Our
myths and rites tried to establish a convergence between the works of
man and images of an ordered cosmos.
Thus, the circular arrangement
of the solar temple at Stonehenge mirrored the order of the world,
symbolized by the journey of the sun, its eternal return at the end
of night and winter - an image of the ring of life that joins birth
to death, and of the eternal cycle of the seasons.
Likewise, the Greek temples were born from the sacred groves of our Hyperborean ancestors. Strabo says that the "poets embellish things, calling all sacred precincts 'sacred groves'", even if they are bare of trees." Archaeological research has shown that the columns of the Greek archaic temples were made from tree trunks. The analogy between temple and sacred forest stirs us. It was in the consecrated woodlands that the roughly hewn effigies of divinities were first placed. Pausanias lists the varieties of trees that best suited sacred copses: oak trees, ashes, plane trees, olive trees, pine trees, cypresses. Echoing more ancient authors, Varro also tells us that a temple is "a space bounded by trees." The sacred grove formed the surrounding enclosure, the peristasis of the divine realm. It gave rise to the peristyle characteristic of the Greek temple of the classical period. The latter is a stylized evocation of the primordial forest, the dwelling place of the gods of the Greek pantheon. Architecture represents the place in divine space ('numen inest', as Ovid calls it) where sacredness gathers. The outer colonnade is an image of vegetation, its trunks rising from the ground to form, under the light of the sun, a place where men and gods converge. At Olympia, the venerable temple of Hera, built in the eighth century B.C.E., allows us to directly observe the 'petrification' of the external portico, initially built in wood, its logs then progressively replaced by Doric stone columns. That is how a kind of stylized forest followed the sanctuaries when they abandoned the realm of untamed nature and began instead to occupy the centre of cities.
Likewise, the Greek temples were born from the sacred groves of our Hyperborean ancestors. Strabo says that the "poets embellish things, calling all sacred precincts 'sacred groves'", even if they are bare of trees." Archaeological research has shown that the columns of the Greek archaic temples were made from tree trunks. The analogy between temple and sacred forest stirs us. It was in the consecrated woodlands that the roughly hewn effigies of divinities were first placed. Pausanias lists the varieties of trees that best suited sacred copses: oak trees, ashes, plane trees, olive trees, pine trees, cypresses. Echoing more ancient authors, Varro also tells us that a temple is "a space bounded by trees." The sacred grove formed the surrounding enclosure, the peristasis of the divine realm. It gave rise to the peristyle characteristic of the Greek temple of the classical period. The latter is a stylized evocation of the primordial forest, the dwelling place of the gods of the Greek pantheon. Architecture represents the place in divine space ('numen inest', as Ovid calls it) where sacredness gathers. The outer colonnade is an image of vegetation, its trunks rising from the ground to form, under the light of the sun, a place where men and gods converge. At Olympia, the venerable temple of Hera, built in the eighth century B.C.E., allows us to directly observe the 'petrification' of the external portico, initially built in wood, its logs then progressively replaced by Doric stone columns. That is how a kind of stylized forest followed the sanctuaries when they abandoned the realm of untamed nature and began instead to occupy the centre of cities.
Despite the rifts within the ancient European order introduced by biblical interpretations, the construction of Romanic and Gothic churches continued to follow the old symbolism. Built over ancient sacred sites, they also safeguarded their continuance (1). They were still 'oriented' towards the rising sun, and their carvings teemed with a fantastic bestiary. Rising imposingly, the stone forest of the Romanic and Gothic naves were still a transposition of the ancient sacred forests.
(1) In 1711, four pillars called "nautes", from the first century C.E., were discovered under the choir of the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris. They represented the Celtic divinities once celebrated in a Gallo-Roman temple, on the site of which the Christian cathedral was built twelve centuries later.
Translated by Giuliano Adriano Malvicini
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