medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
jbugslag wrote:
>
> A useful, very full, and highly informed overview of fairly recent
> work on Saint-Denis (and virtually any other major Gothic church) can
> be found in the copious notes added by Paul Crossley to his revised
> edition of Paul Frankl, Gothic Architecture (Yale U.P./Pelican,
> 2000).
Many thanks, I shall certainly pursue that. The more I think about it, I am
convinced that Suger's choir was not completed. It makes no sense to me to
carefully dismantle a 'choir' (actually a retrochoir) less than a century
old, without disturbing the surrounding ambulatory. The older explanation
was structural failure, but Bruzelius discounts this, and there is no sign
of that in the ambulatory or the crypt (where I would expect such signs to
have appeared.)
An 'outer crypt' had been added in the 9th century to the east end of the
8th century church (immediately to the east of the high altar), to
accommodate pilgrims viewing the relics, etc. This was more or less at
ground level. What Suger did was surround this by his own crypt, consisting
of ambulatory and chapels, again more or less at ground level. On this
platform he built his 'choir', ambulatory and radiating chapels. This new
'ground floor' level was thus elevated above the level of the high altar.
The chevet columns were not aligned directly above the corresponding
supports in the crypt below, but that doesn't seem to have mattered (and
wasn't changed in the 13th century rebuilding.) But the columns for the
straight portion of the choir were positioned over the barrel vault of the
crypt ambulatory (which seems to be wider than the ambulatory above). I
find this structurally dubious, and so did the 13th century masons, who
inserted supports into the crypt below the columns when rebuilding the
choir. Would they have done this if they had just demolished a perfectly
sound full-height choir?
I think the 13th century masons found a 'choir' which didn't rise much above
arcade level - hence their readiness to dismantle it and rebuild it to full
height and in an up-to-date style, and with stronger underpinning, columns
and arches - before moving on to build a new sanctuary and transepts.
John Briggs
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