Monsters at the Threshold: Bestiary Creatures and Folkloric Imagery in Romanesque Cloisters and St Bernard’s Criticism

Abstract

This paper examines monstrous creatures and folkloric motifs in Romanesque cloisters, connecting with St Bernard’s Apologia (1125). Hybrid entities populate cloisters, disrupting the visual tranquillity of sacred architecture and provoking enquiries about their symbolism. The ‘monstrosities’ in monastic atmospheres display their ability to divert monks from spiritual contemplation. St Bernard’s rhetoric depicts these entities as disturbances—visual symbols that undermine revered monastic life. Monstrous creatures (a) signify moral allegories, (b) raise theological issues, and (c) mirror medieval cosmologies where boundaries between the natural and supernatural, and the sacred and the profane were fluid. While serving as abject symbols that undermine identity and order and provoke fascination and repulsion, monstrous creatures contextualise Romanesque visual culture, wherein marginality and monstrosity are central to narrative and symbolic representation. They are a liminal entity and a visual boundary between the real and the imagined. Romanesque sculptors derive inspiration from folkloric beliefs; hence, monstrous creatures bridge a dialogue between localised folklore and Christian teaching, which has religious and psychological significance. Their horrific shapes force the monk to confront spiritual chaos, moral uncertainty, and the limits of representation in monasteries. This paper intends to explore Benedictine and Cistercian artistic attitudes toward monstrous animals and folkloric motifs. It also investigates how they were adopted into the visual language of Romanesque sculpted capitals (10-12C). Benedictine cloisters (Moissac/France, Silos/Spain) along the pilgrimage road draw on medieval knowledge in folklore, bestiaries, and biblical textual sources. For Benedictine-Cluniac houses, monstrous animals were a didactic yet spiritual means of learning about God’s existence in contrast to Cistercian austerity.