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in a carving on a misericord in Chester cathedral, and as an "unclean ape" on a corbel at Langley Marish (Buckinghamshire), and I think it is probable that the Green Men with three faces in one, represented on misericords in Whalley Church and Cartmel Priory respectively, are images of "three-headed Beelzebub", the root of all evil, as at Toscanella. The reappearance of the foliate tricephalos at these two places in north Lancashire and Cumbria in the fifteenth century is most interesting. It is a very rare form of the motif and I know of no other examples in England. There is, however, some evidence that it was perpetuated in Scandinavia, and it has been recorded at Gothem and Vamlingbo in Sweden. 61 The crowned tricephalos at Cartmel is remarkably similar to the head of the figure of Satan represented as triceps Beelzebub, the Trinity of Evil, in a miniature in a thirteenth century manuscript in the Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris).62
The use of the foliate head on Christian tombs and memorials (a use continued long after the motif had fallen out of favour as an ornament in church architecture) might suggest the idea of resurrection a life out of death symbol, but could equally well suggest: "For all flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth and the flower thereof falleth away". Peter 1.24. The Christian soul, having renounced sinful nature the World, the Flesh and the Devil at baptism, hoped for salvation through grace after death. A foliate head carved on a font or a tomb could allude to man's fallen and concupiscent nature, or to his brief life on earth a reminder that "All greenness comes to withering".
The motif was used on the tombs of saints: Sainte-Abre in Poitiers in the fourth and fifth century, and Saint-Étienne in the Cistercian Abbey at Aubazine in the thirteenth century, and St. Frideswide at Oxford. It was used on the tomb of Louis de France, also in the thirteenth century, and on the tomb of a parish priest, William Harrington, at Harpswell in the fourteenth century, and on the Memorial of Abbot Hölein of Ebrach in the seventeenth century. Its use on Memorials was continued into the eighteenth century: a foliate skull appears on the Sandford and Challoner Memorial (circa 1741) in St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol. This eighteenth century "Green Man" does not suggest a connection with the eighteenth century Jack in the Green; it is, more likely, a memento mori.
The secular use of the foliate head had not yet been extensively studied. It was a popular ornamental motif from the sixteenth century and is still occasionally used as, for example in the panels of the very beautiful stained glass screens by John Piper in the Wessex Hotel, Winchester. These foliate heads were, of course, intended to suggest the roof bosses in the Cathedral, close by.63 They were, so to speak, caught like echoes from the past, but they are no more copies of medieval carvings that the fourteenth century Green Men are copies of antique leaf masks. They spring into vibrant new life in these wonderful screens, shifting between leaded outlines and colours, changing as they are illuminated both by reflected and transmitted light. The artist has expanded the image. Mr Piper pointed out to me that if one is drawing leaves and branches as a flat, more or less decorative design it seems quite natural to put in two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Surely this explanation accounts for the long continued popularity of the motif. Its various traditional characteristics, the deeply furrowed brow; the baleful glare; the barely focused, sometimes squinting eyes, made it even more exciting. It could not only stimulate but deeply disturb the imagination. It is a dynamic image, capable of infinite expansion. Rarely if ever can the Green Man be considered a "meaningless" ornament or an empty echo. The Green Man whose appearance on the walls of Fountains Abbey in the fifteenth century so sadly anticipated the natural growth of vegetation in the ruins today remains a resonant echo.
The Green Man's story is a long one, with many ramifications and many surprise twists. Much of the story is better told in pictures than in words because we can trace the roots and follow the main growth and the spreading of the branches more easily when the theme is presented
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visually, but best of all is to seek out and meet the Green Man face to face and let him speak for himself. In following his trail we come to some of the most beautiful places on earth the churches and cathedrals of the Middle Ages. It is, indeed, a very strange demon that can lead us to such heavenly vistas.
Page 23
List of References
1. LADY RAGLAN
"The Green Man in Church Architecture"
Folklore. 50. 1939. pp. 45-57.
2. SIR NIKOLAUS PEVSNER
The Buildings of England (series)
Penguin Books.
(Numerous references to Green Man carvings in the volumes of this series.)
3. C. J. P. CAVE
"The Roof Bosses in Ely Cathedral"
Proceedings and Communications. Cambridge Antiquarian Society. 32. 1932. pp. 33-46.
