The Green Man

Dr. Eleanor Janega delves into the enigmatic figure of the Green Man, tracing his origins and uncovering the myths and realities behind this medieval character. Eleanor is joined on location in Kent - at St. Mary's, Minster-in-Thanet, and St. Nicholas at Wade - by Imogen Corrigan to explore the symbolism and significance of the medieval Green Man carvings, a detail often misunderstood as a pagan symbol but here reinterpreted within a Christian context of rebirth and eternal life. Along the way, they discuss the influence of historical periods including the Black Death, the role of craftsmen, and the blending of pagan and Christian elements in religious art. MORE A Guide to Medieval Churches https://open.spotify.com/episode/6uL2WMaHruAxVlwSNV8elP A Stonemason's Secrets https://open.spotify.com/episode/0QGLLrkD8KV44EfTGsOK3L Gone Medieval is presented by Dr. Eleanor Janega. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff. All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds. Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast. Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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• 0:01Matt Lewis?

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• 1:56Eleanor Janega?

  Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanaga and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gob-smacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research, from the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to popes, to the Crusades. We delve into the rebellions, plots, and murders that tell us who we really were, and how we got here.

• 2:50Eleanor Janega?

  Today, I've finally been let out once again on day of release from the Gone Medieval dungeon by order of the Lord of History Hit Towers. Thanks, Dan Snow. And I've been sent here to the quiet, leafy churchyard of St. Mary's, Minster and Thanet, on the northern edge of the original Wartsum Channel. And it's known as the Cathedral of the Marshes because of the size of the church. And it is quite unusually large, I have to say. It has beautiful and very typically Norman features. It's quite squat to the ground and has a wonderful Norman square tower. Now, it looks as though the Victorians have come along

• 3:35Eleanor Janega?

  and given us a little bit of a spire on top of that, which I can't blame them for. But you can see little windows punched all the way along. Some are very clearly later incursions, they're rectangular, and so that's always a hint. But you can just see the gorgeous Kentish flintwork. And as I come around, right up to the actual doors of the church, there's this beautiful Norman arch. And it's got the typical Norman, what we call toothwork, so it looks like jagged edges over it, leading to two huge wooden barred doors. Can't wait to get inside and have a look. But the ground upon which I am standing

• 4:18Eleanor Janega?

  has long been hallowed as a place of worship. A small monastic parish church made of mud and wood was founded here in 670 Common Era, before the peasant church was started by the Saxons. And it was then enlarged and absorbed by these Normans who are ready to build in stone. But the reason I'm here is that I had been sent on a mission to take a closer look at St. Mary's set of 18 superbly preserved misericords, or choir stalls. And there's one little carved guy with a face that is made of leaves. No explanation, no plaque. It's just there, watching, and probably judging. This leafy fellow has come to be known as the Green Man,

• 5:02Eleanor Janega?

  and that name makes him sound like an eco-friendly Marvel villain, but don't be fooled. He's older, weirder, and probably more judgmental. My mission has been given to me by Gone Medieval listener Jill Rozell from the United States, who sent me this message.

• 5:19Speaker 05

  Hi, Dr. Yanega. My name is Jill Rozell, and I'm an avid Gone Medieval listener living in Saratoga Springs, New York. I really enjoy all the topics that you discuss. A few months back, I attended a winter solstice-themed party and took along some Green Man cookies that my family made. Not knowing a lot about the Green Man, I found myself referencing the Green Knight movie when people asked about the cookies. But I'm realizing that the Green Man's origins are quite different, and I'd love to know more about them. Thanks so much.

• 5:48Eleanor Janega?

  Well, Jill, it is not every day that I get to delve into the origins of the inspiration for cookies. So today, I am under instruction to investigate the myths, realities, and wild misunderstandings surrounding this mysterious medieval figure who pops up in literally hundreds of churches around Europe and the UK. Is he a pagan fertility god in disguise? A Christian symbol of rebirth? Or just a very elaborate way for craftsmen to say, "Hey, look what I can do with my chisel." And just over here is my guide Imogen Corrigan, the author of The Green Man: Myth and Reality, who's trawled through over a thousand churches and somehow managed to not go completely mad. Together, we're going to trace the roots - see what I did there?

• 6:33Eleanor Janega?

  - of this leafy legend from Roman gods and Celtic spirals to misericords and perhaps drunken mermen. So grab your metaphorical gardening gloves and prepare for our journey through church architecture, folklore, and facial foliage. Because today on Gone Medieval, we're asking the age-old question: Why is that man's face vomiting leaves?

• 7:00Eleanor Janega?

  Imogen, thank you so much for meeting me here.

• 7:02Speaker 06

  It's a pleasure.

• 7:04Eleanor Janega?

  What a real beauty of a church. I mean, it's absolutely enormous for something that I would expect to see from the Normans.

• 7:12Speaker 06

  It is absolutely huge, isn't it? But some of that is to do with its status, of course, because this is Minster in Thanet. It's an abbey. And it was built pretty much to house not just the local community, but the local religious community as well. So that all adds to the size. And we've got a very large chancel at the end because of the number of monks and clergy up there.

• 7:36Eleanor Janega?

  It's absolutely stunning. You come in and you see these perfect Norman, Romanesque arches going along in a line. And a beautiful old wooden roof as well with gorgeous beams. It's just a really beautiful monument. And I also think a testament to how important this area of the world was religiously in the medieval period.

• 7:58Speaker 06

  Oh, most certainly. I mean, it goes way back. Because here, Thanet area, this is where Saint Augustine - well, he wasn't a saint when he arrived - but Saint Augustine, sent by Gregory the Great in the year 597, this is roughly the area, not precisely here, where he arrived. And he arrived with his entourage. And he was sent by the Pope, Gregory the Great, to impose the Roman way. Of practicing Christianity on us. Some people say, well, he was sent to convert. Well, yes, because it was, there were still pagan practices happening. But in fact, to impose the Roman way of practicing Christianity.

• 8:42Speaker 06

  And that is really important in the development of our history here. And in fact, I always say to people, the Pope, Gregory the Great, in this instance, but he wasn't alone in this. They were concerned, it sounds a bit strange to us perhaps, that if you weren't practicing Christianity in the right way, you can't get into heaven. So you could be as Christian as you like, but if you're not doing it right, which means his way, let's face it, then that's it. So he sent people like Augustine to save our souls. That's what it was about.

