The gate of the year

Sculpted capital, dating to the XII century, from the Church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, Bourgogne, France.
The scene shows the Biblical episode of the Golden Calf, when the Israelites “have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said: These be thy gods, O Israel” (Exodus, 32, 8). In this sculpture, from the animal’s mouth springs forth a demon with shaggy hair. The image of the bovine takes here a more sinister aspect, as representative of the pagan world and, consequently in Christian representation, of the Devil.
The cult of Mithras, a religion of Oriental origin, was an opponent movement with respect to Christianity , which was diffused in the Roman world during the first centuries of Christian propagation. It was based on the cult of the bull and on the sacrifice of this animal, which appeared in the foreground in the iconography of the places of worship dedicated to Mithras. For the first Christians, it was necessary to desecrate this animal, too much worshiped by the adversary religion and which took with itself a long practice of pagan traditions and beliefs. Christianity thus transformed the bull into a diabolical being, until it became one of the common attributes of the Christian Devil, which was invariably represented with a pair of bull horns on his head (Pastoureau 2012, p. 132).

[Image: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilique_Sainte-Marie-Madeleine_de_V%C3% A9zelay]




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Sculpted capital, dating to the XII century, from the Church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine, Vézelay, Bourgogne, France. The scene shows the Biblical episode of the Golden Calf, when the Israelites “have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it, and have sacrificed thereunto, and said: These be thy gods, O Israel” (Exodus, 32, 8). In this sculpture, from the animal’s mouth springs forth a demon with shaggy hair. The image of the bovine takes here a more sinister aspect, as representative of the pagan world and, consequently in Christian representation, of the Devil. The cult of Mithras, a religion of Oriental origin, was an opponent movement with respect to Christianity , which was diffused in the Roman world during the first centuries of Christian propagation. It was based on the cult of the bull and on the sacrifice of this animal, which appeared in the foreground in the iconography of the places of worship dedicated to Mithras. For the first Christians, it was necessary to desecrate this animal, too much worshiped by the adversary religion and which took with itself a long practice of pagan traditions and beliefs. Christianity thus transformed the bull into a diabolical being, until it became one of the common attributes of the Christian Devil, which was invariably represented with a pair of bull horns on his head (Pastoureau 2012, p. 132). [Image: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilique_Sainte-Marie-Madeleine_de_V%C3% A9zelay]