The gate of the year

Portal of the Church of St. Mary and St. David, Kilpeck, Herefordshire, England, dating to the XII century. The sculpture in local red sandstone is rich of symbols, not so usual in the decoration of Christian churches. The tympanum of the lintel represents a great “tree of life”, towering in isolation as it was the sole protagonist. Around it are distributed many figures of animals, masks, serpents, while the last semi-circle shows the signs of the Zodiac. The side columns are decorated with interlacing serpents and on the right-hand capital is shown a “Green Man” (see detail below), a human face intertwined with leafy branches.
During the Middle Ages, popular religion was still well alive, and it saw the woods, springs, rivers, as sacred sites, sometimes inhabited by invisible beings. In the VIII century, a certain Aldebert was condemned as heretic and schismatic because, among other things, he had planted crosses outdoors, in the meadows and beside springs, inviting the people to pray to God in these places rather than in the consecrated churches. Episodes like this one reveal a continuity with popular cults of the pre-Christian era. “In the List of superstitions and pagan rites compiled in the VIII century, maybe by an Anglo-Saxon missionary in Saxony, and constituting a brief compendium of pagan manifestations deemed dangerous by the Church, among the prohibited rituals are mentioned holocausts in sylvan temples and on the stones […] The Sermon on sacrileges, which dates also probably to the VIII century, warns the believers against bringing back to the old pagan altars in the woods, on the stones and similar places. The cult of natural forces, in which was manifested the conception of the world of European Middle Ages peasants, demonstrated an exceptional vital endurance during Christianization as well as in the properly Christian period” (Gurevic 1986, p. 111).

[Image: http://www.wga.hu/html_m/zgothic/1romanes/po-12c22/]




Tree Symbols

Back

Portal of the Church of St. Mary and St. David, Kilpeck, Herefordshire, England, dating to the XII century. The sculpture in local red sandstone is rich of symbols, not so usual in the decoration of Christian churches. The tympanum of the lintel represents a great “tree of life”, towering in isolation as it was the sole protagonist. Around it are distributed many figures of animals, masks, serpents, while the last semi-circle shows the signs of the Zodiac. The side columns are decorated with interlacing serpents and on the right-hand capital is shown a “Green Man” (see detail below), a human face intertwined with leafy branches. During the Middle Ages, popular religion was still well alive, and it saw the woods, springs, rivers, as sacred sites, sometimes inhabited by invisible beings. In the VIII century, a certain Aldebert was condemned as heretic and schismatic because, among other things, he had planted crosses outdoors, in the meadows and beside springs, inviting the people to pray to God in these places rather than in the consecrated churches. Episodes like this one reveal a continuity with popular cults of the pre-Christian era. “In the List of superstitions and pagan rites compiled in the VIII century, maybe by an Anglo-Saxon missionary in Saxony, and constituting a brief compendium of pagan manifestations deemed dangerous by the Church, among the prohibited rituals are mentioned holocausts in sylvan temples and on the stones […] The Sermon on sacrileges, which dates also probably to the VIII century, warns the believers against bringing back to the old pagan altars in the woods, on the stones and similar places. The cult of natural forces, in which was manifested the conception of the world of European Middle Ages peasants, demonstrated an exceptional vital endurance during Christianization as well as in the properly Christian period” (Gurevic 1986, p. 111). [Image: http://www.wga.hu/html_m/zgothic/1romanes/po-12c22/]