The ‘Green Man’ in Medieval England
An article by Stephen Miller…
This article will discuss the profusion of occurrences of the ‘Green Man’ motif (more correctly known as the foliate head motif), in its various particular forms, in the medieval cathedrals and churches of England, prevalent in the centuries following the Norman Conquest of 1066. It will discuss the meaning and significance attached to such motifs.
What does the ‘Green Man’ mean?
The first thing to clear up is what we mean by the term. The amateur historian Lady Raglan (Julia Somerset, née Hamilton, wife of the independent scholar Major FitzRoy Richard Somerset, the fourth Baron Raglan) first came up with the term in her 1939 article, ‘The “Green Man” in Church Architecture’, for the journal Folklore.
She conflated several quite unrelated, albeit superficially similar, notions about such motifs and proved successful in giving a name (albeit, as we shall see, something of a misnomer) to a largely disregarded and consequently forgotten and anonymous (albeit ubiquitous) emblematic figure. She wrote:
This figure I am convinced, is neither a figment of the imagination nor a symbol, but is taken from real life, and the question is whether there was any figure in real life from which it could have been taken. The answer, I think, is that there is but one of sufficient importance, the figure variously known as the Green Man, Jack-in-the-Green, Robin Hood, the King of May and the Garland King…
At the outset, the first thing to nip in the bud is that he is any sort of conflation or derivative of Jack-in-the-Green, Robin Hood, Father Christmas and/or the King of May. The Green Man is very much his own man with a precise meaning and origin (indeed as we shall see he is not just any man, but commonly a representation of First Man and in that sense Everyman, of humanity itself), one whom over the centuries has displayed a remarkably durable persistence, notwithstanding our neglect of his sources and origins.
History of the Green Man
The motif arose as part of a new repertoire imported from northern France. It did not appear in England until the late-11th and 12th centuries (or rather, there is no direct pre-Conquest evidence that it did), but became abruptly and increasingly common after the upsurge in Norman church building following the 11th century Conquest of Britain, continuing into later expressions of the same phenomenon throughout the Romanesque and Gothic periods.
Two main classifications of the motif are evident—the leaf mask and the disgorging foliate head. The subject matter of such church carving was tied to specific Christian legend and theological significance, coming not from an undefined pagan past, but from a new and rich dialogue with Europe that was first transmitted through illuminated manuscripts and afterwards by the motif itself being copied from other cathedrals and churches.
This is why the motif appears in so many churches and cathedrals and features on the tombs of so many medieval bishops. It has not been ‘sneaked in’ by pagan stonemasons. It is an integral motif of the Christian faith.
The motif is not, in any specific or particular sense, an appropriation of ancient nature gods—such as Dionysius/Bacchus, or Pan, or some Mesopotamian equivalent — even allowing that such imagery could have initially offered stonemasons and woodcarvers a degree of purely visual inspiration for a more precise and focussed Christian rendering.
Lady Raglan is indeed responsible for leading us a merry dance and misleading a generation of those all too eager to buy-in to a quasi-pagan theme of the greenwood, enticing them down a false path strewn with misguided assumptions, based on romantic notions of domestic culture and national identity that are wide of the mark here.
These medieval carvings are indeed about the Christian story of resurrection, as described in Scripture, apocrypha and the medieval hagiographies and bestiaries relating to Adam and used to flesh out the biblical account… stories and legends long-since forgotten by the majority today.
Romanesque Architecture
The Romanesque period in England was later to develop into the beginning of English Gothic style in the 12th century.
Examples of Romanesque architecture are to be found across the European continent, making it the first truly pan-European style since the architecture of Imperial Rome. The overthrow of Anglo-Saxon England in 1066, by the Duke of Normandy (later styled William the Conqueror) and his Norman, Breton and Flemish army, was to transform England, from how it was organised and governed to its language, customs and expression—the visible remains of which are seen today in England’s cathedrals, churches and castles of the period.
With these then new and richly decorated buildings came ‘a new language of ornament’ and the first wave of what we refer to as foliate head/Green Man depictions burst onto the scene in England. As Richard Hayman comments, in his beautifully illustrated short survey on the Green Man (The Green Man, 2010), ‘Their emergence was not an isolated event but part of a new vocabulary of art and architecture that came with a surge of church buildings’ (Hayman 2010, p. 15).
Churches in the 11th and 12th centuries were built by wealthy patrons rather than parish communities and these patrons were responsible for prescribing decorative schemes in explicit detail, rather than it being left to the stonemasons and woodcarvers, who executed such schemes, to invent them.
