CHAPTER 4
Pre-Christian Cults of the Atlantic Coastal Culture
Many pagan sites were buried under chapels or marked with Christian symbols, demonstrating paganism at the time when missionaries were active, some about AD 500 other much later.
Photo 4.1 St Michael’s Mount C ornwall David Wogan
Photo 4,2 Mt St Michel Brittany/Normandy David Iliff
Photo 4.3 Skellig Michael SW Ireland Jerzy Strzelecki
Photo 4.4 Glastonbury Tor Chapel dedicated to St Michael. Showing the ledges Josep Renalias
Photo 4.5 Chapel dedicated to St Michael on Burrow Mump Jerry Mitchel
Photo4.6 Modern chapel to St Michael on the Great tumulus at Carnac Yolanc
The Chapel is not the first Christian presence on the mound. There is also a Calvary of the 16th century.
Examples of the burial, covering or containing of pagan monuments by Christian buildings
Photo 4.7 Chartres Cathedral T.Taylor
A Christian building was built to cover a chamber enclosing a pagan female idol and a deep well at the site of Chartres long before the great cathedral of about AD 1200 illustrated here was built. By that date the chamber had become part of the crypt. A photograph of the well is widely published but not signed by a photographer so cannot be included. The chamber with its well and idol were blocked in the 11th century because of inappropriate pilgrimages there, presumably pagan. Church authorities later realised the idol to be pre-Christian and called the statue ‘Our Underground Lady’ or ‘the Druidical Virgin’. She was heavily pregnant rather than the usual Virgin and Child. The successful transfer of sanctity from pagan goddess to Our Lady of Chartres may have influenced the success of the site as a place of pilgrimage.
The Venus of Quinipili and other sites with the same motif
The Welsh missionary St Gildas was active in Brittany in the middle of the 6th century AD and St David at about the same time in Wales. St David’s story is in more detail later in this chapter. The chapel illustrated below, which is dedicated to St Gildas, is of the 16th century AD and is at the bottom of the hill where in about AD 500 the saint buried a stone idol under a new monastery at Castennec on the river Blavet in Brittany. About 500 years later Norman raiders demolished the monastery buildings. The local people recovered the stone idol from the debris, set it up on a mound and continued to worship it.
The site of Castennec is on a neck of land 100m wide at the base of a peninsula surrounded by a loop in the river Blavet. The peninsula was occupied by a Roman town so there are likely to have been military defences on the neck but all that is visible now is a steep sided conical mound with a flat top approached by stone steps. Perhaps the top of this mound was where the Venus of Quinipili stood, visible over a wide area, and where she was replaced after the villagers recovered their idol.
Photo 4..8 St Gildas Chapel PDD
This chapel of about AD 1600 stands against the rock and partly under it. It is said to cover a grotto where St Gildas slept when he first reached Castennec. He may have been accompanied by his companion Bieuzy, now the name of a village near Castennec
St Gildas Chapel Detail: at the front of the end walls of the original building there are carved faces, level with or close to the last row of slates. The one at the left faced forward, that at the right projected from the corner.
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Photos 4.9 St Gildas Chapel left and Photo 4.10 right RJD |
This Chapel is of the 16th century 1000 years after St Gildas arrived. Without detailed information about French church decorations of the period, speculation about the faces illustrated here would be pointless. Any information about these strange figures and the grotto inside the chapel would be welcome.
Long after the villagers recovered their idol Catholic bishops tried to have the idol destroyed. She was thrown into the river and somewhat damaged by hammers. Next year the harvest failed, which the peasants blamed on the disrespect shown to Er Groach Couard, the Old Woman of Houard. Her worshippers pulled her out with oxen and continued as before. Offerings to the statue were made to cure illnesses. Also a stone tank in front of it was said to be ‘used by newly weds’ to wash and by women to wash after birth. The objective of the cult seems to have been to promote health and fertility. As late as the 17th century AD, the Lord of Lannion took the statue to use as a garden ornament in the grounds of his estate at Quinipili not far away. He had the statue recut in a classical fashion, so it became known as the Venus of Quinipili. The affair is well documented and until the second half of the 18th century offerings were still surreptitiously being deposited where she was in the estate garden, according to Ogée’s Gazetteer of 1778/80 under Bieuzy, the nearest village to Castennec. The town of Lannion in Brittany is far from the estate near Bieuzy but it does have several covered alleys with the breasts and necklace motif on the stones.
