Home
Creators
Search Recent Random
Posts
Search DMs Popular Hash Lookup Tags Random
Importer
Import FAQ
Register Favorites Keys Review DMs Logout
Community
Telegram ThePornDude
Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Study 127 - The Cicerones (Patreon)

Published:
2025-04-10 18:45:59
Imported:
2025-04
Tags:

Downloads

Content

With The Cicerones by Robert Aickman as our guidebook, join us for a tour of religious art in a lonely cathedral. What could go wrong?

Some of the art in this episode:

Christ Among the Doctors

The Martyrdom of Saint Barbara

The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb

The Virgin Glorified

The Martyrdom of Saint Livinus

Further information:

St. Bavo's Cathedral in Ghent

The Ghent Altarpiece

The World's Most Stolen Painting

Examples of caged choirs by Bauhaus and NIN

Comments

Thunk

But but what does it mean?

Jamie Brittain

I remember as an English Literature undergraduate, there was a module on medieval hagiography (biographies of saints). The week's reading prior to a particular seminar was a bunch of manuscripts concerning female saints and martyrs, who, it turns out, are pretty much always depicted naked, and the violence they are subjected to is often focused on the parts of their bodies which are specifically female. As we entered the seminar, there was piece of paper for every student, on which was written a single proposition: 'The lives of female saints have more in common with 20th century bondage pornography than they have with the lives of their male counterparts, Y/N'. We all answered, and handed our sheets into the professor. She read through, and announced the results of the poll. which I present here without comment. There were perhaps 13 female students, and 7 male. The female students were evenly divided between Yes and No. The male students, to a man, answered Yes.

REO Jackwagon

As opposed to chicharrones, which is fried pork rind or pork belly.

Ann Knight

St Bartholomew is the saint holding his skin, he's depicted in many medieval paintings and statuary.

It's a Ghost.

Since the main character, John Trant, mentioned being annoyed by the tourists in the other churches he'd visited, and the church he's currently visiting doesn't have any tourists, and because he knows that he only has a short time to visit the current church before being kicked out, but his watch "stops" and he seems to be there way longer than half an hour, I suspect the moment he walked into the church he was captured and doomed by the Cicerones and Bishop Triest to do whatever they wanted to do with him.

Derek Scott

This story was a first for me: After 11 years listening to the Podcast, I finally read a story prior to listening to the show. After my introduction to Aickman via "The Hospice" episodes, I accumulated 4 volumes of the Faber and Faber e-books for my IPad. Like Chad, I found myself compelled to look up the paintings AS I read the story and decided to stop. Interestingly, one of the features I enjoy about Apple Books is that I can highlight text to come back to later. I often do this with unfamiliar words, etc. so I can try not to impede the flow of the story. Funnily enough, despite my beer homebrewing experience, I misinterpreted the word Cicerone first as Saucier and then as Sommelier, so I was convinced this was a sneaky March is for Draculas extension story. Going back to my highlighted sections to research gave me a wild chuckle. This story, for me at least, really hits on the often horrific nature of both biblical iconography as well as the baroque art depicting it. One can really become incredibly unsettled by all of it and it's no wonder people of middle ages and beyond were so entranced and terrified by the divine. Fantastic story overall, as all of his stories tend to be.

Steve

In the St Livinus painting, it's a bit dark, you may have missed the guy holding the saint's tongue in pair of pincers.

Steve

Aickman mostly didn't rent apartments, he very much relied on the kindness of his friends who put him up for weeks on end for him to write.

Jim Cannon

In the Old Testament, "feet" are often a euphemism for "genitals." So that third pair of wings was probably covering the angel's junk.

Jim Cannon

Well, I don't know you guys. I think I'm still struggling with Aickman. Last week's story was quite good, but this one... way back when you did "The Great God Pan" I said it struck me like the story of a very repressed man being terrified of female sexuality. In the same vein, this one sounds to me like an Anglican Protestant being weirded out by Catholic imagery. "Aren't those papists silly" etc. and ascribing sinister intentions to highly metaphorical and symbolic art. The paintings are pretty awesome, though.

Eric - Speaker in Digressions

Worth remembering that Cicero (Cicerones would be the plural) is Dante's tour guide through the tortures of Hell and Purgatory, although the theology doesn't quite check out. Thanks for the reminder about that Gaslands video; I've meant to watch it already. I also have to dig out my breakfast-cereal-themed Hot Wheels cars and finish gluing little guns and missiles and 1/72 scale wastelanders to them. (Not going to paint them except for weathering, though, since I want my friends to know when they get blown up by the Fruit Loops mobile or whatever.)

Cole Caron

Funny to hear about an international Twin Peaks diner! While working at a local ski area I met a coworker from Argentina who decided to come work at this Washington mountain specifically to visit North Bend and the diner that inspired Twin Peaks. I had no idea the fandom was so alive outside of the United States, but when you love Twin Peaks it seems to find a dark corner in your brain and put down roots there.

James Anthony

You know, it's funny to me how much the behavior of the youth and the child.... just strike me as normal behavior for someone of those ages. If you remove the themes of the supernatural, the kids dialogue could just be from a reddit post titled "weird things my nephew said last week".