• 9:14Eleanor Janega?

  And so you have these multiple accesses in the medieval period of pilgrimage and importance, because you have everything that's associated with Saint Augustine, and you have everything eventually that is associated with Canterbury as well. So I imagine that especially after Henry II has his ways with the Archbishop, you know, this would be the sort of place where people might very well be passing through if they're coming up from the continent. I mean...

• 9:40Speaker 06

  Oh, yes. Yes, completely. You wanted to clock up as many shrines as you could, you know, as they say, every little helps. But places like this, substantial places, and awe-inspiring and beautiful places, it would all have been brightly painted and all that sort of thing, you know, yeah. And they would probably, the most likely entry route would in fact be Dover. That was the main port for passengers, I suppose it still is really. And otherwise, they would come through Sandwich, but that was much more freight and so on, but not exclusively. So yeah, if you're heading up to Canterbury, you're very likely to come via some of these enormous churches.

• 10:23Speaker 06

  And you're not just passing through, I mean, I'm guilty, I have to say, of say, oh, look, let's go in, oh, lovely, here we are. And maybe a couple of hours. At the most, but they would be up here for several days, really getting into the atmosphere, lighting candles, praying, just making the whole place redolent with prayer in the end. And you can, some churches, you can feel it to this day.

• 10:46Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely. I mean, this one has just an absolutely gorgeous air of sanctity still, you know, upon it. And I think as you look through on a beautiful day like today with the sun streaming in through the windows, you are really drawn up to the altar.

• 11:02Speaker 06

  Without doubt, this building is designed so that everything you see is focused there. But don't let's forget, there would have been a rood screen. So if you and I were standing here, two things. Firstly, we're not going to go up there. And we're not going to get, as I would say, across the chancel step. So that's where the rood screen would have been. And that's where, as Philip Larkin always said, you enter the holy end of the church. And that was for the priests, for the monks, for those helping with the working of the mass.

• 11:32Eleanor Janega?

  Well, what we are really lucky to have in this particular church, and what we've really come here to see today, is there's some beautiful, original misericords up near the altar. Shall we go have a look?

• 11:44Speaker 06

  Yeah, let's do that. They are lovely and in very good condition.

• 11:48Eleanor Janega?

  So up on either side of the altar in the transept, we have some beautiful misericordia. Can you explain what those are?

• 11:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, so the stalls, as we would say, like choir stalls, if you think choir stalls, install. And we find them up in the chancel. So we've crossed out of the nave, out of the people's end, and we, you know, there is a distinct step here. And here we are in the chancel. And we see these lovely carvings. So the idea was, people had to stand, monks and priests had to stand for very long services. And at times, their knees were giving out. Okay, so these are theatre-style tip-up seats. And some of them have the original hinge. So, you know, you have to use two hands and be a bit careful with them. But if it's in the down position as a seat, on the underside, we've got these extraordinary images.

• 12:41Speaker 06

  And they were trying just to find a way so that they could balance and take the weight off. And not very comfortable, to be honest. Some of them are weighted deliberately. So that they won't stay up. So if you lift them up and think, oh, I'll do a photograph, bang, down they go. So the idea there was that if the monk or the priest fell asleep. Yeah, right, you've got it, yeah. So they so they end up being sort of thrown forwards and highly embarrassed and all of that. But they started with having little separate stool that they could just put in there and sit down. But that's a bit noisy and not, you know, they want something a bit more streamlined than that.

• 13:24Speaker 06

  So they tried all sorts of things and somebody came up with this idea of a hinge seat, which absolutely caught on. And then the designs changed because the early ones, this corbeau, where the seat bit. The really early ones, so I say really early, I'm talking about maybe twelfth century, so they would be very smooth and shallow. This is much more designer than comfortable, must be said. And they start having these very lovely curved edges and. That sort of thing, quite lacy. Sometimes you get things on the carvings that might just be a family shield. With no idea, there's no record that tells us who ordered what.

• 14:04Speaker 06

  But somebody has because somebody's paid. And sometimes you get, um, at Ludlow, there's a whole series of marble ones. A moral theme, you know, sort of you're bad in this life, it won't do you any good long term. In the end, we're mortal, that sort of idea. And other ones, there's a wonderful archive of medieval daily life. I mean, there's twenty, I think I've seen in England of domestic violence. That's not great, but look again, it's always the woman who's winning. Ah, that's, I mean, I love that. It's quite hilarious, actually, in a way. And there's a poor old man, sometimes being lifted up by his hair while the woman whacks him with a butter paddle. Dear, oh dear. You think, what?

• 14:47Speaker 06

  Some of them can be quite profane, but I won't go into that one. Yeah, there's all sorts of things, and possibly Beverley. I think there's the cart before the horse. I mean, we, yeah, that's.

• 14:56Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, amazing.

• 14:58Speaker 06

  I'm, I'm hope I got the right place for that, but I think it's Beverley. But there's things, legends, local tales, people fighting, children playing, as in Gloucester Cathedral, they're playing a sort of football game, you know, that, that sort of thing. It's just, just wonderful.

• 15:14Eleanor Janega?

  I, you know, this is something that I love about medieval people. They'll come up with something that is so deeply practical, but they never leave it at that. They always like to just put a little bit of embellishment on everything.

• 15:24Speaker 06

  There's some harpies across the way here.

• 15:26Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, gosh, no, I've got to see them.

• 15:28Speaker 06

  And the harpies are these women who are so beautiful, and they were there just to dupe these poor innocent men, lead them astray. It's cruel, absolutely cruel, isn't it? But there we are, that's, um, so, so, but what intrigues me is that they are here in the holy bit, and you and I are not going to see them. So that, again, there's always more questions than answers in this world. That's why I love it, I think, is.

• 15:55Eleanor Janega?

  I'm really a big fan of the tile work on the floor here. I would imagine it's Victorians playing at being medieval, but.

• 16:02Speaker 06

  I thought so.

• 16:03Eleanor Janega?