"Jack in the Green Carvings"
Letter to Country Life July 4th. 1947. p. 37.
Roof Bosses in Medieval Churches
Cambridge University Press. 1948. pp. 65-8.
4. GEOFFREY GRIGSON
The Englishman's Flora
Jarrold and Son. Norwich. 1960. (p. 114; p. 168; pp. 251-2.)
The Shell Country Alphabet. 1966. (pp. 183-4. Illustration. p. 167.)
Looking and Finding
Carousel Books. 1971. (pp. 55-6.)
5. C. J. P. CAVE. 1932. loc. cit.
6. FRITZ SAXL
A Heritage of Images
Penguin Books. 1970.
7. W. H. ST. JOHN HOPE
"Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire"
Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 15. 1296.
Pp. 27-8: "Owing to an unequal settlement of the foundations of the gables, the masonry has been dislocated in parts; in two places, to such an extent as to seriously misplace the arches of the window heads. To make good the disruption, Abbot Darnton inserted in one window, the northernmost on the east side, a new stone, elaborately carved; on the outside with a head amongst the foliage issuing from the mouth, on the inside with a rose and an angel carrying a scroll and dated Anno Domini 1483."
8. MAX WEGNER
"Blattmasken"
Das siebente Jahrzehnt. Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag yon Adolph Goldschmidt. Berlin. 1935. pp. 43-50.
9. HARALD KELLER
"Blattmaske"
Reallexikon zur deutschen Kunstgeschichte. 2. Stuttgart. 1948. pp. 867-74.
10. J. M. C. TOYNBEE AND J. B. WARD PERKINS
"Peopled Scrolls: A Hellenistic Motif in Imperial Art"
Papers of the British School at Rome. 18. 1950. pp. 1-43.
11. THEODOR WIEGAND
Baalbek
Berlin and Leipzig. 1921-5.
12. OTTO PUCHSTEIN AND THEODOR LEUPKE
Ba'albek
Berlin. 1905.
13. LOUIS VALENSI
Présentation d'Oeuvres Gallo-Romaines
Musée d'Aquitaine. 1964-65.
14. NELSON GLUECK
Deities and Dolphins: the story of the Naboteans
Cassell. 1966.
15. J. M. C. TOYNBEE
Art in Roman Britian
Phaidon Press. London. 1962.
16. J. M. C. TOYNBEE
Art in Britain under the Romans
London. 1964.
17. J. M. C. TOYNBEE. 1962. loc. cit.
18. WILHELM VON MASSOW
Die Grabmäler von Neumagen
Berlin and Leipzig. 1932.
19. HAROLD KELLER. 1948. loc. cit.
20. WILHELM VON MASSOW. 1932. loc. cit.
21. J. M. C. TOYNBEE (Personal communication.)
22. O. NAVARRE
"Persona"
Dictionnaire des Antiquités grecques et romaines. 1877.
C. Daremberg; E. Saglio; E. Pottier. 4. P. 406
23. J. N. VON WILMOWSKY
Der Dom zu Trier
Trier. 1874.
24. EUGEN VON MERCKLIN
Antike Figuralkapitelle
Deutsches Archäologisches Institut.
Berlin. 1962. pp. 135-40: "Blattmasken".
25. NIKOLAUS IRSCH
Die Kunstdenkmäler der Rheinprovinz: Der dom zu Trier. Dusseldorf. 1931.
26. THEODOR KONRAD KEMPF
"Untersuchungen und Beobachtungen am Trierer Dom, 1961-63"
Germania. 42. pp. 126-41.
27. ERICH GOSE
"Der Tempel am Herrenbrünnchen in Trier"
Trier Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Kunst des Trierer Landes und seiner Nachbargebiete. 30. Jahrgang 1967. pp. 82-100.
28. EDITH MARY WIGHTMAN
Roman Trier and the Treveri
Rupert Hart-Davis. London. 1970.
29. EDMOND LE BLANT
Page 24
Les sarcophages chrétiens de la Gaule
Paris. 1886. p. 85.
30. H. LECLERQ
Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et liturgie. 14. col. 1315 and 1335.
1939.
31. GUSTAVE MENDEL
Musées imperiaux ottomans: Catalogue des sculptures grécques, romaines et byzantines. 2.1912-14. pp. 546-9.
32. JOHN BECKWITH
Early Medieval Art
Thames and Hudson. London. 1964.
