6 - Sacred or Profane? The Horned Headdresses of St. Frideswide’s Priory

Summary

They make themselves horned with worked hemp, or flax, and counterfeit dumb beasts; who will be known for worthy ladies … . There is great talk about their horns; people mock them … . Such a foolish whim is too vile in the sight of God … . I believe well that the devil intends to seat them at his table.

The sentiment expressed in this fourteenth-century poem, “Des Cornetes,” is typical of that found in many songs and sermons of the late Middle Ages lambasting ornamental female headgear. A favorite target for censure, headdresses resembling horns—whether simple plaits coiled at the temples or the more elaborate structures that sometimes topped them—were especially offensive in the eyes of critics. Moralists regularly compared them to the horns of rams, cows, and devils, and predicted hellfire for the women who wore them. Given this common religious response, it is surprising to find sculpted heads with horned headdresses adorning the vaulting shafts of the cloister of St. Frideswide’s Priory, a foundation for Augustinian canons, now Christ Church Cathedral at Oxford.

At first glance this may look like nothing more than late medieval monastic decadence. In company with other carvings in this cloister—heraldic devices, fanciful animals, and the Green Man—it would be easy to conclude that these vaulting bosses represent secular incursion, godless ostentation, or entertainment for bored canons with false vocations. But they may have more significance than meets the eye. Like marginalia in medieval manuscripts, marginal sculpture in medieval buildings often rewards careful consideration. It is frequently multifaceted and can evoke more serious meaning than may be evident initially. In addition to embodying a medieval approach to sacred space generally, the ornamental female heads of the St. Frideswide cloister also evoke the priory’s prestige, its ancient and royal past, and the strength and breadth of the cult of the founding saint.

St. Frideswide’s priory, now the cathedral of Oxford and part of Christ Church College, was founded, according to tradition, in the eighth century by an Anglo-Saxon princess. In the twelfth century it was refounded as a house for Augustinian canons and given a standard medieval monastic plan, with a church and cloister. The cloister walks were said to have been rebuilt in 1499, at least partly, and seven bays of this late medieval structure remain.