What did medieval patrons of architectural projects have on their minds? Jason R. Crow’s exegesis on the reconstruction of the Abbey of Saint-Denis unfolds from the abbot’s words in De Consecratione: “Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone which joins one wall to the other; in Whom all building—whether spiritual or material—groweth into one holy temple in the Lord” (23). Was this an expansion, a misreading, or a self-serving amendment to Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 2:19-22? The abbot’s theology, which mapped a path from the material plane to the transcendental, has been the target of modern scholars’ criticism that views him “as a bit of a nincompoop” (17). This book seeks to rehabilitate Suger as a sophisticated thinker who deployed matter theory to justify the reconstruction of his abbey’s church. Crow turns away from familiar tropes that describe the Gothic as light-filled and dematerialized. Instead, he focuses on the meaning of its matter—the stones, glass, and metal, but not the wood, that, together, crafted a vessel filled with divine spirit. In the hands of art and architectural historians, the fabric, contents, and decoration of the church have been triaged into separate categories of medium or subject matter; here, to the contrary, a deeper cosmological level of intention is sought.
Chapter 1, “Materializing the Way,” reviews theories of matter that lie behind Suger’s plot for the abbey church. Through this lens, the abbot would have approached his project as a reconfiguration of physical matter that was a crucial part of the plan of salvation (25). Plato’s Timaeus and, more importantly, Calcidius’s fourth-century translation and commentary, the Cosmographia of Bernardus Silvestris, and Hugh of Saint-Victor’s De Sacramentis Christiane Fidei emerge as key texts in working out the relation between the terrestrial and celestial realms that plunge us into intricate explanations around creation, prime matter, and form. What exactly did God create and when? The elements—earth, water, fire, and air—that compose the material world exist in an impure state; thus, the terrestrial realm was created to be remade and improved (42). Just as Jesus turned water into wine or bread transubstantiates into the body of God through the sacrament of the Eucharist, Suger’s reconstruction of Saint-Denis, along with its decoration and the rehabilitation of its liturgical vessels, aimed to remake a more beautiful world as a step toward divine unification.
Chapter 2, “Crafting Prayer,” features the role of craft in the scheme of divine perfection. Peter of Celle, abbot of Saint-Rémi, Reims, then bishop of Chartres; Peter the Painter, a canon at Saint-Omer, poet, and painter; and Theophilus Presbyter, author of De diversis artibus join the conversation to elaborate the thinking around artisanal activity, the preparation of matter to receive God, as a form of mystical practice. In fact, Suger’s views on this issue are set out in the inscriptions, recorded in De Administratione, that act as signposts on a journey that starts at the gilded doors of the central portal of the west façade, moves to the choir, then the Altar of the Patron Saints, and ends at the new panels made for the High Altar. Interestingly, the fresh arrangements made to Notre-Dame, Paris following the 2019 fire likewise aim to announce the cathedral’s roles in Christian life. New liturgical furnishings—baptismal font, high altar, cross—articulate a transcendental axis from west to east. Interior space and its imagery are orchestrated to map a “route of initiation” from Incarnation in the north nave chapels to the Holy Sacrament, materialized in the reliquary of the Crown of Thorns displayed in the axial chapel of the ambulatory, to the Resurrection presented along the south choir aisles, the Virgin at the crossing, and concluding with a “corridor of the saints” in the glass program proposed for the south nave chapels. [1]
Crow short-circuits the plot of Suger’s exposition by omitting the choir verses, while his identification of the location of the inscriptions—“on the altar at the front of the upper choir...and on the altar dedicated to Saint Denis” (72)—is unnecessarily vague. [2] The altar of the relics of Denis and his companions was, indeed, located in the second bay of the “upper choir” of the new chevet, while the “main altar of the (church) of Saint-Denis” (“principale igitur beati Dionysii altare”) was placed to the west, in the same spot it occupied in the Carolingian building, and in front of the expanded choir. This may seem like a minor detail, but accurately representing Suger’s narrative clarifies the calculated route from terrestrial to celestial that he charts through the inscriptions. Thus, beginning at the west doors, we are firmly in the material realm, advised to “marvel not at the gold and expense but at the craftsmanship of the work.” The theme of light that “brightens the mind” echoes in the choir inscription that celebrates “the noble edifice which is pervaded by the new light.” The door of paradise beckons in the golden frontal of the Patron Saints altar and, finally, at the High Altar, the Eucharist offers salvation: “He who saves all men on the Cross.” Following this, with his most famous words, “out of the beauty of the house of God...,” triggered by the cross of St. Eligius and the “Escrin de Charlemagne” placed on the altar, we follow Suger across the threshold “from that which is material to that which is immaterial.” Nevertheless, Crow’s sweeping view of artisanal activity, one that encompasses the walls of the church, liturgical objects and their gems, the baking of Eucharistic bread, Christ as the perfect stone, and human beings—“stone vessels crafted to receive God” according to Bernardus Silvestris (82)—creates an umbrella that invites us to think of the Christian edifice in multiple modes from the literal to the eschatological that connected object, ritual, celebrant, and viewer.
