Pieve Terzagni is a small hamlet in the lower Po Valley, now part of the municipality of Pescarolo ed Uniti. It is home to a treasure of art and symbolism that has long been hidden in the mists of oblivion. In the presbytery of the church of San Giovanni Decollato, fragments of a forgotten past reappear in the form of tiles and colors from a precious medieval mosaic, where enigmatic writings, fantastic animals, and sacred symbols intertwine in an ancient and obscure language. Matilda of Canossa seems to have commissioned the church of Pieve Terzagni between the 11th and 12th centuries, establishing it as an important spiritual and civil centre for the communities in this part of the Cremona area.
The mosaic in the church of San Giovanni Decollato in Pieve Terzagni
At first glance, the church of San Giovanni Decollato appears less ancient than it actually is. Baroque restorations work carried out during the 17th and 18th centuries altered the façade and most of the architectural decorations. The original Romanesque structure had a basilica layout with three naves. It exuded a sense of sober elegance and refined spaciousness. Only one column, some decorations and, above all, the remains of the grandiose floor mosaic that covered the presbytery have survived from the medieval church.
The mosaic, which was created after around 11501, is composed of hundreds of black and white tiles. Only in some areas is there a hint of subtle colouring. Unfortunately, the Baroque restoration damaged the work, making it difficult to understand. In addition, many of its tiles have been lost, and with them, the original iconographic composition conceived by the skilled mosaic masters who created it.
A reconstruction of the mosaic floor was proposed by Aus’m Weerth, who visited the church in 18732. The German archaeologist’s drawing shows that the placement of a bulky altar obliterated part of the work at the beginning of the nave. The mosaic in the presbytery, however, appears to be in much better condition. With the exception of the central area, the figures and corresponding captions are still clearly legible.
The mosaic in the presbytery of the parish church in Pieve Terzagni
The presbytery, the most sacred place in the church, used for liturgical functions, housed in the Middle Ages a fascinating mosaic carpet depicting symbolic representations of the four evangelists. The creatures of the Tetramorph, namely the lion of Mark, the eagle of John, the ox of Luke and the angel of Matthew, are at the four corners of the area, a metaphor for the Word of God reaching the ends of the Earth. Between them are representations, taken from illustrated bestiaries, of a wild beast and, above all, a griffin. This animal, with the head of an eagle and the body of a lion, was a figure of Christ. In fact, it summarised his dual nature, heavenly and earthly, as the son of God.
Facing the nave is the image of the protomartyr Stephen. He stands under a graceful arcade with columns and capitals, flanked by crosses with equal arms. The solemn figure of the saint, the first deacon of the Church, has his ecclesiastical insignia in Greek (Stephanus diakwuws). In the mosaic representation in Pieve Terzagni, Saint Stephen holds the book of the Gospels. Thus, in all likelihood, he indicated the position of the lectern for the liturgical proclamation of the Holy Scriptures.
Depictions of vices and sins in the nave
At the beginning of the central nave, the mosaic floor features a series of wild beasts and monsters, symbolising human vices and sins. The creatures are inscribed within circular clipei and arranged in a grid of twelve squares. Among these, we can see: a seductive two-tailed siren, personifying lust; an animal resembling a donkey, which in the Middle Ages symbolised sloth; several birds, such as a turkey and a rooster; various felines, a metaphor for pride; and a wolf, associated in popular tradition with avarice and heresy. The presence of this varied bestiary was functional to the liturgies that took place in the church. In this way, the faithful proceeding towards the altar had to walk over their vices, purifying themselves. Indeed, there are twelve animals, a number that expresses totality in Christian symbolism. Through the sacrifice of Christ, the Eucharistic rite takes on universal value, redeeming all of humanity.
The juxtaposition of real animals with fantastical ones should come as no surprise. For people in the Middle Ages, it was not important whether such creatures really existed, but rather their symbolic meaning. Furthermore, knowledge of the natural world was very limited. Uncommon animals were known only through the tales of distant travellers, were described in a few religious texts and were often interpreted in a completely imaginative way. The representations in the medieval bestiary, therefore, were not always faithful to reality. Rather, it tended to grotesquely accentuate one or another quality depending on the message to be conveyed.
The Sator Square
Among the tiles of the floor mosaic, which were removed and randomly rearranged near the current lectern, one can recognise what remains of the word “rotas“. It is a fragment of the Sator Square. This famous Latin inscription is one of the greatest mysteries of archaeology. Scholars have found the epigraph in a wide range of sites across Europe, Asia Minor and Africa from the classical and medieval periods. It consists of five words of five letters each: “sator arepo tenet opera rotas“. The oldest inscription of the Sator was discovered in Pompeii, a city that was destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.
The Sator Square is a palindrome: we can read it in all directions. This characteristic has contributed to its popularity as a linguistic game and, above all, as a magical talisman, to which people have attributed apotropaic powers. Scholars have long debated its meaning and interpretations are not unanimous because of the term arepo. Arepo is a hapax legomenon, meaning that it does not appear in any other Latin text. Thus, its significance is still unknown. Assuming that it is a proper name, the translation is: “The sower Arepo carefully holds the wheels”3. For other authors, such as Jérôme Carcopino, arepo was an instrumental ablative derived from the Gallic arepennis, which referred to the plough: “The sower, with the plough, carefully holds the wheels”4.
The Sator in the church of Pieve Terzagni
But what did the Sator square mean in the Christian mosaic of Pieve Terzagni? In his 1873 reconstruction, Ernst Aus’m Weerth placed the epigraph at the centre of the sacred area of the presbytery, highlighting its important liturgical function. In this way, it was located directly in front of the solemn seat of the presbyter. The palindromic inscription probably served to indicate the position of the mobile altar on which the priest performed the Eucharistic sacrifice. For the community of worshippers who attended the church of San Giovanni Decollato, the Sator therefore had a Christological value.
At the same time, the epigraph constituted a sort of sacred invocation linked to the power of Holy Scripture. As narrated in the Gospels, in fact, the sower (sator) is God and the seed is his word, which must be spread in all directions of the cosmos. It is no coincidence that the symbols of the four evangelists surrounded the Sator inscription. Sacred Scripture is like the Merkavah of the prophet Ezekiel, the chariot of fire driven by four beings resembling the Tetramorph, which reaches all corners of the Earth with its wheels.
And in the fire was what looked like four living creatures. In appearance their form was human, but each of them had four faces and four wings […]. Their faces looked like this: Each of the four had the face of a human being, and on the right side each had the face of a lion, and on the left the face of an ox; each also had the face of an eagle […]. “When the living creatures moved, the wheels beside them moved; and when the living creatures rose from the ground, the wheels also rose. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, and the wheels would rise along with them, because the spirit of the living creatures was in the wheels”.
Book of Ezekiel 1:5-6; 1:10; 1:19-20
Samuele Corrente Naso
Notes
- M. Conte, La Chiesa e il Mosaico di Pieve S. Giacomo, 1976. ↩︎
- E. Aus’m Weerth, Der Mosaikboden in St. Gereon zu Cöln, 1873. ↩︎
- R. G. Collingwood, The Archaeology of Roman Britain, London, 1930. ↩︎
- J. Carcopino, Le Christianisme secret du “carré magique”, Museum Helveticum, vol. 5, n. 1, 1948. ↩︎
A special acknowledgment to the religious authorities who allowed us to visit the church of San Giovanni Decollato and for their kind availability.
