The ancient depictions of Easter in England’s churches

Easter is the most important festival of the Christian calendar, and so it is unsuprising that most of England’s Pre-Reformation churches were adorned with artworks commemorating Christ’s passion and resurrection. Sadly, such was the zeal of the reformation that virtually none of these depictions remain, apart from fragments, mutilated, burnt or eaten away by rot and woodworm. But it is still possible to see some remains of the pre-Reformation Easter in England’s oldest churches today.

The most common pre-Reformation Easter depiction in every church would have been an image of the Crucifixion over the Chancel arch, between the sacred space of the Chancel and the people’s part of the church, the Nave.

The so-called ‘Mostyn Christ’ in Bangor Cathedral shows the power that such a figure would have had over the faithful. Wearing his crown of thorns, Christ is seated in contemplation, a ‘man of sorrow’ just before his Crucifixion. His torso and the drape-covered rock he sits on is cut from a single oak, with a skull at his feet.

Many carvings of the Crucifixion were fixed into a lower carved piece that depicted Golgotha (also known as Calvary) with rocks bestrewn with skulls and bones that would have sat atop a Rood Screen that divided the Chancel and Nave.