A Pagan God in the Heart of Christianity
Few would expect to find the roots of Celtic paganism buried in the heart of Christianity. Yet, in the last century, excavations in the square in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris revealed precisely this: two bas-reliefs of ancient Gallic deities, Cernunnos, the horned god lord of nature, and Hesus, his martial counterpart.

History, as we know, loves irony. And it’s difficult to imagine a more biting irony than that of a temple of Christianity, the symbol par excellence of the submission of paganism, revealing in its immediate vicinity the traces of those very deities it believed it had erased.
This discovery is not simply an archaeological anecdote, but the starting point for a broader reflection. Pre-Christian myths did not simply disappear. To survive the tide of the new dominant faith, they had to mix, camouflage themselves, and transform, insinuating themselves into the folds of new traditions. In this article, we will follow the traces of one of these archetypal figures, that of the Horned God. A journey that will take us from the Gallo-Roman foundations of Paris to the frightening masks of Alpine folklore, connecting the Celtic god Cernunnos to the figure of Krampus. A path that reveals the universal cosmological meaning of the passage from chaos to order, a rite that humanity has celebrated since time immemorial.

The Discovery at Notre-Dame: Who is Cernunnos?
During archaeological excavations carried out starting in the 1960s in the square in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, bas-reliefs depicting Gallic deities were found. Among these, the figure of Cernunnos stood out. The iconography of the bas-relief represents him as a Celtic male deity equipped with horns (or more precisely antlers), a powerful symbol that indissolubly links him to nature, the pagan world, and an ancient and primordial spirituality.
The location of the discovery, Île de la Cité, is not accidental. This was the beating heart of Lutetia, the settlement founded in the 3rd century BC by the Gallic tribe of the Parisii, long before the Roman conquest redrew the cultural and religious map of Gaul. The presence of an effigy of Cernunnos testifies to the importance of his cult in an era when the sacred and the wild were still deeply intertwined.

Deep Roots: Man, Animal, and the Divine
To understand a figure like Cernunnos, it is necessary to take a leap back in time, to the Upper Paleolithic (40,000-15,000 years ago). In the deep European caves, such as Chauvet in France, our ancestors left extraordinary testimonies of their worldview: walls decorated with countless animal figures. This was not simply a love of art, but the expression of a precise conception of reality, which we might call “animistic ontology.”

Present both among Paleolithic hunters and among Amerindian peoples, this worldview presupposes that all living beings, human and non-human, share the same inner subjectivity, distinguishing themselves only by their bodily “envelope.” Consequently, “changing skin” means transforming into another being. This ability to change form was attributed to specialized figures such as shamans, capable of traveling between worlds and acquiring the qualities of animals. It is in this cosmological humus, where the boundary between man and animal is fluid and permeable, that archetypal figures like Cernunnos take root, the ‘Lord of Animals’ whose hybrid form is not monstrous, but an expression of shamanic power to mediate between worlds.

The Ritual of Chaos: Festivals and Masks to Refound Order
Zoo-anthropomorphic figures do not only populate myths but erupt into social life through specific rituals. Many popular festivals, in fact, represented the establishment of a “tempus terribile,” a controlled irruption of primordial chaos that preceded a refounding of cosmic and social order. Through ritual disorder, the community regenerated itself.
A striking example are the ceremonial masked parades of Carnival (Schembartlauf) that took place in Nuremberg between the 15th and 16th centuries. Participants in these processions embodied the mythical figure of the “Wild Man”: they wore animal horns, garments made of goat or sheep skin, and girded their waists with noisy bells. These hybrid figures, halfway between man and beast, brought chaos into the orderly streets of the city, only to be ritually defeated, thus restoring order. This ritual overturning was not a simple festival, but a fundamental social mechanism to reaffirm community norms through their temporary and controlled violation. These same characteristics would be found, almost unchanged, in Alpine masked parades of subsequent centuries.

The Surviving Horned God: Saint Nicholas and Krampus
This tradition of horned and wild figures bringing disorder has survived to the present day, camouflaged in Christian folklore. Krampus, now known as the terrifying companion of Saint Nicholas, existed in pagan and Celtic traditions long before the advent of Christianity. He was a frightening figure who appeared during the passage from the “living” to the “dark” season of the year, embodying the forces of winter chaos.

