears in the flames below the head of the recumbent soul.

With the exception of the female figure at the left upper corner, all the 'souls' are represented as naked figures. The devils are represented in human form, naked, with hideous faces. The devils. supporting the cauldron have no horns, and one of them has a threeclawed hand, as also has the devil below which pushes the soul into the flames. The two devils with the prongs have hairy heads, horns, large ears, and human hands with thumbs. The devil on the extreme left appears to have a three-clawed foot.

All the motives of this sculpture have their parallels in the representations of the punishment of the damned, which forms one scene in the great drama of the Last Judgment, so strikingly illustrated in the tympana of many great doorways of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in France. In England the tortures represented here have their parallel in one of the series of twelfth-century sculptures on the west front of Lincoln,' in which, however, the cauldron motive does not occur. In the representation of the Last Judgment on the tympanum of the central doorway of the west front of Autun cathedral," in the scene of the weighing of souls, Satan is trying to pull down the arm of the balance on the side where the scale bears a damned soul, and behind him another devil brings a lizard, an emblem of evil, to add to the weight. Behind again a devil is thrusting two souls into a cauldron, while from the furnace below issues another devil who drags other souls towards the cauldron; with a two-pronged fork in his right hand he attacks a female figure (Luxury), with a serpent at her breast. In the lower tier, which represents the resurrection of the good and evil, three of the latter

1 E. Trollope, The Norman Sculpture of Lincoln Cathedral, in the Archæological Journal, vol. xxv. (1868), p. 14, and fig. 12. See also the paper by Dr. James, cited below.

2 Autun cathedral was commenced

about 1120; there was a consecration by Pope Innocent II. in 1132, but the church was still unfinished in 1146. Harold de Fontenay and Anatole de Charmasse, Autun et ses monuments (Autun, 1889), pp. cxlii., cxliii.

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have symbols of their vices- —a woman has two serpents biting her breasts (Luxury)'; a man has a purse suspended from his neck (Avarice); and another appears to bear a cask (Drunkenness). As an example of the completest development of the theme towards the end of the thirteenth century, I may mention the tympanum of the central doorway of the west front of Bourges cathedral. Here some of the devils are armed with two-pronged forks; they are pushing along the damned towards and into the cauldron. On the right is a great inverted hell-mouth, vomiting flames around the cauldron above, while two devils are blowing the flames with bellows; on the edge of the cauldron are two toads, one at the mouth of a soul, and the other sucking the breast of a female figure, both of these souls being within the cauldron. M. Mâle remarks that in such scenes as these we find scarcely any trace of dogmatic teaching. "The bestial hideousness of Satan and his acolytes, their cynical gaiety, the liberties which they take with more than one noble lady, the despair of the damned-all these characteristics arise from the popular fancy." He goes on to show, however, that the mouth of Hell is the mouth of Leviathan described in the Book of Job. The verses, "Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or cauldron," and "He maketh the deep to boil like a pot," passed for an exact description of Hell. This imagery was translated literally by the artists of the thirteenth century, so much so that they represented a boiling cauldron in the yawning mouth. It would appear to be possible, therefore, that the exhalations from the nostrils of the great heads in this York sculpture may have been suggested by the smoke from the nostrils of Leviathan, and that their snake-like form and the lizard which terminates one of them may indicate the poisonous character of the exhalations. Probably also the three heads here may be explained by the representations of Satan as a monster with three heads. We see here, too, a feature which frequently charac

1 On the west jamb of the porch of Moissac, Luxury is represented by a naked female figure, with a serpent at each breast, a toad at her loins, and a devil grasping her wrist (G. Fleury, op. cit., fig. 20). On the inner face of the left jamb of the doorway of the narthex of Charlieu (Loire), Luxury is represented by a similar figure, with a serpent at one breast and a toad at the other (F. Thiollier, L'Art roman à Charlieu et dans les régions voisines (1894), pl. 3).

2 Cf. p. 439 ante, note I.

Two of the blessed in this resurrection scene bear pilgrims' wallets, one orna

mented with a cross, the other with a shell. For illustration of this tympanum, see A. Du Sommerard, Les Arts au moyen age (Paris, 1838-1846), pl. 21 of 3rd series.

4 This scene is illustrated by fig. 124 in M. Mâle's work, L'art religieux du XIIIe siècle en France, p. 424.

5 Ор. cit., р. 422.

6 Fob xli, 20, 31.

7 E. Mâle, op. cit., p. 423. The whole subject of the representations of the 'Doom' is admirably discussed in his chapter vi., pp. 400-432.

8 Cf. Dante, Inferno, canto xxxiv., 38.

terises these hell scenes-the wicked are suffering punishments suited to their particular vices. Thus the avaricious are weighted down in the flames by their money-bags, the sensual are attacked by unclean reptiles, while toads attach themselves to the lips of the slanderers.

It is impossible to study this York sculpture without being struck by the vivid imagination displayed by the artist, the intense realism of his conception of the horrors of hell, and his vigorous handling of the subject. Apart from the relative crudeness of the sculpture when compared with the fully developed examples of the thirteenth century, it is distinguished by a weird savagery which is not surprising when we regard it as a product of northern imagination.' At the same time the rendering of the figures and reptiles is remarkably true to nature, and certainly cannot be called grotesque.

Before venturing any suggestion as to its probable date, something may well be said of another sculptured fragment in York, which, if not actually contemporary, is, I think, certainly the work of the same school. This is now preserved in the Museum of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, on the ground floor of the 'Hospitium." The accompanying illustration is reproduced from a photograph which Dr. Auden has very kindly taken specially for this notice. It was found in 1817, laid with the face downward, at the bottom of a flight of steps leading into an old building called the 'Dungeon,' which was discovered when a public-house, known by the name of the 'Hole in the Wall,' was taken down in 1816.3 This 'dungeon' appears to have been a crypt under the chapel of the Holy Sepulchre, built by Roger of Pont l'Evêque (archbishop 1154-1181), at the gate of the archbishop's palace, which was also built by him. The stone in question, which formed the lower part of a semicircular tympanum,

1 Compare, for example, a representation of Hell in an illuminated psalter said to have been executed for Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester, before 1161 (Brit. Mus., Nero civ.), illustrated in Histoire de l'Art, edited by André Michel, vol. ii., p. 314. M. Arthur Haseloff, speaking of this psalter, says:-" Le goût du fantastique sombre et sauvage, qui a sûrement son origine dans le caractère du peuple saxon, s'exprime avec une force géniale dans le thème, naturellement préféré, du Jugement dernier, qui ne remplit pas moins de neuf miniatures. Dans la représentation des tourments infernaux, l'art anglais ne peut être surpassé. Sa création la plus originale est celle de l'Enfer conçu comme une gueule énorme et grimaçante. Nulle parte cette conception n'a pris une forme aussi

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effrayante que dans ce psautier.” (Ibid., ii., 315.)

2 In the Society's catalogue the stone is described as "A sculpture, representing the torments inflicted on a dying person by evil spirits. It was found reversed in the dungeon of a building near the N.W. tower of the Minster. Deposited by the Dean and Chapter in 1862."

W. Hargrove, History and Description of the ancient City of York, vol. ii., p. 126, and plate 9. John Browne, The History of the Metropolitan Church of St. Peter, York, p. 319.

4 Thomas Stubbs' Chronicle, in The Historians of the Church of York and its Archbishops (Rolls Series), ii., 398. The chapel was immediately north of the western bays of the present nave (see plan in Browne, p. 181).