For the original appearance of the Venus of Quinipili we have to rely on descriptions. These identify her as of a type, absent in Britain, called ‘statue menhir’ in France. In the one shown in the foreword and below the head is indicated by a bulge on the top of a slab of granite 2m tall. Her limbs and features are rudimentary or absent except for her breasts and either above or below them there is a necklace. There are also indications of a headband on the Venus of le Castel illustrated in the Foreword and below and of the end of a cape falling to the small of the back. This ‘Venus’ was recovered from under the nave of Le Castel Church on Guernsey in the 19th century AD. This church was first dedicated in about AD 1500 to Our Lady of Deliverance, now St Mary. The inference that the statue was still being worshipped in AD 1500 would not be out of place in Brittany where the Venus of Quinipili was worshipped much later.
A second statue on Guernsey, also illustrated below could have been a statue menhir. She now stands at the entrance to the churchyard of St Martin. She has a cape but no necklace. If she is a statue menhir it looks as if the face and shoulders have been recut.
A statue of the same kind but later, called the Lady of St Sernin, came from S-E France, shown in Map 1 to have been in the later phase of megaliths. She has attenuated arms and legs, also bare feet. A substantial cape is swept back over her shoulders. The breasts are clearly show shown below the cape with the necklace between them. Her bare toes are an archaic feature like living in a tent.
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| Photo 4. 11 Idol buried under church at Le Castel, Guernsey Man vyi | Photo 4.12 The Grandmother of the Cemetery St Martin’s Guernsey Man vyi (no necklace) | Photo 4.13 The Lady of St Sernin Raoul75 |
The motif on the pillars of monuments
The ‘breasts and necklace’ motif can also be found on the uprights
of some earlier Breton graves of the late neolithic called covered alleys. These were set up before 2500 BC. They usually had a side entrance at one end and a chamber at the other with a passage covered with stone slabs between. In Britain, where they are unknown, they are sometimes called ‘gallery graves’ but ‘covered alleys’, an exact translation of the French allées couvertes, will be used here as they are not graves in the modern sense.
Photo4.14 A row of motifs with necklaces below the breasts at Kerguntuil not far from Lannion PDD.
At Kermené en Guidel (Southern Brittany), a mound with a passage open until recent times, fragments of a statue menhir were found inside the mound, showing that it would originally have had breasts, possibly a necklace, and an even smaller vestige of arms than that of St Sernin. On the back there are short parallel vertical stripes that could be tassels. The finders thought she might have originally been standing on top of the mound but was destroyed by Christians and hidden in the passage.
More photographs of covered alleys in the Lannion area.
Photo 4.15 Prajou covered alley near Trebuerden HD
Photo 4.16 the roof slabs
Photo 4.17 the passage
Photo 4.18 The way in to the chamber, there was no formal entrance
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Photo 4.19 the chamber with the motif in relief in the background
Photo 4.18 Two pairs of different sizes in the previous photo.
Photo 4.19 a pair of breasts with part of a necklace
The last five photos show Prajou covered alley near Trebeurden Brittany. The chamber with the motifs on it is separated from the passage by a slab. The face of the slab in the chamber is covered from side to side ny two rectangular designs with rows of recessed dots parallel with the edges. They are separated by a paddle shaped object.
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Photo 4.20 Crec’h Quille covered alley
Photo 4.21 Crec’h Quille motif
This motif is also to be found in covered alleys at La Maison des Feins (Tressé, Ille de Villaine) and Mougau Bihan (Commana). There are also breasts and necklace motifs similar to those mentioned here in covered alleys of the Paris basin
Other pagan symbols buried under or otherwise incorporated in Christian structures.