According to a folk tale widespread in the Alpine area, his “Christianization” occurred as follows: in an era of great famine, shady characters disguised with animal skins and horns plundered mountain villages. Local folklore narrates that among them was hidden the devil himself, recognizable only by his goat hooves. It was then that Bishop Nicholas (the future Saint Nicholas) intervened, who with his spiritual authority managed to exorcise the demon and subjugate him to his will, transforming him from a destructive force into an instrument of justice.

This folkloric narrative serves as a founding myth for the tradition still alive today in Austria, South Tyrol, Friuli Venezia Giulia, and Istria. On the night between December 5th and 6th, Saint Nicholas brings gifts to good children, while his retinue of Krampuses, chained and tamed devils, has the task of frightening and punishing those who have behaved badly. The domestication of Krampus by Saint Nicholas represents a classic example of religious syncretism, in which a liminal figure, embodiment of the untamed forces of nature, is not erased but subsumed and re-functionalized within the new Christian moral system. Chaos is not eliminated but hierarchically subordinated to order.

If We Know How to Listen, Myths Still Speak
Pre-Christian myths are not dead; they have simply transformed, finding a way to survive within new dominant traditions. Our journey demonstrates this: we started from the Celtic god Cernunnos, whose traces rest beneath the square of Notre-Dame, we crossed the classical world populated by satyrs and wild deities, we witnessed the chaotic masked parades of carnival, and finally arrived at Krampus, the pagan demon “domesticated” by a Christian saint.
The final proof of this survival through transformation lies in the fate of the very idea of contamination between the human and animal world. Once considered sacred, an expression of the fluidity of the cosmos, with the advent of Christianity and the subsequent persecution of witchcraft, this permeability between the spheres of the living was definitively relegated “to the realm of the demonic and magical.” Yet, if we know how to listen, these ancient figures still speak. From the deer-god to the hairy demon, their whispers tell us of a primordial bond with nature, of a time when chaos was not only to be feared but also celebrated in order to refound order. One need only lend an ear beyond the patina of more recent traditions to hear how, from the foundations of a Gothic cathedral, a horned god continues to whisper his eternal story.

Lo scarabeo stercorario si serve degli escrementi per diversi scopi. Se ne nutre e vi depone le uova, e alcuni maschi ne fanno dono alla femmina sperando di far colpo su di lei. La lotta per accaparrarsi lo sterco fresco è intensa. Alcuni tipi di scarabeo formano una pallina di sterco e scappano dal gruppo facendola rotolare fino a un punto in cui il terreno è abbastanza morbido da poterla sotterrare. Lo scarabeo rotola la palla lungo una linea retta per allontanarsi nel modo più rapido, evitando così il rischio che altri scarabei gliela rubino.

Ma come fa lo scarabeo stercorario a non mettersi a girare a vuoto, specialmente di notte?

Alcuni studi hanno dimostrato che questi scarabei sono in grado di orientarsi grazie alla luce solare e lunare, ma sono anche capaci di procedere in linea retta nelle notti serene senza luna. In Sudafrica alcuni ricercatori hanno scoperto che gli stercorari non si orientano guardando le singole stelle ma usando la banda luminosa generata dalla Via Lattea. Secondo il periodico Current Biology, si tratta del “primo caso documentato in cui nel regno animale si fa uso della Via Lattea per orientarsi”.

Il ricercatore Marcus Byrne afferma che gli scarabei stercorari possiedono “un vero e proprio sistema di navigazione a vista in grado di funzionare con la più fioca luce stellare sfruttando una limitata capacità di calcolo”. Aggiunge che “hanno quindi il potenziale per insegnare all’uomo a elaborare complesse informazioni visive”.

Gli scarabei spingono lo sterco con le zampe fin dentro alle proprie tane e vi depongono le uova.

Gli antichi immaginarono che fosse uno scarabeo a far rotolare il Sole nel mondo sotterraneo durante la notte, per poi spingerlo all’esterno per dare luogo a una nuova alba il mattino seguente. In virtù di questa connessione allo scarabeo venivano aggiunte le ali o gli artigli del falco, animale che rappresenta l’incarnazione del Sole nel cielo.

Il Dio Scarabeo Khepri era colui che spingeva ogni mattina Ra, il dio sole di Eliopoli fuori dalla Duat, l’Oltretomba, rinnovando la rinascita di Nut, madre di Osiride, Iside, Seth e Nefti.

