Stone sculpture (present location), Callan, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Stone Monuments
A fragment of carved stone in Callan's Roman Catholic church holds a small puzzle that has occupied at least one scholar for decades.
The relief panel shows a robed ecclesiastic, dressed in a chasuble worn over an alb, the layered liturgical vestments of a medieval cleric, with one hand raised in blessing and the other gripping what may be a spear or crozier. Beneath him, to his lower right, crouches a creature whose head has been broken away entirely, leaving its identity genuinely open to debate.
The sculpture was moved to its present location in the early nineteenth century, having originally formed part of the medieval church of St Mary's, which stands roughly 190 metres to the north-east on Green Street. Helen Roe, writing in 1979, interpreted the scene as the cleric impaling a dragon or serpent, a familiar motif in medieval Christian iconography linking a holy figure to the defeat of evil. The identification is not straightforward, however. The creature's surviving features, pointed claws, a tail, and a general form that suggests a quadruped, seem closer to a griffin than a serpent, and its position does not fall neatly in line with the spear or crozier. Above the creature there is additional decoration in relief, apparently an abstract vegetal design, though the damage makes it difficult to read with confidence. The panel has suffered considerably: the upper portion, including most of the cleric's head, is gone, as is much of the left side and the lower section. Only a plain border running along the right edge of the panel survives intact.
What remains is a fragment that raises more questions than it answers. The exact identity of the figure, the nature of the creature beneath him, and the original context of the carving within St Mary's are all unresolved. The move to the present church preserved the stone, but the loss of so much of its surface means that the scene it once depicted can only be partially reconstructed.