Where is all the smut? The tricky questions about medieval graffiti...

So I'm standing before the audience, lecture over, trying to answer the questions posed by the audience. Some are brilliant questions - things that hadn't even occurred to me. Others are more expected. The questions that get asked almost every time. So common indeed that I don't even cover the subject in the lecture. I know it will come up later on. However, there is one question that I am never quite prepared for, particularly when it comes from a respectable looking, tweed clad, little old lady in her eighties. It is a question that keeps getting asked, again and again. Where, in the collection of medieval graffiti that we keep recording, is the smut? Where are the 'naughty' images - the phallus inscriptions, the smutty jokes, the sleazy graffiti? "Where", cackles the old lady, long past caring what others think of her, "are all the cocks"?

Well, it is actually a legitimate question. It's also a question that has been asked before in many different ways and in many different forms. Where, in short, is the subversive graffiti? Very recently I was contacted by the author of an American publication on graffiti through the ages - focussing upon graffiti as an act of political dissent or rebellion. Very nicely they asked if I had any good examples of medieval political or subversive graffiti, that they could add to their work? I had to decline - politely - and explain that we simply don't come across any. There are no "King John smells of wee" inscriptions, and most certainly no graffiti expressing such sentiments as "Down with the feudal system!", and "Peasants arise!". It just isn't there.

Well the American author obviously thought I was just being coy. He found it hard to believe that there simply wasn't anything like that amongst the medieval church graffiti. Perhaps he thought I was just being a wee bit staid, a wee bit English, and ignoring the graffiti that was deemed unseemly. Not the case I can assure you.

There are those who will argue that the political graffiti isn't present because the levels of literacy during the Middle Ages was so low. That the lack of political graffiti is simply the result of only the upper orders of society - the 'establishment' for want of a better term - could read and write. Now I'm not going to get in to that debate in too much detail, but suffice it to say that literacy levels in late medieval England are now considered to have been far, far higher than many of our Victorian historians would have us believe. Depending upon which 'authority' you happen to side with, current estimates for basic literacy sit at between 40% and 60%. However, that still leaves a bias towards the upper and clerical classes, making any analysis ambiguous to say the least. Indeed, if you want to study graffiti types that fall outside what may have been considered 'acceptable', it is far easier, and far more entertaining, to look instead at the area of good old fashioned, down to earth, smut! A form of inscription that, to put it bluntly, more often than not relies completely upon imagery. Words are not required...

The thing is, when you view graffiti as a whole, throughout history, smut is one of the key elements. It is one of the key features of continuity from the past to the present. Although as a recent article in the magazine Current Archaeology made clear, the symbol of the phallus was regarded by the Romans as both a mark of fertility and good luck, anyone studying Roman graffiti inscriptions will soon come to realise that it also went far beyond this 'formal' attribution. A quick glimpse at the graffiti inscriptions recorded at sites such as Pompeii and Herculaneum (available in plain brown covers) will soon convince you that sexual graffiti was far more than a projection of fertility cults. There are numerous depictions of various sexual acts, alongside the usual "get it here" type inscriptions, and many linked with innuendo or downright smutty inscriptions. Similarly, just the same sort of depictions are found in seventeenth and eighteenth century graffiti - and a quick wander down to the local bus shelter or busy city underpass will soon convince you that it most certainly continues to this day. Although compared to some of the Roman inscriptions today it may even be considered a little 'tame'...

Roman graffiti from Pompeii

So, taken as a whole, sexual graffiti of one form or another can be found in graffiti inscriptions pretty much throughout history. Surely then it must also be turning up amongst the medieval inscriptions we are coming across? That other images and graffiti types continue without a fundamental break down the centuries is unquestionable. The compass drawn designs, or 'hexfoils', that we come across in such massive numbers are also the most common single motif you will find amongst the Roman graffiti at Pompeii - so why then does not the smut also continue? Well, the answer most probably has to do with location and function. Probably...

In terms of the church graffiti that we are recording the vast majority of identifiable inscriptions appear devotional in nature. From the ritual protection marks found in most churches, to the more formal devotional imagery of blessings, saints and Latin phrases, the inscriptions we are coming across are, as I have said many, many times before, simply prayers made solid in stone. They are expressions of faith; expressions of belief. Whilst there are most certainly secular inscriptions alongside them, the devotional graffiti forms the bulk of the material we record. They are located in and on a building of spiritual significance, and as such their location may indeed be a reinforcement of the potency of the prayer itself. They are site specific - and are therefore unlikely to represent the whole corpus of medieval graffiti. They are a representation of church graffiti only - and church graffiti appears to be, almost without exception, smut free!

Medieval 'festival' badge

So what about the rest of medieval graffiti? Does that contain the 'interesting' stuff? Is all the smut to be found in the medieval houses and barns, much like it is two centuries later? Were medieval cottages full of flying cocks and ribald imagery? Well, the rest of informal medieval decorative arts certainly had their fair share of such images. One need only look at a selection of the small leaden 'festival' badges in various European museum collections to realise that the medieval world had perhaps more than its fair share of such (sometimes surreal) imagery. However, in terms of the graffiti we may never really know. There are so few medieval vernacular buildings that survive without having undergone numerous restorations and renovations, that most vernacular graffiti has simply been lost. Wiped from the walls by generations of people actually living in these buildings. If such imagery was there, it was lost centuries ago. The smut, if it was ever present, has long since gone the way of the people who carved it... to dust.