The motif indeed appeared in churches because they were part of the developing Continental tastes of those who made it possible for the churches to be built. The example of designs on the capitals of columns at Northampton St. Peter, show masks emitting foliage that are derived from manuscript illuminations, in particular English Psalters of the mid-twelfth century. The richly decorated and exquisite St. Albans Psalter (ca. 1120-40, produced by at least six scribes and four artists), for example, includes many illustrations of disgorging heads. It is the best known of a number of Romanesque illuminated manuscripts produced in the Abbey scriptorium at St. Albans (now stored at the Cathedral Library, Dombibliothek, of Hildesheim Cathedral, Germany).
The intricacies of Romanesque and Gothic architecture provided ideal locations for the inclusion of all manner of idiosyncratic ornamentation in church buildings—grotesques, gargoyles and gremlins of many kinds were introduced, to warn of the snares and traps that mortal man might fall into. Sirens, Mermaids and Sheela-na-gigs (figurative carvings of naked, sexually explicit women) were among other recurring motifs to be found.
Some examples
Note the medieval misericord of a mermaid suckling a lion, at St. Mary the Virgin in Edlesborough (see below), intended as a stern warning of the traps that man is ever in mortal danger of falling into, through the seductive charms of sensual temptation and the sins of the flesh.
Mercia MacDermott (Explore Green Men, 2006) refers to a couple of doubled-tailed mermaid examples in Italy and France (at San Sigismondo and La Cour d’Or) as an ‘anti-sex symbol’ that in Romanesque church sculpture were ‘another warning against debauchery’ (MacDermott, p. 136). Several similar examples appear here also.
Apart from the example at Edlesborough, misericords of a mermaids suckling lions also exist at both Wells and Norwich cathedrals. A two-tail mermaid holding up a mirror and comb (an indication of vanity) can be seen at Cartmel Priory, with others in similar pose at Carlisle Cathedral, Chichester Cathedral and St. Laurence Church in Ludlow, while a bare-breasted mermaid flanked by a manticore (a legendary creature with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and a tail of venomous spines) and a dragon appears on a misericord at Bristol Cathedral.
It is perhaps easy to see how the Green Man motif might be lumped in with the fashion for such grotesques and pagan caricatures.
Gothic Styles
In broad terms, the three main periods of Gothic style in England, following on from the Romanesque/Norman, were Early English (ca. 1175-1275); Decorated Gothic (ca. 1275-1375) and Perpendicular Gothic (1375 onwards).
The first fully achieved example of Gothic architecture in England is traditionally regarded as the reconstruction work on Canterbury Cathedral, after the fire which destroyed the Romanesque quire in 1174. However, Wells Cathedral was the first church in England to be entirely built in the new style with work started in 1175. The first flowering of English Gothic (derived from France) thus began in the fourth quarter of the 12th century.
Early English
The Early English style, spanning a century, emphasised height and simple, austere, lines and proportion.
The heavy and massive columns of the Romanesque were replaced by clusters of shafts, often of dark Purbeck marble. The capitals of the columns began to become more richly decorated with carved stylised designs including the foliate head stem- and leaf-disgorging heads of ‘spewing and uttering’ design, with vegetation typically erupting from the mouth, but also from eye-sockets and ears (see the accompanying illustration, a mid-14th century example of the so-called ‘bloodsucker’ type of Green Man motif, featuring sprouting vegetation from a full set of facial orifices, at Ottery St. Mary Church, Devon).
An increasing use of the chisel enabled greater definition and expression, with undercutting techniques of the stonemasons causing their efforts to stand out from the underlying stone in a more rounded and three-dimensional form.
Decorated Gothic
The Decorated Gothic style (also known as Geometric or Curvilinear style), spanning the century from 1275 to 1375, is characterised by more flamboyant tracery and ornamentation seen especially in the wider window heads. The flying buttress and improved vaulting techniques also mark this period, together with stone carvings and a more extensive use of stained glass. Exeter Cathedral is a prime example of this type of Decorated Gothic architecture still seen today.
Perpendicular Gothic
The Perpendicular Gothic style of architecture started in about 1375 and continued into the 16th century.
The style is marked by strong vertical lines in window tracery and wall panelling. Vaults were expressed as elaborate fan-shapes and towers became heavily decorated. Wall space was pared back to a minimum, which introduced the characteristic sense of space filled with interior light. Henry VII’s Chapel (1503-19) at Westminster Abbey, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge (1446-1515) and Bath Abbey (1501-39) are all superb examples of this later phase. The naves of Canterbury Cathedral and Winchester Cathedral were also rebuilt in the Perpendicular style during this period.
Exeter Cathedral and its Green Man carvings
Exeter Cathedral is one of the most complete Gothic churches to be found anywhere in England.The misericords are the earliest complete set in the country and date from two periods of 1220-30 and 1250-60.