  I still can't fault them for that. I, I, I agree with the Victorians. I think that you should try to make things look medieval.

• 16:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, and the Victorians did so much work on the churches. People like George Gilbert Scott and Purdon, you know, all sorts of people are working on these churches, restoring them, when otherwise goodness knows what would have happened. And people have said to me, because I take people around churches, you know, and they say, oh, but, you know, what the Victorians did, and, oh, what a shame. And I said, well, yeah, hang on, because occasionally the Victorians slightly did cause damage, but let's not be too judgmental on our own conservation efforts for another hundred years, you know, it's just.

• 16:44Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely.

• 16:44Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 16:46Eleanor Janega?

  Well, so here we are, and they are absolutely gorgeous, these. Beautiful misericords and you know the wood is so old as to be silky to the touch when you put your hands down and I'm noticing on the misericords at the back we have you know classic what I would expect to see a kind of teeny little stool that you can sort of lean against and most of them have a main figure in the middle flanked by two others.

• 17:11Speaker 06

  Yes, that's that's right and this is peculiarly English. Misericords, misericords, both connotations aren't absolutely correct. I say misericord because I'm pretentious, I can't help it.

• 17:22Eleanor Janega?

  A woman after my own heart.

• 17:24Speaker 06

  But here we have, so we've got the main, the court, the central image, under the seat, as it were, the corbel, and then we've got the supporting images on each side, known as the supporters, and they very often have nothing whatsoever to do with that central image, but it's only in England that you get the supporting image. If you were in a church in France, for example, you would have a really deeply cut, bulky central image and maybe spreading much further over, you know, to each side, so not much room for a supporting image, and it would be blank. So it's it's completely different and occasionally, I can think of six churches in England that

• 18:08Speaker 06

  have got that, and I would suggest that they were journeymen from France, something like that, because after all, most of them on the south coast, so that's a bit of a clue. But you know, I always say if you go out on the razzle dazzle, which I hope you do, and wake up on the floor of a church and you have no idea which country you're in, just have a look at the misericords and you'll start by saying, well, I'm not in England, perhaps I am.

• 18:31Eleanor Janega?

  Now, in particular, we have come to look at this one, which is the third along from the altar, and it stars in the middle underneath the seat what you and I, I think, would describe as the green man.

• 18:45Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 18:46Eleanor Janega?

  And now, I want to pick your brain about this because I think, you know, the common understanding of green man, the thing that people always say, it's a rather like Sheila in a gig, people will say, oh, well, certainly this is pagan in character, and I'm not sure I agree with that, and I'm wondering what you tend to think about it.

• 19:03Speaker 06

  Well, let's start with pagan in origin, because funnily enough, an awful lot of images, including the, what I will now start ranting, you say, misnamed, misunderstood, misinterpreted green man, they start off being pagan, so.

• 19:19Speaker 06

  Let's go back to Gregory the Great again, the Pope. And he said to people who were evangelising, "If you come across pagans, just watch what they do. Don't trash what they're doing. Don't scorn it, if that's the right word. But just look to see, is there a way that I can use that practice, that image, to tell the Christian story? And to bring them into church? So we've got dragons, and we've got labyrinths, and we've got all sorts. Sheila Nogig, you've mentioned. Pagan in origin, but they're there being interpreted in a different way to tell the Christian story. So, yeah, pagan in origin, but not this one, because he is, there he is, in a church. The other thing I have to say early

• 20:04Speaker 06

  to explain my ranting is that they were never called green men till 1939. Ah. And that is what has skewed the interpretation. It's just about the most important thing that's happened, actually, in their history. Because 1939, Lady Raglan was standing in a church in Wales with the rector, and she said, "And so I named them green men." Okay. Why it took on so popular, I have no idea. But it did. And the problem then was that, of course, we've got some really good green men in folklore history. I mean, you get people, folklore, being acted out. A clown in Shropshire, and a man dressed in green.

• 20:47Speaker 06

  He has a fight with winter, you know? And of course, he represents spring. It's nothing to do with these. And the jack in the green, that's sort of a May Day junketing, but nothing to do with these. These have been, in our churches, carved in wood, stone, for centuries, sometimes in stained glass, that sort of thing. And when Lady Raglan called them green men in 1939, everything changed, but only in Britain. It didn't happen in France. I've been in French churches and said, "Could I see the omver?" And they just say, "Euh, but?" And when I say, "Well, it's that." "Oh, they say the tete a fil." "Okay, the leafy head." "Why are you interested?" Exactly.

• 21:30Speaker 06

  It doesn't grab their imagination as much as we have it here talking about the green man, which I find absolutely intriguing.

• 21:54Speaker 01

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• 23:53Eleanor Janega?

  So it's almost as though we have retrofitted this particular piece of religious imagery to coalesce around the folkloric traditions that we have specifically here in England.

• 24:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so we've given it a backstory, which it really never, never had and shouldn't have had. But there we are, I'll calm down.

• 24:15Eleanor Janega?

  No, please, never calm down. So what made you want to start looking into the origins of Green Man?

• 24:21Speaker 06

  Oh, well, to be honest, when I was at university about, ooh, golly, what a long time ago, I was very interested in carvings to do with monsters in churches and why they are, where they are. I mean, what's it doing here in the holy part of the church? For example. And I thought I'd write this wonderful dissertation on it. And my tutor sort of looked slightly pale and said, well, just bring it down to one monster, as it were. And because you might say they're not necessarily monsters. But the reason I picked on the Green Man was because I wanted to rescue it from this hippie interpretation. This has come the 60s. Everybody said, oh, Green Man, right. Green, that's fertility. Men are shocking characters.

• 25:06Speaker 06

  There you are, pagan, patriotic, right. Job done. And that just isn't it. It really isn't. So how can I, how can I work it out? And I just started by looking at thousands. I have a database. And as a coincidence, very few friends, actually. I have noticed that. But, and I just found them completely fascinating because they're so varied. You know, they're not all men. Where colour remains, which on a Misery Court there's, there isn't going to be colour. But where it does remain, it's never green. It's gold or maybe red, which are autumnal colours, actually, aren't they? So forget the green. The man bit, well, a third of these images

• 25:50Speaker 06

  on my database, and I've been right across the country looking, a third are human. Sometimes impossible to say male or female, but so let's say human. A third are abstract, perhaps, monsters. And so if I say abstract monsters, and then another third are identifiable animals and identifiable monsters. So when we say green man, well, we should say foliate heads, but it doesn't run off the tongue so well, does it? But when we say that, we're actually limiting this art form and not necessarily understanding what's happening.

