medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> 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).
>
> Crosby's argument was that Suger's choir was substantially rebuilt in the
> thirteenth century - most likely because it was designed without flying
> buttresses.
This view has been challenged by Christopher Wilson, The Gothic Cathedral, who --
sensibly, I think -- points out that the massive buttress piers between the chevet
chapels (visible only from the exterior) make little sense as anything but the anchors
for flying buttresses, and close copies of 12th-century Saint-Denis, such as the
chevet of Vezelay, probably from c.1160s, has flying buttresses. This is still, I
believe, somewhat controversial.
> > 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?
No, definitely not. Brown and Cothren's study of the "Crusading window" at Saint-
Denis definitely claims that this window (formerly reconstructed as two windows)
dates after the rest of Suger's chevet windows (some of which he actually mentions
in his writings), but they date it, in relation to the Second Crusade of 1147,
alternatively either to later in Suger's own abbacy, between 1146 and 1148, or more
probably to the abbacy of his successor, Odo of Deuil (1151-62). The abbot who
"completed" Suger's church, on the other hand was another "Odo", Eudes Clement,
whose abbacy began, I believe, in 1236. In completing the body of the church
between Suger's east end and his west facade and tower block, Eudes Clement had
the upper parts of Suger's main apse rebuilt, so that now, only Suger's ambulatory
and ring of chapels survives, and shortly later, I believe, the main piers of the
hemicycle had to be replaced, since they were too slight and were showing signs of
structural instability. There seems to be some sort of curious misinterpretation in
Speer's article (perhaps caused by translation from the German?).
Cheers,
Jim Bugslag
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