While constructing a new crypt beneath the nave, workers uncovered an ancient, four-tiered stone block. Supporting part of the choir and chancel, the block had been part of a pagan temple that once stood on the site. Originally dedicated to the god Jupiter by the Nautae Parisiaci—the mariners of Parisii during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius—the block depicted in bas-relief a number of gods, but none so prominently as the fearsome visage bearing the antlers of a stag. The broken inscription read, “–ernunnos.” This was almost certainly Cernunnos, the ancient Celtic Lord of the Animals, the most famous horned god in European mythology. The Christian Middle Ages, it seemed, truly rested on pagan foundations. The image (but not the name) of Cernunnos had been known at Val Camonica in the Italian Alps, where a great antlered figure looms out from a fourth-century B.C. cave engraving, a torque necklace on his right arm and a horned serpent on his left. At Autun in France, Cernunnos bears two horned serpents.
