This beautifully illustrated landmark monograph (with more than five dozen specially commissioned original colour photographs) compellingly connects the ‘Green Man’ phenomenon in medieval England to a specific Christian meaning and understanding, rather than a mysterious and undefined pagan one. The meaning and significance attached to such Green Man depictions would have been apparent to almost all churchgoing medieval folk, from the patrons who commissioned them and the stonemasons and woodcarvers who created them, to the monks, clergy and worshipping community well-versed in biblical stories and associated Christian lore and legend that helped to flesh out and illuminate Scripture—stories and legends long-since forgotten by the majority today. The visual narrative contained in the art and craft of medieval churches brought such stories to life in a meaningful way for everyone, the literate and illiterate alike.

Drawing on a wealth of extant examples, the author, who has researched this subject over the past decade, connects Green Man iconography with the Christian legends and hagiographies of Adam, the Garden of Eden, the Quest of Seth, and the various legends of the cross, contained in such medieval writings as Jacobus Voragine’s The Golden Legend and Honorius of Autun’s Imago mundi. The author has visited a large sample of medieval cathedrals and parish churches throughout the length and breadth of England in his search of such illustrative evidence and offers a selection of those findings and conclusions here.

This monograph will provide libraries, research students and those interested in the study of church history, symbolism and the iconography of church motifs with an exquisite, authoritative and readily accessible reference source on this subject. It illustrates that the occurrences of the Green Man motif, in its various particular forms in the medieval cathedrals and churches of England, prevalent in the centuries following the Norman Conquest of 1066 and before the English Reformation of the 1530s, typically have associations with a specific Christian context and tradition, rather than an unspecific and archetypal pagan one.

Concise Overview:

Chapter One discusses the assumption of pagan origins and examines some proposed Green Man archetypes.

Chapter Two looks at the new expression of Romanesque style in the churches and cathedrals of England following the Norman Conquest.

Chapter Three takes us through the various phases of the Gothic period of church architecture and decoration, introducing an emphasis on space, light and decoration.

Chapter Four develops the historical context of various medieval cathedrals and churches and the contribution of illustrators, stonemasons and wood carvers that worked in them.

Chapter Five looks at inspiration in church iconography, from Scripture, apocrypha and hagiography.

Chapter Six considers Green Man close encounters and false trails in literature and folklore.

Chapter Seven offers a conclusion and points to discovered significance in the Green Man motif.

A colour plates section of some 69 photographs on 40 pages follows the final chapter.

These are followed by a Glossary relating to church terminology and a final section of selected Green Man locations in England with historical and architectural commentary.

Stephen Miller is a visual arts and theology scholar who has been fascinated with researching this subject 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 in art and theology, and is the author of the books The Word Made Visible in the Painted Image (2016) and The Book of Angels: Seen and Unseen (2019). His research interests focus on the theology of images.

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