Ryan Thomas

CHOIR CAGE: I'm not sure, but if the church had a choir of cloistered people (nuns, friars), then a metal grating would often be used as a separation between lay people and the religious, each group with its own entrance. If anyone can explain further, please do.

Thomas Stettler

When you said that they are going to show Trant the real sights, that reminded me of the Cenobites in Hellraiser. As Pinhead says, “We have such sights to show you.” And “Demons to some. Angels to others.” In a way, the Cenobites are Cicerones as well.

Thomas Stettler

And the depiction of female martyrs has always struck me as overly sexualised, as other posters maybe said, it is very sexualised violence and could be classed as extreme BDSM.

Ben A

I rather like this Aickman short story, though I agree that it assumes you know the artwork and the allegories of the art to decipher some of the themes. It's also cause for me to dust off my disused degree in comparative religion, where I specialized in the origins of Judaism and Christianity. It doesn't take a long stroll into any part of Judeo-Christian writings to spot the terrifying and bizarre. Of course, this is why Jewish and Christian writings, rituals, and history make for such great source material for the strange and horrifying. So much of the bible is a psychedelic bloodbath that rivals strange fiction if you read it closely. Angels are indeed described as terrifying to behold, and they come in multiple forms (sometimes appearing as human). What makes them especially scary is that they are often portrayed as the foot soldiers for a God who will kill all nonbelievers or rivals. For instance, in the book of Acts an angel strikes down King Herod Agrippa when he presents himself as a god; Herod is eaten by worms and _then_ dies. In reading Chronicles, the Destroyer (an angel) kills thousands of Jews in Israel to convince David to build the altar that eventually becomes the Temple of Solomon. Also, Chris is right that the seraphim are described with six wings, but moreover as winged serpent-snake-men that often appeared before divine violence occurred. They also were the ones from whom the "Holy! Holy! Holy!" quote is taken, only they are declaring adoration to the "Lord of _Armies_" (which is often mistranslated as "Hosts"). The seraphim declare the coming of divine armies. I'll finish by adding a note about the cherubim. They aren't described as cute little baby-like angels as portrayed in art, but rather as monstrous, indescribable, and kaleidoscopic entities. They are more like chimeras with four faces, and their main task was to keep humans away from the divine. When I read Charles Dexter Ward, I always think of the creatures abandoned in the tunnels as looking like cherubs. Cherubs--the multi-faced monsters--were painted on the walls of the Temple of Solomon in addition to guarding the holy of holies (the room where the Ark was held and served as God's literal throne). The two statues on the lid of the Ark were cherubim. They were introduced in Genesis, where they guard the gates to the Garden of Eden and keep out humans, like monsters that protect spaces in Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek, and Roman mythologies. Whether Aickman was familiar with these and many other details when making angels the creepy antagonists in the story is beyond me. But it seems like he knew that if one sees an angel, one should be very afraid.

JonEsprockets

Watching The Cross and the Switchblade at church as a tween didn’t have the desired effect on us.

Aaron La Vene

Literally hellraiser, he’s looking to each art piece as a piece of a puzzle almost as if he is trying to complete the puzzle. Seeing weird people are each one.., By the end he finished the puzzle and at that point , his guides were ready to take him to the eternal pleasure of martyrdom? Hellraiser origins - cathedral bar crawl

The Lonely Sand Person

To me, this felt like a "cabin in the woods" kind of story. Trant comes into this church full of worldly concerns like art and time. He's here not to worship, but to observe its treasures from a secular perspective. He breaks the rules by uncovering the covered painting and repeatedly ignoring the donation boxes. And in the end, he's punished for trespassing where he ought not be. I feel like there's a theme of idolatry running through the scenes -- from the paintings of people looking at the saints instead of to God, to the room full of people adoring the paintings and not (at least to hear Trant tell it) the one the paintings are meant to glorify. And that's what Trant is doing, too.

Tomas Rawlings

An interesting point here is the depiction of halos in religious art, this predates Christianity and can be found in many cultures including ancient Egypt with the sun god Ra and Mesopotamia art. There was an idea that heroes in battle radiated light. You can also see it in depictions of Alexander the Great. Because he was rumoured to be the son of a god (with Phillip of Macedonia not being his actual dad) he was depicted with divine light. So this idea carried though into Christian art as how to show the son of a god.

It's a Ghost.

Listened to this episode again after having already read the story twice, and how could I have overlooked the true horror of this story for so long . . . the Dutch language! Also, if you google The Cicerones, you should probably be able to find a copy of Jeremy Dyson’s short film pretty easily. What I found was a lower quality version, but I still enjoyed it and thought it was a nice companion piece to the original story.

James Duffy

So Chad used to see angels as divine Oddjobs, hunting down the enemies of their mob boss and chucking their haloes at them.

Our old pal Brendan Gardiner

I know it’s wrong to think this episode was directed at me, but after launching that discussion of Catholicism that dominated the comments in the Dracula episode and the feedback episode, I feel like Chris and Chad are my two dads making me smoke an entire carton of cigarettes here.