• 26:28Eleanor Janega?

  So this one in particular looks as though we've got, we've got a face. And it is surrounded by leaves that almost look as though someone is wearing a hood or a veil or something like that. And two of them seem to just be hooking into the corners of its mouth. So this we should understand as a religious image. What are we meant to take from this here?

• 26:52Speaker 06

  Right, you get two sorts. This is what they call a disgorgia, lovely. Because the foliage, it's usually a disembodied head, foliage coming out of the mouth, nose, eyes, ears, or a combination. And then you get the transformers, so they're the ones where the face transforms into foliage. So I started by thinking, does it matter where they are in the church? And the answer is no. I just couldn't find anything on that. I can tell you that two thirds are inside the church, obviously a third outside. I couldn't decide if it mattered if they were the top of corbals. It just didn't seem to have any bearing on that.

• 27:34Speaker 06

  So then what else can we do? Can we analyze the foliage type? Which I did obsessively. And actually, the truth is that seventy-five percent, the foliage is stylized. So obviously, the foliage type doesn't matter. It might be stylized vine, stylized acanthus, something like that. And we can interpret that, the vine's obvious, acanthus is a symbol of eternal life. I'm told if you get it in the garden, you can't get rid of it. But, you know, but there might be maple, buttercup, sink foil, you name it, hawthorn. They're always lobed leaves, so they're arty leaves, you could say.

• 28:16Speaker 06

  But, okay, so you could make something of that, I suppose. Doesn't really take us much further. Mostly, this is the most popular type, the foliage coming out of the mouth, by far. But you get it coming out of the nose and so on. So I started analysing it like that. And then I started thinking, hang on a minute, I'm missing the point here. What surrounds them? And if there's something around them which we can analyse, and it's obviously connected, what can we make of that? So, for example, on fonts, well, baptism's one of the seven sacraments. What are the other images?

• 28:59Speaker 06

  If you get one of these, which is not unknown, on a font, other images made at the same time, how can we interpret them? And it went on and on and on, with tombs, even in East of Sepulchre, all sorts of things. And the answer came back again and again and again. The supporting images, where they have a meaning, because very often on a reserve record it's just foliage. But if they can be interpreted, they are all to do with resurrection, to do with the next life, to do with eternity, and to do with Christ, and occasionally to do with Mary. And I thought, that's it. It's not pagan fertility rites, it's to do with eternal life.

• 29:44Speaker 06

  And this is as holy as you can get, almost. And then I noticed something else, because it's very difficult to take them exactly. But they go sort of in and out of fashion. But in the middle of the 14th century, there is a proliferation of them, you would not believe. Like a sort of bomb burst of these things, in roof bosses, I mean, everywhere. So what happens in the middle of the 14th century?

• 30:09Eleanor Janega?

  Black Death.

• 30:10Speaker 06

  Black Death, absolutely. So what about that? Are there any other key points where you get a proliferation of them? Yes and no, nothing like the Black Death, but occasional burst of famine. Oh, hang on a minute, what are we getting there? And I thought, right, so it's something to do with...

• 30:33Speaker 06

  Something bad happening on a large scale, maybe. I'm just saying maybe. I've just put it in my book, so I hope it's right. So why? And I think it could be, I know this sounds farfetched, and I'm willing for you to say that's ridiculous, because I think you'll be kind about it. But I think it's the church, in a way, and the priests saying, "Okay, old chum, this time next week, we could all be dead. Out of you will come life," in the sense of this foliage. And the life of your eternal life, the life of your children. We're very much an agricultural community, so foliage makes sense. You know, and that sort of idea.

• 31:15Speaker 06

  So I think it's much more important than being dismissed as, you know, pagan fertility rites. I think there's something really profound and inspirational happening. And I should say, to back up that theory, I have seen thousands, I'm not kidding, and I've never seen one where the foliage isn't living, not one. And sometimes there's little buds, you know, new growth as well.

• 31:41Eleanor Janega?

  Well, I think that, you know, I have to agree with you because I think one of the things that I find incredibly frustrating, you know, this beautiful example that we're looking at right now, what do we think this is, probably 15th century, something like this?

• 31:54Speaker 06

  Early 15th century.

• 31:56Eleanor Janega?

  It's a rather long bow to draw back to the pre-Christian past at that point in time. So, you know, you're good. What I'm expected to understand, then, is that for a thousand years, this particular thing has been coming through, and we need to understand it in a pre-Christian way. To me, that is simply too long. And I think also, there is this tendency where any time something doesn't accord to our modern understandings of religion, we'll just say, "Oh, well, that's pagan." And, you know, so for example, with Sheila NeGiggs, people just say, "Well, this is hugely sexual, so it can't possibly be Christian." Well, medieval people just think differently than we do.

• 32:41Speaker 06

  Oh, yes.

• 32:42Eleanor Janega?

  It's a different society. They have different symbology. And that doesn't mean that something is pagan.

• 32:47Speaker 06

  No, that's right.

• 32:48Eleanor Janega?

  It just means that they live in a different culture than we do.

• 32:51Speaker 06

  I completely agree with you. And, you know, there's sort of pagan ideas being brought forward. And of course, we don't know this head with foliage coming out. The root is not known. There's a very strong chance it could be Scandinavian. If you look at Viking art, you know, they went for very beautiful tendrils and things like that. That's a possibility. It's too late for these, but around the 1300s, Jacobus de Vaujy wrote The Golden Legend. And one of them, he has Seth go to the gate of the Garden of Eden, ask for a seed from the tree, from the angels who actually tell him to go away.

• 33:34Eleanor Janega?

  They would.

