For centuries, the Cerne Giant, an enigmatic chalk figure towering 180 feet tall on an English hillside, has captivated imaginations with its imposing presence and mysterious origins. Was it a tribute to Hercules, Saint Eadwold, or a pagan deity misunderstood through time?
A new paper in Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies proposes that the Cerne Giant can be dated to the early Middle Ages, allowing its cultural context and significance to be more clearly understood. “The Cerne Giant in its Early Medieval Context,” by Thomas Morcom and Helen Gittos, notes that previous attempts to date the giant placed its creation either in prehistory or the early modern period. Using optically stimulated luminescence, researchers for the National Trust now theorize that the hillside monument was constructed between 700 and 1100 A.D., potentially serving as a mustering site for West Saxon armies.
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Photo by Nigel Mykura / Cerne Abbas Giant Renovation (8) / CC BY-SA 2.0
This dating breakthrough sheds new light on various historical interpretations of the Cerne Giant’s identity. Many scholars had posited that the giant was modeled on Hercules. The authors believe this to be the case as well, and although he was a figure from Greek mythology, he still resonated with the people of ninth-century England. They explain:
Interest in Hercules did not end in antiquity. He continued to be a well-known cultural figure throughout the Middle Ages. As in the classical past, he remained a character about whom views varied. At one extreme, he was a Christ-like figure, who defeated death, overcame the guardian of the underworld, Cerberus, and was rejuvenated by eating apples from the tree of the Hesperides. At another extreme, he was a personification of vice. And sometimes he was portrayed more ambivalently as a mortal hero, not a god, whose great deeds could be emulated in spite of his depravity.
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While Hercules may have been popular in ninth-century England, that wasn’t the case in the tenth century. It was also around this time that a Benedictine monastery was founded in Cerne. By the eleventh century this monastic community became wealthy, partly as it was the home to relics from Saint Eadwold. Eadwold (c.835 – 900) was said to be the brother of Edmund, King of East Anglia (855-869) but lived his life as hermit.
Morcom and Gittos suggest that it was these monks who repurposed the chalk drawing of Hercules to be that of a saint. They write:
The shift from Hercules to Eadwold might have been inadvertent, occasioned by a period in which the chalk outline fell into disrepair and the figure’s original function was forgotten. This would fit with changes that have been proposed in the mustering system during the tenth century. It is more likely, though, that the giant was intentionally reidentified by the monastic community… This would mean that the reinterpretation of the giant as Eadwold by the monks of Cerne was an accelerated, intellectual endeavor, making use of established hagiographic motifs to bring the pre-existing figure on the hillside into line with their own agenda.
We would probably have known the Cerne Giant as a depiction of Eadwold, but the saint suffered the same fate of Hercules: he went out of fashion in the Later Middle Ages. His story and his connection to the chalk figure became obscured with folklore about the giant emerging such a link to the pagan god Helith. The authors argue that this identification was due to a thirteenth-century misreading of a Latin account.
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The article, “The Cerne Giant in Its Early Medieval Context,” by Thomas Morcom and Helen Gittos appears in Speculum. Click here to read it.
This September, the Dorset Museum and Art Gallery is hosting a one-day conference on ‘Cerne Giant and other Wessex Hill Figures’. Click here to learn more about it.
For centuries, the Cerne Giant, an enigmatic chalk figure towering 180 feet tall on an English hillside, has captivated imaginations with its imposing presence and mysterious origins. Was it a tribute to Hercules, Saint Eadwold, or a pagan deity misunderstood through time?
A new paper in Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies proposes that the Cerne Giant can be dated to the early Middle Ages, allowing its cultural context and significance to be more clearly understood. “The Cerne Giant in its Early Medieval Context,” by Thomas Morcom and Helen Gittos, notes that previous attempts to date the giant placed its creation either in prehistory or the early modern period. Using optically stimulated luminescence, researchers for the National Trust now theorize that the hillside monument was constructed between 700 and 1100 A.D., potentially serving as a mustering site for West Saxon armies.
This dating breakthrough sheds new light on various historical interpretations of the Cerne Giant’s identity. Many scholars had posited that the giant was modeled on Hercules. The authors believe this to be the case as well, and although he was a figure from Greek mythology, he still resonated with the people of ninth-century England. They explain:
Interest in Hercules did not end in antiquity. He continued to be a well-known cultural figure throughout the Middle Ages. As in the classical past, he remained a character about whom views varied. At one extreme, he was a Christ-like figure, who defeated death, overcame the guardian of the underworld, Cerberus, and was rejuvenated by eating apples from the tree of the Hesperides. At another extreme, he was a personification of vice. And sometimes he was portrayed more ambivalently as a mortal hero, not a god, whose great deeds could be emulated in spite of his depravity.
While Hercules may have been popular in ninth-century England, that wasn’t the case in the tenth century. It was also around this time that a Benedictine monastery was founded in Cerne. By the eleventh century this monastic community became wealthy, partly as it was the home to relics from Saint Eadwold. Eadwold (c.835 – 900) was said to be the brother of Edmund, King of East Anglia (855-869) but lived his life as hermit.
Morcom and Gittos suggest that it was these monks who repurposed the chalk drawing of Hercules to be that of a saint. They write:
The shift from Hercules to Eadwold might have been inadvertent, occasioned by a period in which the chalk outline fell into disrepair and the figure’s original function was forgotten. This would fit with changes that have been proposed in the mustering system during the tenth century. It is more likely, though, that the giant was intentionally reidentified by the monastic community… This would mean that the reinterpretation of the giant as Eadwold by the monks of Cerne was an accelerated, intellectual endeavor, making use of established hagiographic motifs to bring the pre-existing figure on the hillside into line with their own agenda.
We would probably have known the Cerne Giant as a depiction of Eadwold, but the saint suffered the same fate of Hercules: he went out of fashion in the Later Middle Ages. His story and his connection to the chalk figure became obscured with folklore about the giant emerging such a link to the pagan god Helith. The authors argue that this identification was due to a thirteenth-century misreading of a Latin account.
The article, “The Cerne Giant in Its Early Medieval Context,” by Thomas Morcom and Helen Gittos appears in Speculum. Click here to read it.
This September, the Dorset Museum and Art Gallery is hosting a one-day conference on ‘Cerne Giant and other Wessex Hill Figures’. Click here to learn more about it.
Top Image: Photo by Hardo Müller / Flickr
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