Issue 100

May / June 2008

Contents

There is more content online than usual for this bumper issue!

news

Early Scottish gardens unturfed

Axes could be 0.5m years old

In the press

Listing lobby was no hot air

Kent Anglo-Saxon cemetery could be royal

Poetry to assist transfer of Hadrian's Wall collection

In Brief & Phase 2

features

John Wymer
Mike Pitts introduces an archaeologist with a fine eye for illustration

The Lost Royal Cult Of Street House, Yorkshire
The excavation of a unique Anglo-Saxon cult cemetery

Born digital: Making People Believe
How computers have changed the world of archaeology

The Office: Heritage and Archaeology at Fortress House
John Schofield finds unexpected things on Savile Row

Green Men & The Way of All Flesh
Richard Hayman uproots a fashionable myth

on the web

Recommended websites
Caroline Wickham-Jones considers archaeological imagery, and The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland has a new website

100 letters & news

Some of the letters we received and news stories we revealed in the past 100 issues

CBA correspondent

Campaigns, comment and communications from the CBA
Communication is king, says Mike Heyworth, celebrating nearly 60 years of magazines

Extra online content

science

Sebastian Payne asks, what do forensic archaeologists do?

Mick's travels & more travels

Mick Aston looks for early saints in Cornwall, and an introduction to visiting Cornwall's sites & monuments

my archaeology

Phil Harding, the man with five guitars

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

features

Green Men & The Way of All Flesh

May-day ceremonies will soon celebrate "green men", carvings of leafy faces popular as symbols of a green paganism suppressed by Christianity. But are they really pagan? And do they have more to do with the evils of sin than the delights of nature? Richard Hayman exposes a 20th century fantasy.

Anyone with a passing interest in history has heard of "green men", those sinister faces spewing oak leaves and vines, a once fashionable adornment of churches. The image of the oak man has enjoyed a remarkable renaissance, championed as a pagan deity that stubbornly resisted Christianity, and now appropriated as an unofficial emblem of alternative culture. If you want reassurance that human beings can live in spiritual harmony with nature, the green man provides it, with all the authority of history – or so it seems.

Plenty of people want such a symbol. At least two English parishes – Pilton in north Devon and Clun in Shropshire – have introduced green man festivals, and have adapted May-day ceremonies to incorporate green men in the symbolic beginning of summer. At Pilton the green man is presented as an ancient symbol of nature and fertility, and his encounter with the local Benedictine prior is supposed to represent the acquiescence of the pagan green man to the Christian church. These are modern communities who want to re-integrate themselves with the past and with the natural environment, both worthy aims. However, I believe that through the green man they achieve neither.

The green man is in reality a Christian symbol. But before we look at that, we need to understand how it has gained such a high profile and why it has been misinterpreted as pagan.

Interpretation as a pagan fertility or nature symbol belongs to the 20th century. In spite of their passion for all things ecclesiastical, Victorian antiquaries showed little interest in "green men". The term was coined by the folklorist Lady Raglan in the 1930s, suggested in part by the popularity of green man pub names in some parts of England. Nikolaus Pevsner brought a large number of green men to wider attention through the Buildings of England (a county by county series that launched its first book in 1951). Writers on church art such as Margaret Anderson continued into the 1970s to cast green men as relics of paganism. Interest from influential quarters like the artist John Piper – who featured green men in stained glass in a Winchester hotel – and the environmental charity Common Ground has given the green man significant credibility.

Prevailing interpretations are that the green man is an ancient pagan figure subverting Christianity, or an archetypal symbol of nature's life force, and so opposed tomodern consumer civilisation. William Anderson, in The green man (see end note), placed it as the male counterpart of the great goddess, the central tenet of James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis. Lovelock proposed that the physical and chemical conditions of Earth actively make the planet fit for life, a self-correcting system that humanity disturbs at its peril. In the chance naming of his hypothesis after a Greek Earth goddess, he turned a cybernetic system into a living organism. Its spurious association with ancient religion has been an attractive proposition to unorthodox thinkers. By claiming the green man as the counterpart of Gaia, Anderson drew Lovelock's hypothesis into a modern belief system, and allied that belief with the authority of science. Anderson argued, after Jung, that the green man is an archetypal figure. He trumps all historical arguments by claiming that the green man has risen up in our consciousness to counter-balance our present negative attitude to nature. Or is he just another example of the way in which we invent the gods we need?

The interpretation of the green man as a pagan survival, or even revival, is based upon a false premise. Lady Raglan associated green men with figures from popular culture like Jack-in-the-Green, Robin Hood and the May King of summer games. Like all of her generation she worked in the shadow of Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough (1890–1915), in which tree worship was placed at the origin of all religion. There was also support in her time for the view that Christianity had failed to wipe out paganism and that in medieval Britain the two religions existed in parallel, a belief informed by Margaret Murray's The Witch Cult in Western Europe (1921).

