medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

From: Jon Cannon <[log in to unmask]>

> I believe the earliest dated 

earliest *surviving* dated

>Zigzag is in the nave at Durham, ie in the far north of the Norman polity,
probably c1110:

this strikes me as pretty late for the "first" appearance of the motif --hence
my hedge to your already hedged "earliest surviving dated..."

it's been too long since i read it, but this article by my old prof might have
something to say about "earliest surviving dated" exemplars:

Alan Borg, "The development of Chevron Ornament." The Journal of the British
Archaeological Association, Vol.30, 1967.

back in the day ('69) i had a discussion with him about why he thought
Zig-Zags were "chevrons"

he won.

but i was right.

as the OED entry demonstrates:

CHEVRON, n.

[a. F. chevron rafter, chevron, circumflex accent (in Picard caveron, Pr.
cabrion, Sp. cabrio, rafter, chevron):L. type *caprin-em f. caper goat: Sp.
has also cabriol in same sense:L. capreol-us, dim. of caper goat, of which the
pl. capreoli was applied to two pieces of wood inclined like rafters.] 

1. A beam, or rafter; esp. in pl. the rafters or couples of the roof, which
meet at an angle at the ridge.

2. Her. A charge or device on the escutcheon, consisting of a bar bent like
two meeting rafters....

3. The same shape used in decorative art, etc. 

1865 LUBBOCK Preh. Times vi. 169 Incised patterns in which the chevron or
herring-bone constantly reappears. 


and

ZIGZAG, n.

1. a. A series of short lines inclined at angles in alternate directions; a
line or course having sharp turns of this kind; concr. something characterized
by such lines or turns. Orig. in phr. in zigzag (= F. en zigzag). 



thus, to my eye/mind, " V " is a chevron.

and " VVVV " is (more or less) a Zig-Zag.



in any event, my candidate for the earliest surviving (barely) datable
(barely) example of the motif in France might be a now-walled-up doorway on
the side of the nave of the village church (former priory) of Champhol, just
outside Chartres.  it is the church you can see from the Bishop's garden
behind the cathedral, looking east across the valley of the Eure. 

there was (and still is) a little airfield nearby Champhol, which got a
pasting in the lead-up to D-Day, spring of '44, destroying a good bit of the
church

http://www.ville-champhol.fr/histoire/image/vuegene.jpg

scroll down a bit more on that page for the pics of the bombarded Chartres
municipal library (800 mss lost in that fire).

the church of Champhol was eventually rebuilt and re-opened; the former portal
in question is just beyond the tower in this view

http://www.ville-champhol.fr/histoire/image/eglise.jpg

a few days ago i came across a 19th c. drawering of the church showing this
portal, on one of the Ministre de Kulture sites, but am jiggered if i can find
it again.

which is too bad, since i've never seen another one like it and a pitcher is
worth a thousand words.

it is, essentially, a doorway framed by a single vertical course of ashlar
blocks, joined at the top by a simple round arch.

there is neither lintel nor typanum.

the external face of the stones is incised with a very shallow zigzag which
flows, uninterupted from the ground, across the arch to the other jamb.

the church itself is undateable, but the _villa_ is mentioned from the third
quarter of the 11th c. in the cartulary of St. Peter's of Chartres, which
owned it and had a priory there (presumably centered on this church).

the interior of the church sports a very nice stone apse, perhaps a copy of
the original one to be found in the 11th c. motherchurch, built over a small
crypt.

as i recall, there is not much in the way of decorative carving to help with
the dating, but the whole place *feels* like later 11th c. to me, at the
latest.


>it starts [at Durham] experimentally up in the clerestory, 

mmmmm... there are examples on the columns of the main arcade, are there not?

which would, presumably, have been built before the clerestory.

>and moves down a level every bay or so, as if the designer likes what he's
come up with and is trying to expand it. Then it did indeed spread like the
proverbial rash (we don't know if it was *invented* at Durham, though its
possible; in any case Durham was a source from which many such novel ideas
spread), such that by 1120 there are many churches using it, and by 1130
architecture in England and I believe Norman France was not architecture
without a bit of it here or there. 


not just "Norman France" but, as i say, the Vexin and the Chartrain regions as
well (at least).

there are some nice examples of 11-12th c. portals in the Vexin in an article
by Joseph Depoin, published c. 1900 in the _Bulletins de la Société
historique du Vexin_, but i can't seem to find the exact reference to it on
their site

http://pagesperso-orange.fr/shapvov/
  

> To be pedantic for a moment,

well, it is strictly forbidden (ListMommy's Edict 27,650) to be pedantic on
this list.

> Zigzag is therefore usually a mid-c12 phenomenon and not so much Norman as
Angevin.... sorry.  

definitely not so for the French examples i know.

it *persisted* well into the 12th c. --and perhaps even beyond-- but
definitely appears earlier, at least by the second half of c. 12 and is,
perhaps, of Norman origin.

that's my guess, anyway.


> One possible source for it may be in painted decoration: 

yes, certainly.

almost all exemplars of which have disappeared.

>there are geometrical patterns at St Albans which, if (and it's a big 'if')
they are late c11 suggest such forms were already around, just no one had
thought of trying them in a carved form. Likewise c11 stone columns in several
European churches survive painted to look like marble, and the marble is
stylised into big diamond-ish and zigzag-ish patterns: a practise that may
have been commonplace, and that zigag at once makes regular, and three
dimensional, and may to c12 eyes have been 'referring'. This would suggest
that if it had a 'meaning' it was part of the usual attempt to evoke the
disorientating glories and exotic materials of the Heavenly Jerusalem.


the veined, V-shaped marble tromp d'oeils might well be an ultimate source.

ditto, the zigzag "ribbon" motifs which are found in ms borders (and
frescos)from at least Ottonian times, which are quite remarkable in their
three dimensionality. 

either one could have been "mis-read" by the primitive Normans.

or, we could go the other way, and assume that all our stone examples were
originally painted and more closely replicated these zigzaging "ribbons."


> I just thought of that, so don;t take it too seriously. 

o.k., i'll try and restrain myself.

>As for the liminal, I'll leave it to others to boldly go where no man, etc,
etc,.... 


back to Square One.

i still think that the motif --which appears on *so* many portals (even though
90+% of the once-extant ones have been destroyed)-- could very possibly have a
"significance" beyond the merely "decorative."

portals are, by their very nature, the interface between the two Worlds, and
the decoration must, it seems to me, be related to their function as such.


i'll leave the discussion of the mandorla(s) in the Utrecht Psalter as
"portals" to another post, on a new thread.

c

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