Four-bodies One-headed Lion (12th Century)

The mystical and mythological meaning of the Romanesque relief is a part of “ornamenta ecclesiae” as an interlacement of the duality of good and evil. The explanation of unusual, fantastic figural interlacements offered by mediaeval iconography with its symbolic figures is an intricate mental pattern. The uniformity of the world order (the four elements of paganism) in the figure of the virtue of a four-bodied lion, devouring its own bodies, is insufficient on the path towards absolute godly revelation; that could be one of the speculative esoteric explanations of the mediaeval learned man. The lion represents a double virtue: the mercilessness and power of religion.