Fulgencio Martinez

Unfortunately, the word cicerone is completely unrelated to chicharrones. They just sound similar. Pack it up y'all. Party is ruined

Stewart

Reminds me of the excellent video game series Blasphemous, where much of the imagery and symbolism is lifted from Spanish Catholic (specifically Sevillan) tradition. Unsurprisingly the result is deeply weird and unsettling.

Matthew Alderman

I have to chuckle a bit about the premise (to the extent we can define any of Aickman's stories as having clear premises) given, as an architectural designer and professional illustrator working almost exclusively in the field of sacred art (and who also briefly taught a seminary course on the subject at one of the pontifical universities in Rome), and who approaches it as a believer, this is the ultimate "but for me it was Tuesday" story. I realize I kind of have a job out of an M.R. James story, and have spent a lot of time exploring cathedrals like this on vacations. In fact, visiting St. Bavo's as a kid on a family trip to Belgium was where I first encountered the Ghent altarpiece, which remains an inspiration for me to this day. The northern school of early Renaissance art is a favorite of mine, and I've even helped design an altarpiece in that style. As a Catholic, attuned to the symbolism and perhaps too used to it, it's all very familiar. Sure, it can get gory, I'll admit, and sometimes artists can go a bit overboard. My friend Eleanor Bourg Nicholson, the horror novelist, who I did a couple of book cover illustrations for, thinks Catholics are best equipped to tackle supernatural threats in fiction like vampires, because we're so unfazed by the weird. I would hazard to guess that the unnamed martyrs mentioned are Lawrence of Rome on the gridiron, Bartholomew the Apostle with his skin, and Elmo or Erasmus with the intestines. I'm less sure about the woman on the wheel, but it might be Euphemia; Catherine, most associated with the wheel in art was actually beheaded as the wheel was struck by lighting before it could be used. The choir being locked: From re-familiarizing myself with the photos of St. Bavo's, I assume what he is talking about is a choir screen with a lockable gate; there appears to be something like that in some of the images. Bear in mind the "choir" in this instance is as much an architectural feature as a place for singers. It is not the choirloft you see in smaller churches; instead it is a space between the nave (congregational area) and sanctuary (altar area), often lined with stalls and semi-enclosed, where usually either choristers or members of the cathedral clergy sit during services and chant. As an extension of the altar area, it would probably be locked to prevent people simply meandering through a more sacred space or to avoid items being stolen. The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb is, of course, filled with imagery from the Book of Revelation; though, on a more homely level, to those in the know it is simply a way of depicting in symbolism what is going on in the Mass--the unbloody participation in the one sacrifice of Christ on the cross, uniting those on earth with the saints above; the reaction a Catholic believer has to it is more one of familiarity rather than disorientation. That being said, while I understand the theological reasons they went for it, I do find the post-cleaning lamb with human eyes a bit unsettling. As to what's going on, probably figures from the painting or the history of the church coming to life seems likely; I wonder if the colorfully-dressed man is the bishop mentioned in the story given they mention vestments earlier. While I'm certain this wasn't Aickman's intent, what it made me think of would be what it would feel like if an unknowing person got accidentally caught up in the start of a Latin Mass sponsored by a Catholic young adult group like Juventutem. I'm pretty sure you'd run into tweedy young folks with a nerdily in-depth knowledge of the saints that might be a bit unsettling to outsiders (also, "Holy Holy Holy" is part of the text of the mass, precisely because of those angelic connections). I know at least one with a transatlantic accent. And there'd be singing. And it'd be bewildering for about an hour, but there'd be drinks and probably dinner at a pub afterwards, and quite good fun. (Ah, the late 2000s/early 2010s were fun.) Two more things that seem germane here. First, I work these days at the architectural firm started by Ralph Adams Cram in 1889; you may remember covering one of his stories way back in the epoch of HPPodcraft. Second, while it's not Gothic, if Chad is ever in downtown Madison on State Street by the university, be sure to stop in at St. Paul's Catholic Student Center, a new church I helped design in a beautiful neo-Romanesque style. I'm sure Fr. Eric would be glad to give you a tour.

Ethanolparty

Late to the conversation, but as someone who has yet to do an independent deep dive into Aickman's works and has only encountered those stories covered by Strange Studies thus far, this is the one to finally formalize my burgeoning appreciation for Aickman. To clarify, I've loved each of his stories previously covered but I think this one is the most accessible and conventional, at least to those with prior experience with the stories of M.R. James. I went ahead and watched the 2002 adaptation starring Mark Gatiss and found it quite faithful. What really prompted me to comment however, is that I recently watched the trailer for the movie "Mr. K" released in 2024 starring Crispin Glover. I don't know if Chris and Chad have already discussed this movie, but it reminded me so much of The Hospice that I wonder if it wasn't an unofficial adaptation of sorts. Of course there's a place where Aickman and Kafka intersect and the latter may have been the chief inspiration. I haven't seen it yet and don't know if it's any good, though the reception seems to have been lukewarm. I had to stop watching the trailer part way because it was spoiling too much of the movie. It's definitely on my to-watch list though.