• 33:35Speaker 06

  They would. But third time of asking, he's given a seed not from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but a different one. He puts it in his father's mouth. The tree grows and that tree is later cut down to make the cross on which Christ is crucified. That's far too neat and trite. So that's again imposing a backstory. But you can see how it fed in and added to the myth of it all. You could, I know it will sound slightly far fetched, but you could say that this image of a head with foliage or something coming out of the mouth could even come to us from India. And if you think, really? Well, if you look at Sutton Hoo, that ship buried in the year 615 or thereabouts, thousands of garnets.

• 34:19Speaker 06

  British Museum have analyzed all of them. Every single one came from India. So that's trade routes being kept going. So an image has been seen, not necessarily a head with leaves, but maybe. And whatever that means in India then, doesn't in a way matter with the greater respect to them. The image has been brought here and given another meaning. And I spent some time in the British Museum looking at Jane images. And a lot of them are quite clunky, quite solid and with bulbous eyes. And I thought, hang on a minute. I think I've seen that on the Southdorff, Sutherlandminster. And I think I've seen that in Sandwich Church. And I think, you know, things like that.

• 35:04Speaker 06

  So ideas traveling, but who knows when, who knows why, you know?

• 35:10Eleanor Janega?

  So do we think that this becomes a particularized English art form? But no, you say that you've seen them as well in France. How is it, do you think that this idea, this particular motif is traveling around Europe?

• 35:26Speaker 06

  Well, good question. I've seen them all over what I'll call the Catholic West. So anywhere where Catholicism is practiced, so largely Europe, you could say, I have seen them. So the idea is traveling. Well, the building trades are the most itinerant. So ideas are traveling with carvers who bring new ideas. Or somebody's heard of this image, can you do one? I don't know, that sort of thing. Templates, none of which really seem to survive. It's really difficult to answer that question. But it happened because we see it. And I can also say that they are in 5%, roughly speaking, of English churches.

• 36:09Speaker 06

  But in every cathedral that was a cathedral before the Reformation, there's at least one. And that applies from Gdansk down to Avignon, right across to Montenegro. Yeah, I hunt them out, I can show you. I'm quite obsessive.

• 36:24Eleanor Janega?

  I love that.

• 36:25Speaker 06

  There's something to do with status as well. And that I haven't pinned down. I think, well, I've pinned down the link to catastrophe. But why? One in every cathedral that was a cathedral before the Reformation? Don't know.

• 36:41Eleanor Janega?

  Well, it's good to have some mysteries or we wouldn't have anything to work on, wouldn't we? One thing that I'm also noticing too, from your descriptions of these. At the ends of misericords, we have these little balsas that come up. And they seem to be draped in leaves as well. And now that you say it, these look a bit like stylized acanthus leaves that we get at the end of the misericords. And so it does seem as though we were building some form of motif then, no?

• 37:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, this is a poppy head from the French. It's a corruption of pupé for, I suppose, a puppet or doll, something like that. And these ones all happen to be Foliage, they're rather lovely, actually.

• 37:21Eleanor Janega?

  They're gorgeous.

• 37:22Speaker 06

  But very often you might get a little image of saint or all sorts, or even local myths. And sometimes you get sort of faces looking one way and the other way. And it goes on to the Victorian period. In round here in Kent, at Deol, St Andrews, there's Victorian poppy heads. And there's, I think, two or three where there's a little face within it where, guess what? Foliage coming out. It's just so, so cute. But it doesn't stand out because, you know, you think, oh, now where is it? Where is it? And you're looking around, there it is, I've been leaning on it.

• 37:57Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah. Ah, they're just stunning. And, I mean, you can really actually see through them. The carving is so fine. You have these little kind of lace bits that come through the various foliage. It just, it's really testament to how skilled these particular carvers were.

• 38:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, and these ones, I, I think these are the same time as these carvings. So I would go early 15th century. But because inevitably people lean on them and they haul on them. Quite often in churches, they might look suspiciously new, you know, because they've had to do something because they get so worn away and eroded. But nobody would be pleased to hear me to say, oh, that's great. But it is because the usage of the church is so important. And visitors, even if they're not here to pray, but just, you know, having a look at it.

• 38:43Eleanor Janega?

  I like it when my churches are still in use, frankly, but. Well, now, one more thing I want to ask about them is, so, you know, we've got a disgorger here. So we have some leaves coming out of his mouth. Do we think that the leaves coming out of the mouth are specifically symbolic of something like, for example, preaching or spreading the word of God?

• 39:00Speaker 06

  Oh, golly, now that's another argument. That's a very strong argument. I am not sure about that, but I can't dismiss it from my mind. The reason I say I'm not sure about it is because when these were made, it was only the job of the priests to spread the word of God, word capital W, so on. And the word was as much of a relic of Christ, you know, as a. Fingernail of a saint, something like that. So exegesis, explanation of the gospels, it's only for the priests to do it, and they're the ones with the trained mind, and by which they meant had studied theology specifically. And they were really concerned that if other people started doing that,

• 39:44Speaker 06

  it would all get, I don't know, misinterpreted, diluted. And believe it or not, and it sounds crazy, it was a heresy. Extraordinary. So I think, and I am very attracted by that idea because it makes sense, doesn't it? But then, how does it explain coming out of the nose, for example, or the eyes, which is slightly unpleasant, or the ears, you know, that sort of thing. It doesn't work for those images. But when I look at them, I sometimes think, yeah, it's the word of God, you know, that makes sense.

• 40:17Eleanor Janega?

  And now, some of them as well, I'm given to understand, have really interesting teeth in their mouths.

• 40:22Speaker 06

  They have, medieval monsters have very good teeth that cannot necessarily have reflected life. But does this chap here have, can we see his teeth? I think he's got his mouth cleaned.

• 40:34Eleanor Janega?

  He does, yes.

• 40:35Speaker 06

  But they frequently have not just teeth, but sort of slabs teeth. And they're not aggressive teeth, they're not pointed, they're not that sort of scary monster teeth. But they are a big row of almost grinning teeth. Perfect, so I think that's wishful thinking.

• 40:57Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, well, I suppose that we have that in common with our medieval friends. You know, a modern audience simply longs for perfect teeth, don't we? So here we are with a green man in the church. You've mentioned that you find about a third of them outside of churches. What's the oddest place you've ever found a green man?