Divenne un amuleto frequentemente usato per auspicare la rinascita dello spirito nel mondo ultraterreno. Un Capitolo del Libro dei Morti  contiene la Formula dello Scarabeo del Cuore, che esortava  il cuore a non testimoniare contro il defunto davanti al Tribunale di Osiride.

For over eight hundred years the façade of the church of San Nicola in Pisa has watched over a message that nobody has ever read before. Recently the front has been restored and the marble cleaned.

During the process a professor of the University of Pisa, Pietro Armienti, an expert in petrology, closely observed the circular and rectangular inlays of one of the church’s lunettes and discovered a coded message. Studying its geometry the professor realized that the symbols were an explicit reference to the findings of the first great western mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci, who was born in Pisa around 1170. Professor Armienti has just published his research report on “Journal of Cultural Heritage”.

The Church of San Nicola has a first mention in 1097. In 1297-1313 the Augustinians enlarged it probably under design by Giovanni Pisano. During the following centuries the ravages of time left its mark on the inlays of the façade making them unreadable. After its recent restoration, the message carved in the lunette of the portal has emerged with all its details, proving to be a valuable artefact which celebrates the insights that marked the birth in Pisa of a school of thought that transformed the medieval vision of the world and turned Pisa into the cradle of modern scientific thought.

What is Fibonacci Sequence?

Leonardo Bonacci (c. 1170 – c. 1250), known as Fibonacci,was an Italian mathematician, considered to be the most talented Western mathematician of the Middle Ages.

Fibonacci was born around 1170 to Guglielmo Bonacci, a wealthy Italian merchant and, by some accounts, the consul for Pisa. Guglielmo directed a trading post in Bugia, a port in the Almohad dynasty’s sultanate in North Africa. Fibonacci travelled with him as a young boy, and it was in Bugia (now Béjaïa, Algeria) that he learned about the Hindu–Arabic numeral system. Fibonacci travelled extensively around the Mediterranean coast, meeting with many merchants and learning of their systems of doing arithmetic. He soon realised the many advantages of the “Hindu-Arabic” system. In 1202 he completed the Liber Abaci (Book of Abacus or Book of Calculation) which popularized Hindu–Arabic numerals in Europe.

Liber Abaci posed, and solved, a problem involving the growth of a population of rabbits based on idealized assumptions. The solution, generation by generation, was a sequence of numbers later known as Fibonacci numbers. Although Fibonacci’s Liber Abaci contains the earliest known description of the sequence outside of India, the sequence had been noted by Indian mathematicians as early as the sixth century. In the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, each number is the sum of the previous two numbers.

Fibonacci Sequence in Nature

The Fibonacci numbers are Nature’s numbering system.

They appear everywhere in Nature, from the leaf arrangement in plants, to the pattern of the florets of a flower, the bracts of a pinecone, or the scales of a pineapple.

The Fibonacci numbers are therefore applicable to the growth of every living thing, including a single cell, a grain of wheat, a hive of bees, and even all of mankind. Plants do not know about this sequence – they just grow in the most efficient ways. Many plants show the Fibonacci numbers in the arrangement of the leaves around the stem. Some pine cones and fir cones also show the numbers, as do daisies and sunflowers.

Apparently studying the diameters of the various circles one obtains the first nine elements of the Fibonacci sequence: 1,2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34 and 55. According to Professor Armienti the reference could not be more explicit and directly connects the inlay to the work of the great mathematician, or at least to a circle of his immediate colleagues or students. It appears that the inlay is an abacus which represents irrational numbers as well as made to calculate with good approximation the sides of the regular polygons inscribed in the circle with the largest diameter.
This is thus an important monument designed to instruct the elites according to the Scholastic programme. A precious gift which has been sent down to us from over eight hundred years ago and which can finally be valued.

È un richiamo esplicito alle scoperte del primo grande matematico dell’Occidente cristiano, Leonardo Fibonacci, ed è riemerso durante un recente restauro che ha riportato alla luce i marmi della Chiesa di San Nicola in via Santa Maria a Pisa.

Un originale studio del prof. Pietro Armienti, docente di Petrologia e Petrografia dell’Università di Pisa, recentemente pubblicato sul Journal of Cultural Heritage, ha permesso di interpretare le eleganti geometrie dell’intarsio della lunetta sopra l’originario portale principale come un riferimento alla celebre successione numerica individuata dal matematico pisano.
“Per secoli i segni del tempo avevano reso illeggibili gli intarsi della facciata della chiesa, la cui costruzione, che risale al XIII secolo, viene da molti attribuita a Nicola Pisano. Dopo il restauro, il messaggio scolpito nella lunetta del portale è emerso in tutti i suoi dettagli e ha permesso di dimostrare che il pregevole manufatto, che ha comportato il lavoro congiunto di matematici, teologi, artigiani, celebra le intuizioni che segnarono a Pisa la nascita di una scuola di pensiero capace di trasformare la visione medievale del mondo e di fare della città la culla della pensiero scientifico moderno.

