Many people claim to have seen big cats roaming the countryside. They write to the papers, they talk to their disbelieving friends, and frankly nowadays no-one takes that much notice. But imagine you saw a large furry animal emerging from the forest with three paws and one human hand. Furthermore, it has a bearded human head with a golden light shining like a halo around it. Then you would have grounds to wonder what on earth was going on, and the tabloids would pay you a small fortune for the story, especially if you had managed to take a picture.

Now such a creature does exist, and has adorned a wall in St. Hubert’s Chapel at Idsworth, high above the London to Portsmouth railway line, for nearly seven hundred years. Exactly what he is has puzzled art historians and academics ever since he was revealed beneath a coat of limewash in the middle of the nineteenth century, having been obliterated at the time of the Reformation.

The strange creature, surrounded by huntsmen, was at first thought to represent the conversion of St. Hubert, but this was discounted soon afterwards, and both the Archaeological Journal and the authoritative Victoria County History of Hampshire claimed that it represented the Saint curing the lycanthrope, a man whose insanity had caused him to believe that he was a wolf.

This identification of the chapel with St Hubert led to its re-dedication to him, rather than St. Peter, and to claims, which could well be correct, that it was used as a hunting chapel by Godwin, the Saxon Earl of Wessex before the Norman Conquest.

Modern scholars, however, delving deep into mediaeval literature, claim that no such legend exists in connection with St. Hubert, and have put forward another interpretation. They suggest that the picture shows the cure of the Hairy Anchorite, who had first seduced the daughter of a king and then murdered her. He performed the penance of eating grass and walking on all fours, becoming hairy like an animal, until eventually he was discovered by huntsmen, to whom he confessed his crime.

It has even been suggested that there may be a link between this and John the Baptist, scenes from whose life are depicted in the rest of the painting. Indeed, the strange creature’s hind legs emerge from between the legs of the Baptist at the moment of his arrest.

The remaining scenes are much less distinct, but show, on the lower tier of painting, his Imprisonment and the Feast of Herod. Salome, executing a sword dance in the centre of the composition, is dressed in a red kirtle, and bends backward so her head almost touches the ground. In each hand she holds a sword, whilst a dagger is suspended above her upturned face. Behind, Herod and Herodias are presented separately with the severed head on a plate. Whatever allegorical interpretations there may be, looking at these extraordinarily vivid paintings today gives us an uncanny glimpse into the minds if our predecessors who decorated these walls all those years ago and whose work still exercises the minds of scholars today.

Tom Muckley, October 2005

This article was originally published by the Petersfield Post

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