Photo 4.22 Rudston Churchyard, Bridlington Steven Hardcastle
At Rudston in Yorkshire a monolith reputed to be the tallest in Britain at 7.6m is enclosed within the churchyard. The name Rudston, originally Rood Stone, suggests that the pagan stone may once have been marked with a cross. The church is dedicated to All Saints. The stone comes from 16 km away. The triple depressions on it on it are the fossilized footprints of a dinosaur. Their similarity to the markings called cupmarks on other monuments may have influenced the selection of this particular stone. The illustration shows it with a lead cap to prevent further deterioration. This is another massive standing stone outside the Atlantic coastal culture and again in Yorkshire.
Photo 4.23 La Hougou Bie Jersey JHD
La Hougue Bie on the island of Jersey is a passage grave with the passage roughly facing east, that is to the rising sun at equinoxes. It has two chapels on top. The one visible over the entrance is dedicated to Our Lady of Brightness. The doorway directly above the entrance to the passage is to the crypt, not the chapel.
Photo 4.24 Holywell Flintshire Photo by Tom Oates This is one of many healing springs now dedicated to a saint. The spring is said to have gushed from the ground where a saint’s blood fell when she was decapitated. A pagan precedent is referred to in the Life of St David below.
Photo 4.25 Knowlton Church Dorset Photo Chris Gunns
Knowlton church is built inside a ‘henge’ a circular enclosure with a substantial bank still standing outside the deep ditch. This circle is the middle one of three and its diameter is 96m, the largest being 244m. The ‘knoll’ the village is named after is a prehistoric mound still 6 m high and including its surrounding ditch with outside bank is 150m across. Building a church within a substantial banked enclosure, like some others with circular churchyards, particularly in Wales, may have been intended to combat the paganism of the original structure, here in the 12th century AD apparently still a force to be reckoned with.
Photo 4.26 St David’s Cathedral Alan Thomas
This cathedral, like Chartres, replaces a monastery built over a spring. Note Clegyr Boia on the horizon to the left of the Cathedral.
The choice of site is described in The Life of St David more thoroughly than at Chartres, though not written down until centuries after the death of the saint.
Photo 4.27 Clegyr Boia Roger W Haworth
The story starts in a gloomy crag, called Clegyr Boia after its ‘Irish’ owner, which overlooks the present Cathedral from a distance of about 1.5km. The unnamed wife of Boia took her niece to gather nuts in Hodnant. While there she put Dunawd’s head on her lap to braid her hair. She then cut Dunawd’s throat and where her blood fell a spring gushed from the ground. Dunawd’s martyrium, as this spring became known, was famous for healing. As the name Hodnant means ‘pleasant valley’ it gives a clue to the site of this event. Looking from the crag today over a windswept landscape it is obvious that ‘pleasant valley’ is the sheltered area where St David’s Cathedral an the small twn of that name now stands. Nowhere else in sight of Clegyr Boia would afford enough protection for hazel nuts, significant to the Celts, to grow.
Photo 4.28 Pleasant Valley JHD
St David, like St Gildas, decided to convert the Welsh people by building a monastery over a cult site. Though not stated in the Life of St David, Dunawd’s spring, of which Boia’s wife, would have been the patron or more likely the goddess would fit the description. The women who would normally have danced naked in the spring would have been displaced to the nearby stream. There, in an attempt to seduce the monks, they displayed love’s alluring embraces and made gestures simulating coition. This was a test for the monks but they were not persuaded to join in the ritual revels of the earlier occupants of the site. Some could not abide the molestations of the licentious sluts and wished to leave, but David steadied them and a monastery was built where the cathedral now stands, on an isolated promontory and with a spring renamed after St David that ran under the cathedral until it was blocked in the nineteenth century. As a result of the saint’s determination to eradicate a pagan cult the city of St David’s is by far the smallest cathedral city in Britain, with a population of about 2000 and the furthest from any populated area. The application of the principle described earlier as ‘conversion by capture’ has resulted in many other springs being called after saints.
Archaeological investigations at Clegyr Boia show that it was occupied in the Neolithic and again in the Iron Age.