• 41:12Speaker 06

  Oh, wow, oddest place, what a great question. Oh, hmm, I can't think of a really odd place. I found them just everywhere. You even find them on tombs occasionally, that sort of thing.

• 41:24Eleanor Janega?

  I guess, well, see, that really goes along with your idea of this is a symbol of eternal life, right? Because that's what we do tend to find on tombs, is very specifically these references to, you know, the resurrection, to eternal life and that sort of thing, so hmm.

• 41:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, I think that would be it because you find them on great graves. I don't mean that effigies, you know. And sometimes you find them, there's one in Leicestershire and it's a rector. And at his feet is this great big, rather clunky foliate head. There's one in Poitiers of a saint and she's got these on her feet at the base. That's what I'm trying to say. So at the base, she's got very stylized heads, rather beautiful, very smooth skin with very stylized acanthus. And you can see, do you know a sort of knot where a plant has a burst of life?

• 42:14Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 42:14Speaker 06

  You can see that happening on it. And you can see other things because they're coming out of an urn. So, you know, because you can analyze things into the ground. That is what I do, by the way. So they might not have a meaning at all, but let's not say that out loud. But, you know, an urn which perhaps might represent somewhere where ashes went. I mean, one can go on and on. But on the head of her tomb, she's got dolphins. And dolphins are psychopomp. They're there to go with you to the next life. Now, there's a lovely classical pagan crossing of ideas into Christianity. It's on a saint's tomb dating to the fourth century. And there she is.

• 42:55Speaker 06

  And so some people have said, oh, well, yeah, but that's, she died, they did that. But some of them designed their own tombs. Bishop Hamo in Rochester, he probably designed his own tomb. He's got some nice ones. And nobody at that time is going to do anything that is going to anger God. Sometimes you might hear people say, oh, well, you know, medieval man, he's a pagan. He's thinking about the old ways because this awful disease, you know, the church has let them down. So he's going back to the old ways, but he's Christian at Mass. And I would say, no, I think he's not going to do anything that's going to upset God. So if he's designed his own tomb and you have these on there, wow. There's got to be a very positive interpretation.

• 43:39Speaker 06

  And I found one on an East of Eppleka, which is the tomb for Christ.

• 43:44Eleanor Janega?

  Wow.

• 43:44Speaker 06

  So you're not going to.

• 43:45Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I'm sorry. I have a really hard time believing that anyone is saying I'm being pre-Christian.

• 43:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, exactly.

• 43:50Eleanor Janega?

  Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Now, I'm given to understand that not very far from here, we have another example of agreement. And this is at St. Nicholas at Wade. So shall we make our way there?

• 44:01Speaker 06

  Let's do that. They're different. They're lovely.

• 44:03Eleanor Janega?

  Fantastic. Two?

• 44:05Speaker 06

  No, exciting.

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• 46:37Eleanor Janega?

  So we have arrived at St Nicholas at Wade, and this is just such a picturesque Kentish village. It looks like the kind of place that only appears out of the mist once every 1,000 years or so. Here, the church's southwest tower was constructed in two phases. First, we have a bit from around 1310. The lower section is kind of like the highest-quality flint, exactly what you would expect in Kent. But the upper sections, which rise up to 74 feet, were added in rubble construction. It's possible that this was used as a navigation market, and that's appropriate for St Nicholas, who is the patron of seafarers. The present building probably dates from the early 12th century. Mid-12th-century Romanesque features survive in the Bridges Chapel

• 47:21Eleanor Janega?

  in the west end of the nave. The most important 12th-century work to survive in the South Isle Arcade probably dates to the early 1160s or early 1170s. These arches and their capitals include carved work of the absolute highest quality, and they're stylistically really similar to work that we see at Canterbury Cathedral, which isn't particularly far away here. Fantastically also, we are visiting while the local parishioners are setting up for a flower festival. So there's going to be some really beautiful things to see inside. Clearly, this is still really a hub of the community. Imogen, we are here because I am told that there is another green man carved at the top of one of these pillars. So shall we go and take a look?

• 48:03Speaker 06

  Let's do that.

• 48:09Eleanor Janega?

  These green men are really different. You know, the last one that we saw at St Mary's, it was as though it was wearing a hood of leaves. These ones, you can really see their complexion. This one is wearing a crown on the right, so quite kingly. Although, you know, for a king to be spewing leaves is a bit odd. What are we seeing here?

• 48:31Speaker 06

  Right. Well, they're, as you say, very different, and a lot older, for a start. So these are going to be end of 12th century, I would say. And they've got that fantastic little smooth face. It's really strange, isn't it? And very pronounced mouths with them open almost as a square with this distinct foliage coming out. But yeah, one of them has this crown. I can never decide if that's, has it actually got foliage on it? Is it a crown of leaves? I think it's definitely a metal covenant. Let's start there. But I think that's, it is a crown. And one of the things I discovered when I started looking at all these beasties was that a number of them, headgear,

• 49:15Speaker 06

  whether it was a kind of foliage hood, but as we've just seen really, but sometimes an actual, like a cowl, something like that. Or sometimes a bishop's mitre, something like that. And then it turned out, when I started looking around at other images made at the same time, maybe not part of that, but maybe made at the same time and just very close by it. I thought, hang on a minute, there's an awful lot of these with crowns or coronets. So that has to mean something. When I say an awful lot, I'm talking about very nearly half of the accompanying images, not the actual foliage head or green man, but the ones very close by. So I thought, oh, okay.

• 49:58Speaker 06

  So what, you're standing there thinking, every time you think, oh, I solved this, then you turn out you really haven't. And so actual green men wearing headgear, whatever.

• 50:13Speaker 06

  Let's go with maybe, I'll say five to 10%. That's probably high, actually, but crowns around the image. So Christ is King of Heaven, could do that. That's an easy one. You get a lot of kings and queens. Quite often each side of the main door, you get a statue, a head of a king and a head of an abbot, you know. So church and state together, that maybe, but that doesn't apply here. And then I thought, well, what is the? What are the big influences on the way Christianity develops in this country? And one of them has to be the rule of Saint Benedict.

• 50:55Eleanor Janega?

  Of course.

