Mourners and animals

On a little ledge, below the tomb lid, we find the mourners or pleurants: a bishop with the Office of the Dead (or prayers for the departed), candle-bearing deacons, genuflecting monks, knights of St. George, members of the male choir and other veiled figures. Dutch sculptor Claus Sluter is thought to have first employed pleurants in his work, starting what can only be described as a craze for them in the second half of the 14th century. They become a permanent fixture of tomb architecture, diversifying and adapting to each new epoch.

You can also see various cowering animals, symbols of the fight of good against evil, or life over death. Fearful rabbits represent the fleetingness of human life and sin itself appears in the form of a snake. Mankind gets a typically medieval dressing down here, as it does throughout St. Stephen’s, speaking to us from the other side of the New Age. Only supplication and piety, as shown on the reliefs, can vanquish the powers of evil lurking beneath, where demonic beasts and mythical creatures provide a constant reminder of the impermanence of life.