1134 Reviews

Anne McGee Morganstern, High Gothic Sculpture at Chartres, the Tomb of the Count
of Joigny, and the Master of the Warrior Saints. University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2011. Pp. xvii, 195; black-and-white figures. ISBN: 9780271048659.
doi:10.1017/S0038713413003424
A nne McGee Morganstern’s text is elegant, poetic, and concise, and it harbors some-
thing of Willibald Sauerländer’s prose style. Her project: a masterly detective journey into
a tomb that may have been made for Count Guillaume de Joigny. Her insight: the tomb
can be linked to the column figures of Saints Theodore and George in the south porch of
Chartres Cathedral. She calls the carver the “Master of the Warrior Saints,” “who ap-
pears to have furnished models for most of the other sculpture” (2) in the transept por-
tals and who was “among the great creators of the animated human figure in Gothic sculp-
ture” (131). Her conclusion: this “Master” was responsible for much in both Chartres
porches during the decade before 1224.
There are three appendices. The first describes the difficulties in identifying the statues
as Saints Theodore and George. The second associates the figures in the peaks of the three
southern gables to the acquisition of the head of Saint Anne in 1204. In the third
Morganstern offers new identifications for some of the more contentious sculpture in the
outer supports of the north porch.
Her language is often enthralling, as in “thuriferous angels” (16) or “melancholy proph-
ets” (98). Her delicate descriptions are a real pleasure, as in “her comely posture exhibits
an evolved understanding of contrapposto, and her lithe feminine body, revealed by a long
dress of fine clinging fabric” (90), “crumpled garments” (88), and “compared with Saint
Theodore’s civilized, discerning glance, Saint George’s eyes seem fixed and somewhat dazed,
as if he had just finished a three- or four-week campaign. Intense, yes; a good soldier, no
doubt; but less capable of reflection than his companion” (126).
On the matter of the tomb in the little church at Joigny, Morganstern weaves a plea for
its being that of Count Guillaume, carved after his death in 1224. The evidence is at best
circumstantial. During the Revolution a tomb was buried with other objects for safety,
and this was disinterred many years later. An earlier eighteenth-century copyist refers to
the effigy “wearing a circle and a crown on his head” (6). However, the figure on this
stone wears only a circle and has no crown, an omission that is not discussed. Uncertainty
remains.
The relationship Morganstern draws between the tomb and Saint Theodore at Chartres
is compelling, especially in the details in the hair and the particular physiognomy of the
face. She persuades me that the carver of the tomb could have carved at least the head of
Saint Theodore, though the eyebrows are quizzical on the face on the tomb while simple
curves descend into the nose of Saint Theodore, and there are marked differences in the
folds of all three figures. She does not discuss the possibility that large medieval sculp-
tural figures could be the work of a team and that the folds of cloth could have come
from an associate’s initiative rather than from the Master’s own hand.
Morganstern concludes that similarities in posture and surface treatment promote the
Master into the man who “was in charge of the execution of the porch’s sculpture until
its completion” (69) and who “emerges as the leading artist responsible for the porches’
decoration” (69) and “was in charge . . . until its completion” (97).
Morganstern would like us to believe that this Master was the prime mover in the de-
sign of the Chartres porches, and though the idea is stimulating, the evidence relies on the
sculpting manner of only a few selected figures. The rigor of a comprehensive compari-
son is lacking. There are only a few other pieces with similar bodies and vestments, as
could have been deduced from a study of the Étienne Houvet collection. This Master may
have led one of the gangs, but the range of Morganstern’s evidence does not encourage

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the conclusion that he was in charge of the whole porch. Though the illustrations are large
and generally clear, we are not offered enough details that would allow us to judge our-
selves. By comparison, consider Edson Armi’s painstaking manner of notation.
Morganstern’s conclusion is that the south porch was not begun until after 1215 and
“various indicators suggest” (116) it was finished by 1224. Her indicators are solely sty-
listic. Nowhere does she consider the integration of the sculpture with the architecture.
This is a fundamental failure in her chronology-by-style methodology. The key phrase is
that “the progress of work on the porch must be based on the style of its sculpture” (77).
This simple sentence sums up a century of research in which style has taken precedence
over construction.
Where carvings are built into the fabric of a structure the erection dates are absolutely
determined by the construction history, even if they negate the assumed “rules” of stylis-
tic evolution. In one example among many, a bas-relief is embedded into the wall over
the eastern lintel of the south porch. It is the first in the Gallery of Kings. As every part of
the porch was bedded into the fabric of the building, the porch had to be complete when
the bas-relief was installed, and therefore everything below the bas-relief would be earlier.
This renders Morganstern’s style-based dating untenable. Morganstern details the ac-
cepted completion of the south transept rose to 1224 from the donors of the stained glass.
She then states that the porch was completed at the same time. This is hard to under-
stand, unless she is implying (but has not stated) that the porch was an addition. Quite
apart from other evidence, the bas-relief would itself have told her this was impossible.
The lithic evidence clearly delineates the sequence of construction. It indicates that the
portal doorways were begun around 1198, the lintels and with them Saints Theodore and
George by 1204 and the bas-relief shortly after. In overview, there are some twenty-five
courses of ashlar from the ground to the roof of the porch and seventy-six courses above
that. As three-quarters of the transept lies above the bas-relief her dates do not make sense.
Further, there is no mention of the working life of a carver. Over twenty or more years,
perhaps as many as forty, a sculptor could be detailing clothing and hair, noses and ears
in the same manner. Any specific manner may have a long tenure depending on an indi-
vidual’s working life. Thus the Master of the Warrior Saints could have made Theodore
just after 1200 and the effigy of Count Guillaume twenty years later. Within the life span
of a man stylistic considerations offer little certainty on dates.
These points highlight the major defects of any style-based methodology and therefore
of the educational system that would present style as the primary basis for chronology.
Indeed, it seems indicative of her avoidance of construction issues that Morganstern relies
on Anne Prache for having “resolved the debate . . . over whether Chartres was begun in
the nave or in the choir” (35) in 1997 when this reviewer had already done so from evi-
dence in the stonework twenty-five years earlier. Because style forms the major highway
of her analytic method there was little room for the more complex evidence from the build-
ing itself.
For example, in the north transept Morganstern uses style to date the doorways a little
earlier than the south, but adds that the projecting porch was begun only as the sculpture
in the doorways was finished around 1212 and took a further thirty years to complete.
Yet the stonework tells us that the porch with its lintels and supporting sculpture was
built with the interior transept wall and aisle arcades, for the masonry can be followed
continuously through the windows, doors, and staircases. Above the porch the buttresses
project well beyond the piers underneath. They are supported on the lintels while the roof-
ing slabs over the porch were inserted into the walls and built with them.
The building evidence shows that the porch would have been finished by 1220⫾, maybe
a little later. Morganstern herself states that the Calendar figures have “profiles that match
that of the count from Joigny” (93), both “close to 1224” (99). Yet because the figures in