• 50:56Speaker 06

  And that was written about the 500 at Montecassino area. And it's what I would call standing orders for how you behave in a monastery. And so rules for people living together. And there's numerous of these, you know, there's Saint Augustine, there's Saint, oh, so many of them. But what Saint Benedict did was come up with what he called the eclectic rule. And that actually is highly flexible. So you don't have to be, oh, the average penitentials. If you think a bad thought, you've got to jump into a pond up to your neck of freezing water. You know, I mean, honestly, come on. But his is very workable. And what does Saint Benedict say in the rule of Saint Benedict? Endurance shall bring forth a crown.

• 51:38Speaker 06

  And that brought me right back to the idea of, okay, the crown of eternal life. That's why I would say it. Having endured this life, you get the crown of the next life. And that takes me right back to things we were talking about earlier. You know, with things to do with eternity and resurrection. So maybe it's just another eternal life reference. And I think I'm going with that for the time being because I can't think of anything else. But I have seen it all over the country, to be honest, just ones and twos popping up with little crowns.

• 52:17Eleanor Janega?

  And it's so interesting because here we have one with a little crown and then one on the opposite end that doesn't have a crown at all.

• 52:24Speaker 06

  No.

• 52:25Eleanor Janega?

  But they do have the leaves coming out of their mouths. And it's got some interesting kind of little dots on some of the leaves.

• 52:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, and in fact, if you look at the chap with the crown as well, just underneath, you can see that, you can see the top of his robe or something under his chin, he's got that. Right, so this, it's called granulation. So you have to think of a parallel line with dots down the middle. It's not the most imaginative design, I know, but this is a Scandinavian note.

• 52:50Eleanor Janega?

  Ah.

• 52:51Speaker 06

  So this is Vikings settling down, bringing their art. And we referred to them a little while ago. So this is what we're looking at here. I'm absolutely convinced. But I think whoever did that, I don't think they're thinking, oh. Scandinavian influence. I don't think they're doing that. I think they've seen this idea such a lot that they think, well, that would look nice. I see it often in the churches. It impacts on our church art up to about the 1200s. So this is at the later end of it.

• 53:22Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah.

• 53:22Speaker 06

  But and sometimes it's very fine, teeny weeny dots. And sometimes it's what I call normal, like here. But on this stylized foliage curling round, definitely living foliage. The chap with the crown is quite vigorous, his foliage. The other chap, I was gonna say he looks a bit down in the mouth, but down in the foliage or something. But he hasn't got a crown. Maybe he's upset. I don't know.

• 53:47Eleanor Janega?

  He's still working towards that crown. In the middle, there are these, there are more leaves sort of in between them. And they look at the top to something, maybe like a fleur-de-lis, maybe like a, sort of like the puppet heads that we saw in the other church.

• 54:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's right. I think they are stylized fleur-de-lis. I do think that. And of course, the fleur-de-lis symbol of Mary, of Our Lady, and that's something that becomes part of the French monarchy's symbolism and so on. But the leaf, the lily, the stylized lily, I think that's what it is. Yeah. And I think it's referring to her.

• 54:28Eleanor Janega?

  So on these faces in particular, they're really expressive. Do you think that we're meant to take anything away specifically from the images that we see of the faces themselves?

• 54:39Speaker 06

  Well, I think there must be a thing. Some of them are portraits. I don't think these are portraits, but sometimes you see one. There's one at Suttonbenger, near Swindon, and that is definitely a portrait. There's no question. And so why him? Why did they pick on him? Did he pay, you know, to get him mentioned? Don't know. But yeah. And so the expression, they look.

• 55:04Speaker 06

  Both very detached and also critical in a way. It's weird, isn't it? And sometimes I look at these images and I think, oh, he looks cheerful. Or he looks upset, but it's subjective, isn't it? You can't really come up with anything for that. And I haven't found a consistency going through all of them, which I really hoped I would, but failed. Sorry.

• 55:27Eleanor Janega?

  Ugh, medieval people, they never do exactly what you want them to.

• 55:31Speaker 06

  I know. As soon as they invent time travel, I'm going back to sort it out.

• 55:35Eleanor Janega?

  Exactly. So these here, our last green man was on a misericordia. These are underneath the pillars of an arch here. And this is as opposed to our lovely Norman arches that we saw in the last one. These are peaked and they're a little bit more Gothic in style. And where else would we expect to see a green man?

• 55:56Speaker 06

  Well, the most popular time, when we get this bomb burst of them in the middle of the 14th century, the most popular place by far is roof bosses.

• 56:03Eleanor Janega?

  Oh.

• 56:04Speaker 06

  So up to, say, 1200 ish, then these on the top of a column. Yeah, this is really popular. They're very visible. They're quite often on each side of the Chancellor Arch. They might be at a doorway, very visible. So I thought maybe a place of guarding. But then that changes and they are up there in the roof boss. And the only reason I'm intrigued by these is I've heard people say, oh, well, brown green men images in a brown roof, they are hidden. But they're not because when you go to a church, always take a very long ladder with you. They won't mind, honestly. And a strong torch. And I have once had a vicar hold the ladder for me. I'm not entirely kidding here.

• 56:47Speaker 06

  And if you get up really close, you might find almost certainly tealy flecks of gold, paint or gold leaf. Up there, so suddenly they're not wooden images hidden in a wooden ceiling. And they're not secret. They are, if you imagine them being gold and you imagine the candlelight and so on. Suddenly they are right there as part of the medieval liturgy and the drama of the liturgy. And that gives them a completely different aspect.

• 57:15Eleanor Janega?

  I mean, and these ones here, you know, they're looking very smooth. They're looking very white, but I wouldn't expect that medieval people would have kept them in such a condition themselves, would they?

• 57:24Speaker 06

  No, having made them, and they would have been painted, I would assume. But there's nothing that remains of that, but you do often get that. But no, I don't think they would do that. I think they would just get left there, get filthy with incense, that sort of thing, candles. And then, you know, over the years, somebody restores them, very often the Victorians, actually.

• 57:47Eleanor Janega?

  And this is so interesting because it shows us once again, we have these expectations about what medieval people must have been experiencing based on what we experience. You know, we go into a church, painting, things has gone completely out of fashion. We expect them to usually be whitewashed. You know, if you have a wooden carving, we expect it to be wooden. And that's not what medieval people are seeing at all.