There is plenty of historical research, notably in the work of Eamon Duffy, to show that the populace was devoutly Christian, not defiantly pagan, in the medieval period. And the Jack-in-the-Green, who most closely resembles the green man, has been shown to be an early-modern accretion to the older festival of May. May celebrations are well-recorded in later medieval Britain, from the prose of Chaucer, the poetry of Spenser and Herrick and the plays of Shakespeare. None of them mentions a green man.

There are also contemporary accounts of 16th century May day celebrations, including the description of London festivities in Philip Stubbes' Anatomy of Abuses (1583), but there are no green men there. A parallel can be drawn with the Sheela-na-gig (a Gaelic expression for an immodest woman), another figure that appears carved on English churches from the 12th century. Once confidently assumed to be a relic of ancient fertility rites, it in fact originated in western France in the 11th century and reached England, like the green man, as part of the Christian campaign against sin, not paganism.

Fran and Geoff Doel have sought the green man in the 14th century tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This line of enquiry soon disappoints. In the tale a mysterious green knight lays down a challenge to King Arthur's court, which is taken up by Sir Gawain. Clearly from the supernatural world, the knight is formally dressed like a man of the court, except in one respect: he is entirely green. However there is no evidence that medieval "green men" were painted green, and the Green Knight has no foliage around him. The tale hinges on the knight being an unfamiliar supernatural figure, able to offer a worthy challenge to a knight of the round table.

Kathleen Basford considered the European origins of the medieval green man in the 1970s. She discovered that the foliate head, some examples of which disgorge foliage, is found in the form of leaf masks in the western and eastern Roman empire from the first century AD, and associated it with the cult of Bacchus. (Recently the origin of the green man has been sought further a field in India). The earliest Christian context for the design is a tomb of the fourth or fifth century at Poitiers. Masks sprouting foliage later appear first in the margins of illuminated manuscripts, then in churches, one motif in the flourishing of architectural sculpture in the 12th century.

In Norman churches green men can be seen on the capitals framing doorways, windows and crossing arches, and in the case of Linley (Shropshire), on the tympanum above the doorway. All of these are symbolic thresholds where other grotesque figures are found, and where a transition is made from secular to spiritual worlds. This suggests that the green man should be interpreted like any other Christian art, within the opposition of virtue and vice, and of the sacred and secular.

The green man also has a social context, which is a key element in its interpretation as a Christian rather than a pagan motif. Green men first appear in the 12th century in churches of high status or elite patronage. Kilpeck and Melbourne are particularly good examples and have been selected for description here. Only in the later medieval period are green men common in parish churches.

Melbourne (Derbyshire) was begun c1120 as a private manorial chapel for Henry I – it had an unusual west gallery that was probably the king's private pew. It is a remarkably ambitious church, with a crossing tower and two west towers, its architecture influenced by churches at Jumièges and Caen in Normandy. One of the capitals of the crossing arches depicts a grinning demon – or perhaps a contortionist squatting down, with splayed legs – holding the branches spewing out of his or her mouth. Like the architecture, the immediate origin of the motif appears to be France. The crossing is a threshold between the sacred and secular parts of the building, the context in which the image needs to be interpreted – it uses ugliness and earthliness to represent sin and a lack of spirituality, quite different from the austere spirituality of contemporary Christian figures.

Kilpeck church was the masterpiece of the Herefordshire school of Romanesque sculptors. Completed by 1134, the church was built by Hugh of Kilpeck next to Kilpeck castle. Together they formed a powerful symbol of Norman control in the Marches, and the church expressed its patron's piety and sophistication. Like Melbourne, this is not a place to look for pagan or ecological cults running parallel to Christianity. The iconography of the church's carvings is drawn to a large extent fromthe bestiaries (illustrated compendia of beasts), one of the earliest such instances in British churches, but some of the creatures are not found in any book. These include the green men on the south doorway and on the capitals of the west window.

The south doorway has a head or a mask sprouting stylised foliage on one of the capitals. Malcolm Thurlby has suggested that the plant represents the Biblical tree of the knowledge of good and evil, an argument strengthened by the presence of a serpent on the jamb just below it. A capital on the opposite side depicts a basilisk – a mythical lizard with a lethal gaze – and a lion, continuing the theme. On the shaft, two knights are entangled with foliage, but this has nothing to do with nature's fecundity. The foliage represents the Devil's snares, ready to entrap unwary men who stray from the path of virtue, a theme familiar from medieval literature. The doorway's tympanum may be a representation of the Tree of Life from Eden.Alternatively it could be the mythical "perindens" tree from India which, according to the bestiaries, represented God and its shadow the Son. Not everybody would accept such a systematic interpretation, but the doorway can be read as a consistent statement about the struggle between good and evil.