There are literally dozens of foliate head/Green Man images in the cathedral, outnumbering images of Christ! They are found throughout the Cathedral on misericords, bosses, corbels and other vault carvings.
A Singular Example
The arcades of the chancel have carvings at the base of the wall rising to the vaults, one of which shows the Virgin Mary and Child, surrounded by thick foliage with angels descending from high heaven, standing above an open-mouthed Green Man head, from which the tree growth shoots out (see below).
Kathleen Basford in her book (The Green Man, 1978) talks of a ‘demonic character’ of Green Man carvings. She sees only ‘the darkness of unredeemed nature’ (Basford 1978, p. 20) in the motif. Her misreading of this late-13th to early-14th century chancel group at Exeter sees the Virgin ‘treading’ on the Green Man head, ‘as she might tread on the head of the old serpent, the tempter himself’ (Basford 1978, p. 20). She goes on to conflate the Green Man image with the demonic and with that of Satan and the devil.
This Green Man head is far from a proxy for the devil, however, but rather of a revivified Adam or ‘First Man’. The Virgin is standing (not ‘treading’ or trampling) on the head, which represents the condition of newly branching life springing from a death-bound state, the promise of mankind’s resurrection personified.
The Virgin triumphantly holds up the Christ Child (or ‘second Adam’) in her arms, Adam is restored through resurrection to the life eternal. The Christ child is in the world and will overcome death for all mankind.
The tree branching from the mouth of the Green Man is a specific Christian reference to the Wood of the Cross from The Tree of Mercy — the seed(s) of which were placed under the tongue of Adam by his son Seth (alternatively by the Angel of Mercy) following Adam’s exile and death.
Such images speak of an overcoming of sin, renewal of life, and the salvation of mankind.
The Green Man in Devon
Many fine wooden parish church roofs were built during the 15th and 16th centuries, which have their own heritage and regional preference for decoration. Hayman writes (Hayman 2010, p. 30):
Look up at an East Anglian roof and you are likely to see a host of angels; in Leicestershire it will be a gallery of heads; but do the same thing in Devon and you are likely to see all manner of foliage bosses and many green men.
The late-medieval roofs in Devon at Sampford Courtenay, Spreyton and South Tawton are all excellent examples of this.
The Green Man elsewhere
The choir stalls at King’s Lynn Minster contain fine examples of the woodcarvers’ art in the 14th century misericords found there.
Earlier the quire had contained simple unattached chairs but in the Gothic era the seats had developed into choir stalls, typically arranged in two sets of stepped rows along the edges of the quire, facing each other at right angles to the altar. The seats are hinged and when folded up typically reveal elaborate misericord carvings.
Included in the misericords is a splendid carving of a foliate/Green Man head (see below), disgorging an eruption of ornate oversized oak-leaves from his mouth, symbolising rejuvenated or enduring life, the oak being a popular alternative in England to the stylised/acanthus leaf depictions of the earlier Norman/Romanesque period.
The carving at King’s Lynn Minster is one of the best examples of a foliate head/Green Man misericord in Norfolk, although other fine examples are to be found in Norwich Cathedral.
The armrests of choir stalls are also popular locations for Green Man depictions (fine examples may be found at King’s Lynn Minster; Winchester Cathedral; Ely Cathedral; Lincoln Cathedral; and St. Margaret of Antioch, Cley-next-the-sea, Norfolk, to name but a few locations).
In addition to such carvings in the quire at Ely Cathedral, several foliate head/Green Man roof bosses and stone carvings of about 1360 appear in the Lady Chapel, together with 13th century stone carvings at the base of the pillars in the north transept, either side of the tomb of Bishop Northwold.
Winchester Cathedral
Winchester Cathedral, dedicated to the Holy Trinity and Saint Peter, Saint Paul, and before the Reformation also to Saint Swithun, is one of the largest in Europe boasting the greatest overall length of any Gothic cathedral. The church, known as the ‘Old Minster’, became part of a monastic settlement in 971.
The first Norman Bishop of Winchester, Bishop Walkelin, began work on a new cathedral in 1079 and the building was consecrated in 1093. A substantial amount of this building survives, including crypt, transepts and the basic structure of the nave. At the beginning of the 13th century Bishop Godfrey de Lucy, son of Henry II’s chief justiciar, inaugurated a ‘confraternity for the repair of the church’, in which the east end was completely remodelled and a new structure laid out around the Norman work.
