This week I went back to Lidgate. A gloriously sunny morning
negotiating the winding byways of the Newmarket heath, dodging the early Easter
get-away traffic, eventually found me at the church with a few minutes to
spare. It makes a change. My normal motto, according to those who deal with me
on a regular basis, should be “24 hours late – but moving fast”. However, this
time I was on time – give or take – which was useful as I’d arranged to meet
others at the church to show them some examples of the amazing medieval
graffiti.
My guests were a diverse collection of lecturers and
post-grad students from the University of East Anglia – my own former
university. Although I used to be fairly firmly attached to the university,
having studied there, lectured there and acted as an extra-mural studies tutor,
these days I rarely get to cross the hallowed concrete. Indeed, rumour has it
that my presence on campus causes certain academics to run screaming from the
area, and the assistant dean to spontaneously combust. It’s a knack I have. Or
is it the assistant Dean who runs screaming and the academics that
spontaneously combust? I forget…
For most of the UEA this was their first visit to Lidgate
church. For almost all of them this was certainly their first field trip to
hunt for medieval graffiti. They were all there to see a certain inscription;
an inscription that has rather made a few headlines in recent weeks. What they
wanted to see was the tiny a discrete line of text, etched lightly into one of
the stone piers, that may, or may not, have been created by the late medieval
poet John Lydgate. A simple enough thing to see. Over with in five minutes.
Well, it would have been if I’d taken them straight to the inscription itself.
However, that’s not my way. That would be wayyyy too easy. Now this wasn’t just
me being a stroppy git (although that has been known to happen upon occasion I
admit). What I wanted was for my visitors to understand that this was just one
single inscription amongst many, and that it was impossible to understand any
single inscription without seeing them as part of the whole. Putting it into a
wider context so to speak.
So I gave them the tour. Starting in the tower we looked at
the bell ringer’s graffiti, the memorial to J. W. Wiseman who “departed this
life” in 1810, and the inscription made by the “Jacob ringer” in the early 18th
century. Then we looked at demons in the nave, compass drawn designs, windmills
and medieval text across the walls. They saw faces, stars, music, names and
dates. They crowded into pews to peer at the walls, squashed around piers and
peered through gaps in the screens. Only then, about forty minutes later, did I
show them the inscription that they had come to see… (I know – I am a bugger)
However, by the time they actually came to look at the
possible Lydgate inscription something had happened to them. I saw it gradually
spreading across their faces as we moved around the church, from inscription to
inscription; something I am privileged to see on a fairly regular basis. A new
understanding had been born. They suddenly ‘got’ medieval graffiti. They
understood that is was about far more than scratched and idle doodles on the
wall. That is went beyond our modern ideas of graffiti as destructive
vandalism. Suddenly they saw the bigger picture. They saw that these markings
had a meaning and function that, as medievalists, could help shed new light
upon the world they studied.
Now I’m not claiming any great miracles here. I’m not
suggesting that it changed the way in which they view the medieval church
(although it did for me). All I am saying is that, for most of them I believe,
they will never quite look at a medieval church in the same way. Their
attitudes and perceptions had changed.
This change in attitudes and perception isn’t just confined
to studying medieval graffiti. It is happening all around us all the time. You
need only look at the current arguments surrounding the latest piece of Banksy
art work to have been removed ‘for the sake of safety’ from the walls of
Bristol. Now just think about that. A few years ago Banksy was widely seen as ‘just’
a graffiti artist – albeit a damned good one with a cutting edge wit and acute
insights into the modern condition. His work popped up all over the place. Some
loved it. Some hated it. Councils destroyed early examples and murals were
painted over. However, here we are a few years later and his works sell for
tens of thousands of pounds and critics talk of his work in terms of fine art.
Works that would have once been painted out are now carefully removed and
flogged off for a huge amount of cash by unscrupulous property owners. Others
try to protect and preserve those Banksy pieces that are still on the walls,
covering them in Perspex sheeting to ‘protect them’ from more graffiti ‘vandalism’.
Protecting something that was once considered graffiti vandalism itself from
further graffiti vandalism. Do they see
the irony do you think?
My point I suppose is this. In the same way that attitudes
towards Banksy’s work have changed in the last few years, so too have attitudes
towards medieval graffiti. It is gradual – but it is happening. We are moving
away from the time when medieval graffiti studies were considered so far out on
the fringes of academia that it was often only published alongside articles on
folklore. We are moving towards a time when it sits, perhaps not in the
mainstream, but at least alongside the main flow of research. Although this is
incredibly good news for those of us that study it, it doesn’t come without
dangers as well. We must remember that these markings that we study are not
just another sterile collection of artefacts. That they are not another
lifeless museum exhibit. As the group from UEA discovered at Lidgate, these
inscriptions had both meaning and function to those who created them. They were
spiritually important to them. In short, we must remember to place a real value
on what we find on the walls; a value that can be measured in meaning rather
than in pound coins.
CC
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