Cibeles en Cornum
We know from Dionysus of Halicarnassus, the Phrygian origin of Kybele, goddess of fertility and wild life, whose cult spread throughout the Peloponnese when Phrygia was conquered.
She was often called “The Mother of the Gods” or “The Great Mother” following the tradition of her ancestor, the goddess Kubada of Asia Minor, a diva with large breasts, pregnant and seated next to two felines. (1)
According to Titus Livy (Periods founded by the city) her cult was introduced in Rome with the construction of a temple dedicated to her on the Palatine Hill in 204 BC, personified as the goddess of Nature, the fertility of the earth, plants and wild animals.
Latinized the name as Cibeles, it is normally represented with a crown in the form of a wall, a symbol of the protection it provided to the cities that adore it, with a scepter, a sign of power over the land that it fertilizes and on a throne flanked by two lions. or thrown by them as a symbol of superiority over all living things.
Well, in the left arcade of the central nave of the well-known Romanesque temple of San Martín de Frómista there is a curious capital that is surprising, misunderstood and unexplained. In it, a naked woman with a prominent pregnant belly appears carved in the central part of her who, holding a staff of command, rules over two lions that flank her.
Despite other different traditions of the Cybele myth (Apodoloro, Pausanias, Callimachus, etc.), Ovid was responsible for the most popular diffusion about his two lions when he wrote the Metamorphoses, specifically, the episode of Atalanta and Hippomenes that we summarize here. very briefly:
Atalanta, to whom the oracle of the gods had prophesied that she would become an animal if she lost her virginity, chose to challenge her suitors in a race. If they won, she would marry them, but if she was the other way around, they would die. No one ever managed to defeat her since she was the fastest and most elusive of the hunters, until Hippomenes, with the help of three golden apples that Venus gave him and that he was throwing so that Atalanta would stop to pick them up, got the necessary advantage to reach first to the goal. Atalanta fell in love with Hippomenes at the same time, in a recess in the road where there was an ancient sacred precinct guarded by the priest of Cybele, the two lovers were sexually united, desecrating the divine will, for which he punished them by turning them into lions at the service of the goddess:
“Thus, yellow manes cover their previously hairless necks,
his fingers are curved into claws,
shoulders become forelegs,
all your weight is shifted to your chest
they sweep the surface of the sand with their tails;
their gesture expresses anger, instead of words they utter grunts,
instead of the thalamus they frequent forests, they are the object of fear for others,
These lions press the brake of Cibeles, with enslaved mouth”
(Metamorfosis, X, 697-704)
Scene on the left side of the capital. In this image Atalanta appears in her transformation, in fulfillment of the oracle prophesied by the gods. The description of the mutation in Ovid’s Metamorphoses seems to be true to the capital, even the claws depicted resemble human fingers.
Together with the transformation of Atalanta we see the guardian of the enclosure, a character that Ovid describes in the same chapter of said literary work and whom he designates as his “priest, of wood”name by which Cybele’s consort, the god Attis, was known and later the “gallis”, eunuch priests of the goddess.
“Of meager light there was near a recess,
like a cave, covered with native pumice,
by a sacred primitive religion, where his priest,
of loghad carried many representations of old gods”
(Metamorfosis X , 690-694).
Right side scene. In this image, by the will of the goddess Cybele, who appears in the background holding the staff and with one hand on her swollen belly, the young Hippomenes is transformed into a lion.
“and crowned with towers the Mother, in the deep Styx
He hesitates to submerge sinners. Little condemnation seemed to him.
Thus, yellow manes cover their previously hairless necks,
its fingers are curved in the form of claws…”
(Metamorfosis X, 695-697)
The frontal image of the capital with the goddess flanked by lions evokes the well-known classical and triumphant representation of Cibeles.
Finally, to influence the etymological origin of the town of Frómista, of which some historians defend its Roman origin, derived from “frumentum”, grain, wheat or cereal, based on the evidence of the Roman settlement in that place, as supported by the existence of the road that linked Aquitaine with Astorga (later the Camino de Santiago), as well as the existence of nearby Roman towns later occupied by Goths and Visigoths.
Thus, the fertile and vital force of Nature has been understood and represented since time immemorial as the great Mother Goddess and, we find in this precise place, Cornwhose name evokes the generous fertility of Mother Earth, a representation of Cybele, universal mother and mother of the gods, a representation of Nature in its fecund, vegetative and wild state power.
Undoubtedly, this is the representation of a Mother Goddess, an image that could become part of the many standardized ones except that we have now discovered her name: It is a very first CIBELES, together with Atalanta and Hippomenes at the moment of their transformation into lions, according to the narrative of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. All the carving of the capital coincides with the classical poem.
We believe that being able to identify the goddess Cibeles in a Romanesque capital is an exceptionality that should not be ignored.
“That we have smashed their statues,
that we have driven them from their temples,
It does not mean that the goddesses are dead”
Constantino Cavafy
Health and Romanesque