medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
It is perhaps unwise to infer architectural and archaeological fact from
theological writings :-)
The standard work on Suger's Saint-Denis is:
Sumner McNight Crosby (with Pamela Z. Blum), The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis:
From its Beginnings to the Death of Suger, 475-1151 (Yale UP, 1987).
The thirteenth-century work was discussed in:
Caroline A. Bruzelius, The Thirteenth-Century Church at St-Denis (Yale UP,
1986)
Crosby's argument was that Suger's choir was substantially rebuilt in the
thirteenth century - most likely because it was designed without flying
buttresses.
John Briggs
CARLOS wrote:
>
> I have just finished reading Andreas Speer's contribution to
> HAMBURGER, Jeffrey F. and Anne-Marie BOUCHÉ (ed.), The Mind's Eye: Art
> and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages ("Is There a Theology of
> the Gothic Cathedral? A Re-reading of Abbot Suger's Writings on the
> Abbey Church of St.-Denis"). In it, the famous "theology of light"
> theory, coined by Panofsky is once again rejected. Nothing new here.
> But what surprised me was reading (p. 73) that "There is much evidence
> in Suger's writings and in later sources that no part of the basilica
> had already been finished when he called for the consecration in 1140
> and 1141 (…) According to thirteenth-century sources it was only after
> Suger's death, some eighty years later, that the construction projects
> were continued at St.-Denis under Abbot Odo and completed under the
> direction of Pierre de Montreuil. Thus, for nearly a century, the
> first "perfect Gothic choir" existed only in liturgical descriptions".
>
>
> Does it mean that the ambulatory –with the famous Suger's "vitri
> vestiti"- belongs in part to the 13th century? Was it possible that
> the windows were mounted before the mason work finished?
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