• 58:08Speaker 06

  No, not at all. And I think they must be astounded. I sometimes imagine them sort of sitting on a low wall, thinking, what are they thinking of? What are they doing? But yeah, and it is frustrating to me when I see these images. And there's so many questions. It's a bit like being at a cocktail party where somebody tells you a fantastic joke, but you can't catch the punchline. Yeah, it's like that. You know, the answer's there somewhere, but can't get it.

• 58:38Eleanor Janega?

  Well, speaking of being at a cocktail party, shall we retire to the pub?

• 58:42Speaker 06

  What an idea.

• 59:04Eleanor Janega?

  Well cheers Imogen. Cheers. Imogen, unfortunately this isn't a green man pub.

• 59:10Speaker 06

  No.

• 59:10Eleanor Janega?

  But I'm given to understand that the green man pubs that we tend to see around Britain aren't necessarily connected with the guys we see in churches.

• 59:18Speaker 06

  That's absolutely right. Because once he was given that name, the Green Man 1939, things changed. And very often you get a pub called the Green Man, as you say. And the Green Man originally, the folklore one, was connected to brewing, funnily enough.

• 59:33Eleanor Janega?

  Ah.

• 59:34Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so he was not a man necessarily who had any foliage on. He was a green man and he was supposed to act very drunk. And, well, you wouldn't get that in Britain, would you? David.

• 59:46Eleanor Janega?

  No, no, oh no, that's not like us at all.

• 59:48Speaker 06

  No. So they were connected to pubs. And so sometimes you get a green man pub called the Green Man. And if you, if there is one, I usually ask if I can see a photo of the pub sign pre-war, if they have one. And if that is so, then it's that old fashioned Jack in the Green type green man from folklore. But then a lot of them change it, you know, and they, they change the pub sign and they put up pictures of the sort of green men we've been talking about. So it does cause a little bit of a confusion. But they were called quifflers. And one of their functions was to go ahead, you know, when they used to have plagues

• 1:00:30Speaker 06

  and things on the back of carts going around the city, that sort of thing. Well, somebody had to go ahead to break up the crowds. And so the quifflers, or the green men, would go with branches and sort of hold people back. So it wouldn't be coming out of their mouths, obviously.

• 1:00:44Eleanor Janega?

  Okay.

• 1:00:45Speaker 06

  But this is how that's got tied up, I think.

• 1:00:48Eleanor Janega?

  I see. So again, this is this kind of post 1930s amalgamation of every man who vaguely has anything green into one character.

• 1:00:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:00:58Eleanor Janega?

  Well, on a more personal note, what is it that you get from chasing these green men down?

• 1:01:05Speaker 06

  Oh goodness, well, just the satisfaction of trying to put another piece in the jigsaw, which so often doesn't fit anyway. It's hard to say, but anybody who has a kind of passion for visiting churches, I'm a big church visitor anyway, and I'm looking for all sorts of things. But if I see one of these, then I'm really going to try to get into it to see what is it looking at? Does it see me? Does it, you know, all that sort of thing? And then you think, no, it's just a carving. There we are, along with all the other carvings, it means nothing maybe. But one these days, you know, probably on my deathbed, it will occur to me what the answer is.

• 1:01:46Eleanor Janega?

  Hmm, I hope so anyway. What do you think that we can learn about medieval people from finding these green men?

• 1:01:54Speaker 06

  Oh, I think one of the things that stands out is this really extraordinary, they would either be, it seems, you know, really high as a kite, really, you know, it's a lovely day, and absolutely miserable, you know, then exile. So you get this odd juxtaposition of peoples being really happy, but at the same time so fearful of not getting into paradise, you know, big, big anxiety at the time. Will they actually end up in hell as they show on the Last Judgment images? Is that actually going to happen? Does anyone believe that? Well, perhaps we should, you know, no, never mind, you know, let's all go out and we'll have a party. That sort of idea of it, I find quite intriguing.

• 1:02:39Speaker 06

  And I think, you know, I get a bit obsessed looking for these images. Well, how obsessed must they have been carving them at times?

• 1:02:47Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely. Well, and I think one of the things that we really do see is, at the very least, how workers and their ideas of art travel around. And I think that that in and of itself is special.

• 1:02:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, it is. And the idea of taking ideas. And actually, just as today, you know, we would want, oh, you know, I really, we might see someone and think, oh, I really like that coat. I wanted to get that too, that sort of thing. It's the same, I think it's the same idea of, you know, oh, so and so's come into the village and he's been carving on whatever substantive church, you know.

• 1:03:22Speaker 06

  But what can he do for our church? That's in that very big church. And so will we be the latest fashion? Because they definitely like the latest fashion. And when they went from largely Romanesque, round arches, to pointy ones, that was the must-have look. And they're desperate to get it. They're sort of knocking things down to get you to.

• 1:03:44Eleanor Janega?

  Yeah, I always like that about in churches, how you can kind of see on a new style of window. But indeed, we saw that back at St Mary's. You know, smash a rectangular window in now that we figured out how to do it. That sort of thing.

• 1:03:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think that's a lot in that. And they're just showing how up to date they are, modern ideas, outward looking, all that sort of thing. We wouldn't think it like that because... But in the Middle Ages, they danced to a different beat. It was the beat of the church. That was the thing that underlaid everything. Whereas, of course, that's changed now.

• 1:04:16Eleanor Janega?

  Absolutely. Well, Imogen, I can't thank you enough for coming out with me. This has been such a pleasure.

• 1:04:21Speaker 06

  Oh, it's been fantastic to meet you. And it's just been lovely to find somebody like-minded.

• 1:04:29Eleanor Janega?

  Thanks to Imogen Corrigan and to you for listening to Gone Medieval from History Hit. I certainly think I might have a go at carving a green man into my dungeon at History Hit Towers if I could just get this chisel past the ogre at the gatehouse. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original TV documentaries, including my recent film, Medieval Apocalypse, and ad-free podcasts by signing up at historyhit.com/subscription. You can follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave us comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts. And tell all your friends and family that you've gone medieval. Until next time.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

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