Break your head over this

Recently we attended a lecture with the subject “le culte celte des têtes coupées” with as a starting point a few sculpted heads embedded in the walls of the Romanesque church of Santilly.

Santilly

The origins of these sort of sculptures is obscure, and is often attributed to the Celts during the Gallo-Roman period. The lecture was trying to establish a link between these heads and head hunters or “simple” beheadings, from the head hunters in Papua New-Guinea via Indian tribes in South America to Greek and Roman human sacrifices. The whole story had “Chariots of the Gods” by von Däniken written all over it.

Modillons - Saint-Laurent-en-Brionnais

The lecture still left me with the question what is the background of these sort of sculptures. And here I am not talking of the sculpted modillons acting as consoles at the edge of a church roof (e.g. Saint-Laurent-en-Brionnais). They sometimes show different, often grotesque heads, but also depict animals, geometric patterns, etc. These sort of decorations do not seem to be illogical when a sculptor wants to decorate relatively small pieces of stone.
Another example is the tympanum of the church in Ormes. That is, again according certain sources, a remnant of Gallo-Roman (in origin Celtic) devotion, which existed for quite some time parallel to Christianity, certainly in the French country side.

Sucellus - Ormes

This head is supposed to be the god Sucellus, the god with the mallet. And for an agnostic contemplator there is not much difference between a Majestas Domini on a tympanum and a God with a mallet.
I am actually more intrigued by the solitary heads, seemingly without any logic attached to the walls of churches or bell towers. An interesting example can be seen on the bell tower of the church in Saint-Gengoux-le-National.
One can find them on a relatively big number of Romanesque churches in Saône-et-Loire. He who can explain their origin and background, let him speak up….

Saint-Gengoux-le-National

The link to the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle can be found here.