misericordia

A misericord is a small projecting shelf on the underside of a hinged choir stall seat. When the seat is folded up, the shelf provides a narrow ledge for the person standing in front of it to lean against—taking some weight off their feet during long services. The name comes from the Latin misericordia, meaning 'mercy' or 'compassion,' from misereri (to pity) and cor (heart). A mercy for the body during worship of the soul.

Monastic rules required monks to stand for the canonical hours—Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline—which together could total six to eight hours of standing per day. The misericord was a compromise: technically, the monk was standing; practically, he was leaning. The Church tolerated this semi-sitting because the alternative was monks collapsing during prayer.

The undersides of misericords became one of medieval art's strangest canvases. Because they were hidden when the seat was down, carvers were free to decorate them with subjects forbidden elsewhere in the church: comic scenes, bawdy jokes, animals behaving like humans, men fighting with their wives, foxes dressed as bishops. The misericords at Worcester Cathedral, Exeter Cathedral, and St. Laurence's in Ludlow contain scenes of astonishing irreverence—all carved by craftsmen employed by the Church.

Over 3,500 misericords survive in English churches alone. They date primarily from the 14th to the 16th centuries. After the Reformation, new choir stalls were rarely built with misericords—Protestant services were shorter, and the theology of physical suffering during worship had changed. The mercy seats that monks needed, later worshippers did not. But the carvings remain: hidden jokes on the underside of piety.