At a small chapel at Ysbyty Cynfyn in Cardigan there are some large stones built into the churchyard wall and outside the wall a standing stone 3m high. There are probably enough standing stones about to suggest the presence of a pagan site but whether the wall follows the course of an original stone circle is open to doubt. The Church is dedicated to St John.
At a chapel at Locoal Mendon in the Morbihan there is, or perhaps was, the carving of a prehistoric axe, of the type carved on the Great Broken Menhir, cut from a neolithic stone and set into the wall over the door. The dedication is to St John the Baptist, who is regarded as the saint of midsummer,
A large standing stone at St Uzec at Pleumeur Bodou in the Côte d’Armor has a cross on top and is engraved with Christian symbols; another large monolith treated in the same way with a cross on top and figures of the 12 apostles is at Rungleo, Daoulas, Dept of Brest; Gavrinis is the most spectacular find under a chapel; and near Lannion in Côte d’Armor, the transept of a church is built over the stones of a neolithic dolmen 4 or 5m long by2m wide, which acts as a crypt. The present church is not old and the age of its precursor is not known. Seven skeletons found in the dolmen are supposed to have been those of saints. Not in the coastal area, Chartres cathedral in France is built over a deep well.
Pagan objects claimed for Christianity by being incorporated in a Christian building or marked by a Christian symbol identify cults that were still worshipped in AD 500 and later but that does not identify the origin of a cult, which is often neolithic.
Eighty years ago Allcroft in The Circle and the Cross suggested that many Welsh churches with circular churchyards and some in England were built on pagan sites. With so many ‘possibles’ there is a good chance that he was correct in some. For instance St Mary’s Church at Chithurst in Suffolk is said to be built on a mound but whether that is of neolithic origin is unknown.
Probably the most remarkable find was in 1836 when the owner of Gavrinis Island found a chapel had been built on top of the mound that covered the great passage grave
Analysis
There are numerous examples of much earlier cult sites being used by later people with different structures. This is sometimes regarded as respecting the sanctity of the site but replacement could be an alternative. The tactics of the missionaries were definitely a policy of replacement.
From the point of view of this book the well-documented stone Venus of Quinipili is the most important neolithic object in Brittany because the villagers recovered it and went on worshipping it through centuries of literacy into the eighteenth century. During this period the beliefs and tenacity of her worshippers were well documented.
Characteristics of pagan worship
At Chartres there was the idol of a pregnant female in addition to the well. She and the Venus of Quinipili signified fertility.
At St David’s and Quinipili fertility is again associated with water. Christianized springs are common, particularly in Wales where Francis Jones records 200 holy wells. They are frequently associated with healing.
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At a chapel at Locoal Mendon in the Morbihan there is the carving of a prehistoric axe, of the type carved on the Great Broken Menhir, cut from a neolithic stone and set into the wall over the door. The dedication is to St John the Baptist, who is regarded as the saint of midsummer.
Eighty years ago Allcroft in The Circle and the Cross suggested that many Welsh churches with circular churchyards and some in England were built on pagan sites. With so many ‘possibles’ there is a good chance that he was correct in some. For instance St Mary’s Church at Chithurst in Suffolk is said to be built on a mound but whether that is of neolithic origin is unknown.
Probably the most remarkable find was in 1836 when the owner of Gavrinis Island found the great passage grave had been buried under a chapel.
Analysis
There are numerous examples not shown here of much earlier cult sites being used by later people with different structures. This is sometimes regarded as respecting the sanctity of the site but replacement could be an alternative. The tactics of the missionaries were definitely a policy of replacement.
From the point of view of this book the burials under chapels of statues menhir with the breasts and necklace of Quinipili and le Castel are within the scope of the book, as are the passage graves la Hougue Bie and Gavrinis. At Knowlton it is a henge and in the churyard at Knowlton the tall monolith would be sat home in Chapter 2b.
At Chartres there was the idol of a pregnant female in addition to the well. She may have signified fertility. At St David’s and Quinipili fertility is again associated with water and. Christianized springs are common, particularly in Wales where Francis Jones records 200 holy wells. They are frequently associated with healing.