Bruce Thompson51

Is the Green Man a Christian symbol? In 2025 a Church of England consistory court ruled there was a strong body of evidence that the Green Man was a Christian symbol, and therefore allowed one to be carved on a gravestone in Gloucestershire. But there is a fundamental problem. The court relied in part on the claim that medieval people regarded the Green Man as a Christian symbol. Yet there is no surviving medieval evidence to support this claim. We simply do not know what the medieval world thought of these mysterious, foliage-covered faces. This article investigates the historical evidence underpinning the judgment, tracing images of the Green Man from pagan antiquity, through medieval churches and cathedrals, to its surprising appearance on King Charles III's coronation invitation. Along the way it exposes serious problems with the historical scholarship on which the court relied. Whether the Green Man should be permitted in a Christian churchyard is a matter for the Church of England. But how a Church of England court declared it to have been a medieval Christian symbol is historically and legally problematic. My article, 'The Enigma of the Green Man', appears in the October 2026 issue of Art Antiquity and Law, pp. 189-213, published by the @IAL_art_law