To detach the image of the sacrificial pig from that of the sacrificial Christ, the clergy ironically turned the
pig
into a new kind of a sin offering, heaping the sins of mankind in a different way on its head as well.
As the pagan sacrificial pig concept had been fused into the Christian mysteries, as the farmer's helpful pig
had
declined into the peasant's comical pig, as the clan hunter's wild boar had been dubbed the knight's raging
adversary,
and as the decadent pig of the Roman feasts had re-emerged in the panoply of the Boar's Head Ritual, so the
fertility
goddess's sacred pig resurfaced as the companion of the malevolent witch. The entire complex of pig
associations
survived intact to the end of the Middle Ages, providing a legacy to the modern subconscious mind.
— Milo Kearney, The Role of Swine Symbolism in Medieval
Culture
(Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd., 1991)
