“… and lead us not into temptation”

Opposite Henry and Cunigunde, on the right-hand side of the main portal, another man and woman stand to the left and right of an ogival window. The man wears a crown on his gracefully wavy hair and is extending his right index finger towards the woman. He smiles in a friendly and perhaps slightly derisive manner. The woman looks over at the man, enraptured. She is turning towards him and throwing her head back a little, as if in flirtation. She has slightly opened her dress above her left breast, thus indicating that she could go even further. Who are these two, shown to us here at the church’s entrance portal?

2The man is the Tempter (Prince of this World) presented in the Gospel of John (John 12:31). He is the seducer, or simply an embodiment of the Devil. The back of the statue reveals his true nature: two snakes and three toads… evil character! The negative connotations of snakes and toads have survived to this day in slurs. The serpent is also the epitome of deception, tempting Adam and Eve to fall into sin and destroying the idyll of Paradise. The purgatorial fire is already flickering at the feet of this depraved ruler, symbolised by a fire-breathing dragon. The woman is a foolish virgin who allows herself to be seduced by the Prince of this World. This figure harks back to a parable from the Gospel of Matthew, about ten virgins who, in keeping with a tradition, went out to meet a bridegroom and escort him to his wedding. Let us hear the Bible passage itself though (Matthew 25:1-13): “Now five of them were wise, and five were foolish. Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the wise ones took oil in their vessels with their lamps. But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight a cry was heard: ‘Behold, the bridegroom is

West facade

Main portal – Prince of this World coming; go out to meet him!’ Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’ But he answered and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.”

The blatantly moralising theme of the Wise and Foolish Virgins was depicted on various cathedral portals in France and Germany during the Gothic period. One figure resembling our Foolish Virgin can be found, for example, at Strasbourg Cathedral. We will come across this story again, at the St Gall Doorway. Here at the main portal, the Tempter and the