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the Creation and Contemplatives cycles have “heavy, voluminous garments . . . , an en-
hanced three-dimensional presence” (97) she links them to the trumeau at Amiens and
the Coronation portal in Paris “towards 1240” (116). Thus she halts the builders for fif-
teen years rather than looking at the possibility that the sculptors who worked at Amiens
may have been younger men when at Chartres.
How can we distort the reality of a building made of stone to suit the theoretical con-
cepts we call style? Dating by sculptural style rather than the masonry that holds it has
marred an otherwise fascinating study of “one of the great creators of the animated hu-
man figure in Gothic sculpture” (131).
John James, Hartley Vale, Australia

Patrick J. Murphy, Unriddling the Exeter Riddles. University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2011. Pp. 272. $79.95. ISBN: 9780271048413.
doi:10.1017/S0038713413003436
“O ccultam similitudinem rerum,” wrote Donatus of riddles, which uncover “the hidden
meaning of things.” Patrick J. Murphy’s new study of the Anglo-Saxon riddles is a wel-
come addition to the scrutiny already given these poems in the tenth-century Exeter Book,
particularly by Dieter Bitterli (Say What I Am Called: The Old English Riddles of the
Exeter Book and the Anglo-Latin Riddle Tradition, 2009), John Niles (Old English
Enigmatic Poems and the Play of the Texts, 2006), and Craig Williamson (A Feast of
Creatures: Anglo-Saxon Riddle-Songs, 1994), acknowledged predecessors. Because the
Exeter riddles, unlike their Latin counterparts, were recorded without their solutions, they
are “incomplete.” “Unriddling” them, however, is not to complete them by furnishing one
answer. “Unriddling the riddles,” writes Murphy in his afterword, “requires interpreting
other patterns behind their dark language” (235). Too often, he notes, we err in thinking
there is only one solution instead of multiple ones, even paradoxical ones. Many exceed
their Latin models in complexity precisely because they are not merely expansions on title/
solutions but contain what Murphy calls “extended implicit metaphors” (18). Thus they
produce a baffling effect that has been criticized as verbose and asymmetrical, because we
are conditioned to look for “an artful balancing act” (198) where each item corresponds
neatly with its hidden referent. Rather, they might offer a pleasing double meaning that
scholars have formerly noted only in the so-called sex riddles by stretching out “slim se-
mantic chances” to suggest cleverly buried associations. He finds in the sex riddles (which
are not merely dirty jokes and offer similarly plural meanings) a “central clue to the way
so many of the other Exeter Riddles work” (221).
To the two operations of a riddle—“proposition” and “solution”—Murphy adds a third:
“metaphorical focus.” I provide as example his analysis of Riddle 13, “ten chicks hatch-
ing” (53–60). A problem for many solution seekers is its apparently inapt and confusing
imagery. Why do chicks eat “gray fruit” (haswe blede) usually translated as “grass” or
“shoots”? Blede falls outside the requirements of alliteration. More significantly, what is
to be made of the strange remark that their “sides” (instead of “journeys” as Bitterli trans-
lates) were not “the more painful” (ne side þy sarre) from this hatching? It is a “slim
semantic chance” that painless sides and chicks are associated—sides and eggs, perhaps,
but not chicks. Murphy directs us to Genesis A, in which we find the Guardian of Heaven
(rodera wearde) who coaxes the hatching in 13, the painless removal of the rib from Adam’s
side (sar ne wiste) from which Eve is awakened (aweahte), as are the chicks. There, too,
we have the forbidden bled (a term according to the Dictionary of Old English that most
commonly refers to Eden’s fruit). Expulsion and hope of the renewal fit both poems. The
proposition is what the riddle presents us obscurely. The solution is chicks hatching from

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