Cos’è la sequenza di Fibonacci?

Leonardo Pisano detto il Fibonacci (1175-1250), cioè figlio di Bonaccio, individuò questa serie per la prima volta nel 1202, per risolvere un problema pratico: quante coppie di conigli si ottengono in un anno da una sola coppia supponendo che produca ogni mese (tranne il primo) una nuova coppia che a sua volta diventa fertile a partire dal secondo mese? (La risposta è 144 coppie di conigli).

Assieme al padre Guglielmo dei Bonacci, facoltoso mercante pisano e rappresentante dei mercanti della Repubblica di Pisa nella zona di Bugia in Cabilia (regione dell’odierna Algeria), passò alcuni anni in quella città, dove studiò i procedimenti aritmetici che studiosi musulmani stavano diffondendo nelle varie parti del mondo arabo. Qui ebbe anche precoci contatti con il mondo dei mercanti e apprese tecniche matematiche sconosciute in Occidente. Alcuni di tali procedimenti erano stati introdotti per la prima volta dagli indiani, portatori di una cultura molto diversa da quella mediterranea. Proprio per perfezionare queste conoscenze Fibonacci viaggiò molto, arrivando a Costantinopoli, alternando il commercio con gli studi matematici. Molto dovette ai trattati di Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, Abu Kamil e ai maestri arabi, senza però essere mero diffusore della loro opera. Ritornato in Italia, la sua notorietà giunse anche alla corte dell’imperatore Federico II, soprattutto dopo aver risolto alcuni problemi del matematico di corte. Per questo motivo gli fu assegnato un vitalizio che gli permise di dedicarsi completamente ai suoi studi.

Nel 1202 pubblicò, e nel 1228 riscrisse (lo fece pubblicare solo dopo la sua morte però, lasciandolo nel suo testamento) il Liber abbaci, opera in quindici capitoli con la quale introdusse per la prima volta in Europa (nel capitolo I) le nove cifre, da lui definite “indiane”, e il segno 0 che in latino è chiamato zephirus, adattamento dell’arabo sifr, ripreso a sua volta dal termine sanscrito śūnya, che significa “vuoto”. Zephirus in veneziano divenne zevero ed infine comparve l’italiano “zero”. Per mostrare ad oculum l’utilità del nuovo sistema egli pose sotto gli occhi del lettore una tabella comparativa di numeri scritti nei due sistemi, romano e indiano. Fibonacci espose così per la prima volta in Europa la numerazione posizionale indiana (adottata poi dagli arabi). All’epoca il mondo occidentale usava i numeri romani e il sistema di numerazione greco e i calcoli si eseguivano con l’abaco. Questo nuovo sistema stentò molto ad essere accettato, tanto che nel 1280 la città di Firenze proibì l’uso delle cifre arabe da parte dei banchieri. Si riteneva infatti che lo “0” apportasse confusione e venisse impiegato anche per mandare messaggi segreti e, poiché questo sistema di numerazione veniva chiamato “cifra”, da tale denominazione deriva l’espressione “messaggio cifrato”.

Nella successione di Fibonacci ogni numero è il risultato della somma dei due precedenti: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13… fino all’infinito. Fino al XIX secolo a questa successione non fu attribuita alcuna importanza, finché si scoprì che può essere applicata, per esempio, nel calcolo delle probabilità, nella sezione aurea e nel triangolo aureo.

I numeri di Fibonacci si trovano anche in natura, per esempio nella disposizione delle foglie.

In molti alberi, scegliendo una foglia su uno stelo e assegnandole il numero “0”, contando il numero di foglie fino ad arrivare a una perfettamente allineata con la foglia “0”, probabilmente si troverà un numero di Fibonacci. Anche i petali di moltissimi fiori sono un numero di Fibonacci.

