Battle in the bench-end - a glimpse from Erfurt cathedral

 

This blogpost provides yet another detail from the glorious late-medieval choir benches in Erfurt cathedral. The scene itself is familiar from the corpus of Latin medieval art, namely the duel between to figures who are not knights, yet behave as if they were. This motif appears in various media, not only carved in wood but also drawn in manuscript illuminations. While I do not know how exactly to read this motif, it appears to be a variant of the reversion of the world, by which the roles, customs and ideals of the real world are turned upside-down and inside-out. We see women fighting instead of men, we see, possibly, a funnel being used as a helmet, and we see a hog being used as a rider. Perhaps we should also understand the landscape, the branches of a grapevine, as a contrast to the field of battle where tournaments normally are held. 

This detail from one of the bench-ends in Erfurt cathedral provide an excellent example of the masterful carvings made my medieval artists, and reminds us that the medieval visual world was immensely rich in detail and content.