Green men appearmore frequently in Gothic churches of the 13th to the 16th centuries, where they are found on the capitals of arches and on roof bosses. They also feature on misericords, the undersides of the hinged seats used by the monks and canons saying the daily church offices. Along list of green manmisericords includes the cathedrals of Exeter, Hereford, Lincoln, Norwich and Winchester, and former monastic or collegiate churches of King'sCollege in Cambridge, Cartmel, Chester (now cathedral), Chichester St Mary's hospital, Kings Lynn St Margaret, Ludlow, Southwellminster and Winchester College. Their presence in what were self-evidently high-status churches belies the notion that the green man is a product of a subversive folk art opposed to the established church. Green man carvings at Cartmel priory in Cumbria and Whalley parish church in Lancashire (taken there from a nearby Cistercian monastery) unequivocally associate the motif with the Devil. In both cases the green man is a tricephalos, or triple-headed figure of Satan, the Trinity of Evil as counterpart of the Holy Trinity.

green men first appear in significant numbers in parish churches in the 15th and 16th centuries. When churches acquired parish status the lay community became responsible for the secular part – the nave, aisles, porch and west tower – while the church patrons, usually either a landowner or monastery, retained responsibility for the chancel. In the later medieval period church building flourished with increasing secular involvement. Southwest England has a rich heritage of both late medieval churches and of green men. But before we get carried away, we should remember that green men are far outnumbered by symbols of traditional religious iconography such as Christ's Passion, while Biblical and hagiographic subjects were favoured for wall paintings and stained glass.

Christian art existed for the edification of a sinful humanity, and everything in creation was amoral entity. So was the green man. But did it merely represent physical mortality, or go further and associate death and decay with sin? The latter seems more likely. Christianity teaches that the spirit is eternal; by contrast, green men chose the way of the flesh and therefore death and decay, providing the food on which plants grow. Green men are the medieval equivalent of dead men pushing up daisies. Devon churches like Sampford Courtenay, South Tawton and Spreyton have graphical illustrations of this on roof bosses, where cadaverous heads sprout foliage from the mouth, nose and eye sockets.

Another instructive group of carvings is on the bench ends at Crowcombe in Somerset. This parish was evidently run by pious people. They extended the church in the early 16th century by adding a south aisle - much admired by Pevsner. In 1515 they built a separate church house (still in use) to accommodate secular parish functions, reserving the interior of the church for the liturgy and allowing for the provision of benches, one of which is dated 1534. In the best known of the bench end carvings, the green man has a gaunt face, with leaves for hair and a mouth disgorging vines, a standard motif of local wood carvers. His bulging eyes are not level, a deliberate asymmetrical ugliness. From his ears emerge two club-wielding mermen, representing the demons in his head. Another of the carvings has aggressive-looking fish emerging from the green man's ears and head, conveying a similar message. Crowcombe also has four bench ends where foliage emanates from a monster's mouth, and three where the foliage grows out of human hands. In one of the images two men grapple with a double-headed wyvern, standing on the foliage sprouting from another monster's mouth, surely a reference to the snares of the Devil and the battle with evil.

Where there is a context in which the green man can be interpreted, he can usually be shown to be a figure representing sin. There is no case for arguing that the green man is a figure of ancient or medieval pagan origin representing either fertility or some spiritual union with nature. As archaeologists and historians we need to be wary of self-serving interpretations of the past. The green man represents another eternal theme, about death and the vainglorious nature of human existence. It is fitting that the earliest occurrence of the green man in Poitiers; one of the first and finest Romanesque green men on a grave slab at St Peter in Northampton; and one of the last "medieval" green men, on an 18th century monument at St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol: are all death's heads on tombs.

Further reading: William Anderson & Clive Hicks, The green man: The Archetype of our Oneness with the Earth (HarperCollins 1990); Kathleen Basford, The green man (DS Brewer 1978); Fran & Geoff Doel, The green man in Britain (Tempus 2001); Ronald Hutton, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy (Blackwell 1991); Mercia MacDermott, Explore green men (Explore 2006). Richard Hayman is an architectural historian and archaeologist whose publications include Church Misericords & Bench Ends (Shire 2005), Trees: Woodlands& Western Civilization (Hambledon Continuum, 2003/07) and A Concise Guide to the Parish Church (Tempus 2007)

CBA web:

British Archaeology

CBA Briefing

Fieldwork
Conferences
Noticeboard
Courses & lectures
CBA Network
Grants & awards

CBA homepage