Secondo l’interpretazione del professor Armienti, le eleganti simmetrie dell’opera sono un richiamo diretto alle scoperte del matematico pisano: “Se si assume come unitario il diametro dei cerchi più piccoli dell’intarsio, i più grandi hanno diametro doppio, i successivi triplo, mentre quelli di diametro 5 sono divisi in spicchi nei quadratini ai vertici del quadrato in cui è inscritto il cerchio principale, quello centrale ha diametro 13 mentre il cerchio che circoscrive i quadratini negli angoli ha diametro 8. Gli altri elementi dell’intarsio disposti secondo tracce circolari individuano circonferenze di raggio 21 e 34, infine il cerchio che circoscrive l’intarsio ha diametro 55 volte più grande del circolo minore. 1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55 sono i primi nove elementi della successione di Fibonacci”.

Per Armienti, il riferimento non potrebbe essere più esplicito e collega direttamente l’intarsio all’opera del grande matematico o a una cerchia di suoi diretti collaboratori o allievi. L’intarsio di fatto è un abaco per rappresentare numeri irrazionali come p o il rapporto Aureo f, oltre che per calcolare con un’ottima approssimazione i lati dei poligoni regolari inscritti nel cerchio diametro maggiore. Si tratta dunque di un importante monumento la cui presenza era stata concepita per l’educazione delle élites, secondo il programma della filosofia scolastica: un dono prezioso della sapienza degli antichi giunto dopo ottocento anni di oblio.

St. Barlaam and St. Josaphat: A Christian Folktale of the Buddha

The tale of the hermit St. Barlaam and his convert St. Josaphat is a curious link between Christianity and Buddhism, since at least the beginning of the story is unmistakably an account of the early life of the Buddha. The story is thought to have been composed by John of Damascus in the 6th century AD. It also appears, in abridged form, in the Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine. The attempted seduction of St. Josaphat by the beautiful maiden seems to be a Christian reworking of part of the conflict between the future Buddha and the dark lord, Mára.

The legend is set in India. The young prince is brought up in ignorance of old age, sickness and death; but eventually finds out about their existence during excursions from the palace. Prince Josaphat then meets the hermit Barlaam, a Christian missionary, who preaches in parables. The young prince becomes a convert to Christianity. After unsuccessfully attempting to dislodge him from the new faith by various stratagems, his father King Avennir receives a visit from the sorcerer Theodas, who offers to help him. On the sorcerer’s advice, the king replaces the prince’s male attendants with beautiful women (as Shakyamuni’s father also does in the Buddhist version). Theodas sends an evil spirit into Josaphat’s heart to inflame him with lust. The women flirt with Josaphat but fail to seduce him.

The king then sends to Josaphat the orphan daughter of a king, a beautiful maiden. The young prince attempts to convert her to his new religion, to which she responds that she will only convert if Josaphat will marry her. Josaphat tells her that he has taken a vow of chastity. The nameless maiden tells him, if you want to save my soul, grant me one little request: sleep with me tonight, just once is all I ask, and I promise you I will become a Christian first thing tomorrow morning… just do as I ask this once and you will win my salvation. Josaphat prays and receives a vision of heaven. He rejects the temptress, and is attacked by evil spirits. Josaphat destroys them by making the sign of the cross.And so the Buddha became a Christian saint, and even received a feast-day, 27 November.

The Institute for East-West Cultural Exchange (head of research group: Lee Jong-hwa, Professor of Myong-ji University) analyzed both Arabic and European literatures in the Middle Age, and argues that ‘Buddha legend’ spread from Persia to Georgia(Gruzhia) to Greece, and finally to Spain. Buddha was revered as a Christian saint in Medieval Europe. Kim Hun, a lecturer in Seoul National University, who took part in the research published the result in June-July issue of ‘Anticus’, a humanity-oriented magazine.

The original ‘Buddha’ or ‘Bodhisatta’ in Sanskrit (“Enlightenment Being,” one destined to attain Nirvana, enlightenment ), turned up as ‘Bodisav’ in 6-7th century Manichean literature in Ancient Persian, which in turn appeared as Budahsaf in 8th-century Arabic literature, which turned into ‘Iodasaph’ in 10th-century Georgian literature. In 11th-century Greek literature, it showed up as a Christian monk ‘Ioasaph,’ which finally became the Christian saint ‘Josaphat’ in Spain.

The story of Barlaam and Josaphat was popular in the Middle Ages, appearing in such works as the Golden Legend, and a scene there involving three caskets eventually appeared, via Caxton’s English translation of a Latin version, in Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice”.