A major phase of rebuilding took place in the 14th century and the quire is the oldest of the great medieval quires to survive substantially unaltered and the early-14th century choir-stalls among the finest (if not the finest) of their date in Europe. They appear to have been under construction in 1308, when Bishop Henry Woodlock wrote to the Bishop of Norwich asking for the services of a carpenter, William of Lyngwode. The letter survives in Bishop Woodlock’s episcopal register, and is taken as evidence that Lyngwode (who is otherwise unknown) was the master carpenter from Norfolk who designed the choir stalls.
There were originally 64 rear stalls, corresponding to the known number of monks at the time. In front were sub-stalls, most of which have vanished. The misericords escaped the attentions of the iconoclasts, perhaps because the themes were perceived to be secular. The spandrels in the quire also date from this time and include several depictions of the Green Man amid a tangle of luxuriant trees and shrubs many of which are recognisable from the foliage, albeit with varying degrees of stylisation.
Examples include trees spewing out and growing up from the disgorging mouth of the Green Man. For those struggling with the interpretation of the attendant animal symbolism the bestiaries will be of immense help, as the imagery is taken straight from those pages. Literally hundreds of tiny heads (human and animal) adorn the ends of the finials and crockets. Indeed, a general theme of foliage runs through the stonework and woodcarving throughout the Cathedral, with dozens of foliate/Green Man heads either disgorging, or surrounded by, vegetation.
A low-level Green Man boss appears on the vaulting of the narthex in welcome at the west entrance. Higher up on the roof of the north aisle are two others, one pulling his mouth open to reveal his tongue, with oak leaves and acorns.
Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral was founded as early as 597 by St. Augustine, the same year in which he baptised King Æthelberht of Kent in the Christian faith.
The old Cathedral was completely rebuilt between 1070 and 1077. The east end was enlarged at the beginning of the 12th century, but largely rebuilt in Gothic style, by French master builder William of Sens, following another fire in 1174.
A complete rebuilding of the quire began from the west end in 1175 and the various innovative features were a major influence on the styles employed by other English cathedrals. The Norman nave and transepts survived until the late-14th century when they were demolished to make way for the present structures, rebuilt in Perpendicular Gothic style.
Several Green Man images are to be found in the cloister, where the 15th century vault ribbing cuts through the 13th century stonework. The crypt includes various early-12th century shoot-disgorging heads on the capital decoration of columns in the western crypt inspired by contemporary manuscript illustrations and carved by French masons from Caen stone. Several other foliate heads are to be found, including a leaf mask on the ceiling boss in the Black Prince Chantry/Huguenot Chapel.
The significance of the Green Man motif in a Medieval setting
The subject matter of such church carving was tied to specific Christian legend and theological significance, coming not from an undefined pagan past, but from a new and rich dialogue with Europe that was first transmitted through illuminated manuscripts and afterwards by precedents of the motif itself being copied from other cathedrals and churches.
The tree of theological significance from the Garden of Eden that is relevant here—The Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the tree under which Adam first sinned, also referred to as the Tree of Mercy—later becomes the instrument of mankind’s atonement and salvation.
The Condition of Man
These motifs are a representation of the condition of man (imaged as the death-bound and the resurrected Adam). They are the very manifestation of this condition, of a mythical death-bound first man in receipt of God’s grace for new life.
If then the motif stands for us—mortal man doomed to die as descendants of Adam—it also stands as a reassurance and reminder of the Christian hope and promise of the resurrected life to come, won through the sacrifice, death and resurrection of the second or new Adam. This explains the ubiquitous presence of the Green Man in so many medieval Christian churches as well as the significance of motif’s appearance in relation the Blessed Virgin and Christ Child.
The Green Man is indeed Everyman, humanity itself, in all of his death-bound and life-renewing stages of exuberance, torment and ecstasy. The message in such depictions seems clear, rather than confused or mysterious—the twig(s), or seed(s), or kernel(s) that were (according to different versions of the popular medieval tale) planted or placed beneath the tongue of Adam, by Seth (as an agent of the Angel of Mercy) or directly by the Angel of Mercy (as agent of the Lord God), will shoot forth new life. The sin of the world has been atoned for and renewed life is restored for the world, for mortal man, and for all of God’s unlimited creation.
This is surely the true, enduring, and ultimately deeply satisfying, significance of the many and varied occurrences of the foliate head/Green Man motif in medieval England and connected Christian Europe.
Stephen Miller is an author and a visual arts and theology scholar who has spent the best part of a decade researching the foliate head/Green Man motif since studying for his Master’s degree in Christianity and the Arts at King’s College London (in association with the National Gallery, London). He has contributed to a number of academic journals (art and theology) and is the author of four monographs including, The Green Man in Medieval England (Cambridge Scholars, 2022) and The Book of Angels: Seen and Unseen (2019). His research interests focus on the theology of images.