33. M. S. Cod. sanct, 6; Cod. Gertrudianus. fol. 17. (circa 983)
Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Cividale.
34. M. S. Codex Egberti. fol. 2v. (circa 985)
Stadtbibliothek. Trier.
35. RABANUS MAURUS. (784 to 856). Abbot of Fulda and Archbishop of Mainz
Patrologia Latina. 112. col. 1037 edited: J. P. Migne. Paris. 1878-90.
''Ramus voluptas carnis, ut in Ezechiele: Ecce applicant ramum ad nares suos', quod reprobi in voluntate carnis delectantur.... Per ramos homines pravi, ut in Job: "Ramos ejus arefaciet flamma, quod pravos vastabit damnatio aeterna."
36. R. PETTAZZONI
"The Pagan origin of the three-headed representation of the Christian Trinity"
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. 9. 1946. pp. 135-51.
37. WILLIBALD KIRFEL
Die Dreiköpfige Gottheit
Bonn. 1948. (pp. 148-73: "Die dreiköpfigen und dreigesichtigen Gestalten des christlichen Mittelalters".)
38. CONSTANTINUS DE TISCHENDORF
Evanglia apocrypha, Lipsiae, 1876. p. 400.
39. FERDINAND PIPER
Mythologie der christlichen Kunst. I.
Weimar, 1847. pp. 404ff.
40. E. HENNECKE AND W. SCHNEEMELCHER
Neutestamentliche Apokryphen I
Tübingen. 1959. p. 351.
41. HERBERT SCHADE
Dämonen und Monstren: Gestaltungen des Bösen in der Kunst des frühen Mittelalters
Verlag Friedrich Pustet. Regensburg. 1962. (pp. 43, 44).
42. Folkunge Psalter. MS Thott 143, 2°. f. 17v.
Royal Library. Copenhagen.
43. ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX
Apologia ad Wilhelmum Patrologia Latina. 182. col. 914.
44. CHARLES E. KEYSER
A List of Norman Tympana and Lintels 1904.
45. GEORG ZARNECKI
Later English Romanesque Sculpture
Tiranti. London. 1953.
46. HERBERT SCHADE. loc. cit. p. 64 and note 196.
47. A. GRABAR AND C. NORDENFALK
Romanesque Painting
Skira, New York. 1958
P. 159. (illustration): Tree of Good and Evil. (Arbor bona-Arbor mala) in LIBER FLORIDUS. St. Omer, before 1120. Cod. 1125, folios 231 verso and 232. Bibliothèque de l'Université, Ghent.
48. JEAN ADHÉMAR
"La Fontaine de Saint Denis"
Revue Archéologique. I. (1936). pp. 224-32.
49. RICHARD H. L. HAMANN-MACLEAN
"Antikenstudium in der Kunst des Mittelalters"
Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft. 15. pp. 157-250. 1949-50. (Plates 119, 120.)
50. HANS R. HAHNLOSER
Villard de Honnecourt
Vienna. 1935. (Plate 10, a and b; plate 43, c and d)
51. HARALD KELLER. loc. cit.
52. LOTTLISA BEHLING
Die Pflanzenwelt der Mittelalterlichen Kathedralen
Cologne. 1964.
53. Quotation from poem "Long life, O Man, you hope to gain"
No. 29. p. 64 in Medieval English Verse, translated by Brian Stone.
Penguin Books. 1964.
54. SIR NIKOLAUS PEVSNER
The Leaves of Southwell
King Penguin Books. 1945.
55. A. C. SEWARD
"The foliage, flowers and fruit of Southwell Chapter House"
Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. vol. 35. pp. 1-32. 1933-34.
56. CHRISTINA HOLE
English Custom and Usage
Batsford. London (3rd edition). 1950. plate 52.
57. ROY JUDGE. Personal communication.
58. Quotation from "Piranesi's Prison Etchings" by Herman Melville.
59. M.D. ANDERSON
Introductory essay on the iconography of misericords in the Catalogue of Misericords in Great Britain, by G. L. Remnant, Oxford. 1969.
60. LADY RAGLAN. loc. cit. p. 56.
61. ASGER JORN AND NOëL ARNAUD
La langue verte et la cuite. Paris. 1968. (Plates 276 and 285.)
62. MS. latin 11560 5v°.
63. JOHN PIPER. (Personal Communication.)
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