What is this?
The image in the textile is a man fighting and subduing a lion while forcefully opening the lion’s resisting jaws. Lions are symbols of strength, courage, and bravery, as they are fearsome predators in the animal kingdom. This image suggests that the man is stronger than the lion, which is not a typical human capability. The man must be special and have some sort of divine power. Well-known stories of men subduing lions are those of the Old Testament Samson, to whom God gave strength, and the Greco-Roman divine hero Hercules. Regardless of the man’s identity, he represents sheer physical strength and the domination of enemies. The person who displayed this textile in the medieval world would have wanted to convey these themes to the world, possibly suggesting that he or she also manifested these same qualities.
Samson is in the Book of Judges in the Old Testament. He was the last of the judges who ruled over Israel before the time of the kings. God gifted Samson with incredible strength. He performed superhuman feats, including slaying a lion with his bare hands and massacring an entire army of Philistines. If his long hair was cut, he would lose his strength. The woman he loved, Delilah, betrayed him and had his hair cut while he was sleeping, so that he would lose his strength and be enslaved by the Philistines. At the end of his life, God gave Samson strength one last time, and he used that strength to break the pillars of a temple, killing himself and thousands of Philistines.
Hercules is a Greco-Roman divine hero who is the son of the king of the gods, Zeus (also known as Jupiter). Hercules had incredible strength and had to carry out 12 Labors to achieve immortality. The first of these labors was to kill the Nemean Lion, who was impervious to weapons. Hercules strangled the Nemean lion and wore his hide as a cloak for the rest of his life.
The action portrayed has a biblical meaning. In the first Epistle of Peter, in the New Testament, Peter says, “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” In this text, the devil is represented as a lion. Also in the New Testament, Jesus forced open the Gates of Hell, which are also known as Hellmouth, a metaphoric image often represented as the gaping mouth of a monster. In this textile, we see the man forcefully opening the lion’s resisting jaws, like Jesus opened the mouth of Hell.