In my first year at University I remember seeing a slideshow of northern European architecture. The lecturer commented that the gargoyles on top of the churches were actually totems of the older gods who were there just in case this new one didn’t work out. Indeed the further north you went into Europe during the Middle Ages (and even later) the more Christianity was a thin veneer over the older faiths. This poem explores this. The narrator is a young priest heading north…
Holy Orders
at first I did not see the way
they moved their mouths
during mass, as though
they didn’t know the words
their vulgar tongues
unable to grapple the
language
as if behind the prayers & chants
there was worship of something
other
*
sent here to these northern wastes
the vineyards & cypresses
giving way to tall angular trees
& snow
when I saw the church
they were there –
the old gods
grinning down
*
I see them process
out of the village
to worship one of their
wild-wood demons
they beckon to follow
I stay in my church
lose myself
in holy scripture
*
I imagine them
copulating over
some profane altar
the word of God
is not strong enough
here
Lord lead them from the Abyss!
*
a pounding comes at the church doors
until they explode
& a dark bestial god
enters my saviour’s house
I grasp the brass cross
but the image of my dear lord
does not offer sanctuary
the dark one comes for me…
I awake pouring with sweat
the wind whistling
through the walls
I put on my woolen robes & pray
until the dawn
*
I’m sailing toward
an unknown
the edge of the world
drifts
Joanne Fisher
This poem first appeared on this blog in November 2017.
Originally published in JAAM.
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©2019 Joanne Fisher
joanne the geek 
Like this. smacks of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History in which he tells of the conversion of Anglo-Saxon England… and Raedwald, king of the East Angles, had two altars in his church. One Christian, one pagan.
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I think that’s what I was aiming for 🙂
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Thought it was 🙂
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A woman came up to me from Nigeria and a girl friend from Algeria as we took turns on a whisky bottle and smoked in the gardens of the Notre Dame of Geneva in Switzerland around 2005. Happy to see us she said and this was not a compliment we expected. We Blushing. She sat for a while and said: do you know why I and my friend who just left are here? Clearly we didn’t want more. But she continued, this church was built on the shrine of the former God we worshipped. I’m from Italy and my l8tr husband’s family worships that God. We don’t go into the church we just say our prayers in the gardens. Never mind, referring to our habit, you’re both welcome. Truly, I’ve never felt better doing such a thing. We smiled and she walked away.
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I read (don’t remember where, only some years ago) that when work was done to after fire-damage (in early 1950s, I think it was), the altar was moved. And inside it was found a huge phallic image.
Early missionaries carrying the Christian message north across Europe were specifically and explicitly told not to destroy the old religion, but to accommodate it into the new. Thus many early Christian sites (e.g. Notre Dame) are built on the sites of the old.
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The Romans tended to assimilate the religions of the conquered. This included Greek “mythology” and various Celtic and Nordic rites and beliefs.
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Wow – this is incredibly dark and sensational! I’d submit this one to a Halloween or horror publication, tbh.
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Thanks 🙂
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