Chapter 3, “The Everflowing Fountain,” swivels away from Suger and Saint-Denis to explore the Cistercian environment and the attitudes of Bernard of Clairvaux exemplified in his “Sermons of the Dedication of the Church.” Bernard’s writings, Crow finds, set out a material way of understanding mystical experience and, through artisanal metaphors, share points in common with Suger’s perspective (101). Compare this with Conrad Rudolph’s summary of the situation between the two abbots, which concluded, despite positive remarks on Suger’s reforms, that “the program (of Saint-Denis) was (not) compatible with Bernard’s aesthetic views.” [3] A Cistercian monastery, its site transformed from swampy origins, its church bathed in the pellucid light of grisaille glass, the verdant cloister enclosing a fountain, offered a glimpse of the celestial garden and an environment that transformed its body of monks (114-15, 127). Saint-Denis, too, boasted a remarkable double-basin fountain, adorned with sculpted figures of animals, classical gods and heroes, elements and vices, placed in the south wing of a cloister that was certainly viewed in paradisiacal terms. [4] Why then are its cloister and fountain absent from a discussion of the reconstruction of the abbey?
The consecration ceremony stitches together myriad themes of the book. Bernard’s sermon on the ritual complements Hugh of Saint-Victor’s description of the construction of the cosmological wall (57-69) and the two consecrations of Saint-Denis (191), to emphasize the transformation of “a building from a heap of dead matter into living walls” (113). The same vision echoes in another sermon for the dedication of a church written by Maurice de Sully, bishop of Paris and the motor behind the vast project of Notre-Dame. Maurice presents the church as the embodiment of a moral and spiritual edifice, an image of the Christian soul “cleansed of sin and ornamented with the virtues” prepared to “become, with the angels, a companion and participant in eternal devotion.” [5] In fact, references to the relationship between the physical and the celestial were apparent in the consecration liturgy from the tenth century, so that every church, regardless of style or size or degree of ornamentation, was likened to the “Urbs beata Jerusalem...Built in heaven out of living stone/And crowned by the angels like a bride for her consort” sung during its consecration. [6] Crow rightly draws our attention to the theology with its rich metaphorical language that gave meaning to the material church. As Bishop Guillaume de Mende put it in the Rationale divinorum officium, written in the late thirteenth century, in words that echo Suger’s: “Faith lays the foundations, hope raises it up, and charity perfects it because the universal church, built of many living stones is the temple of the Lord. Of these many temples there is only one because God is one and the faith is one.” [7] However, one might ask, does this approach offer “a new material interpretation of twelfth-century architecture,” particularly that of Suger’s Saint-Denis?
Chapter 4, “Embodying Heaven on Earth” tackles this question, finding that “lapidary physics,” not Neoplatonic light metaphysics, holds the key to understanding the distinctive character of the Gothic: “approaching the abbey church as a rounded polished stone provides an explanatory framework for the abbot’s matter-centric form of mystical practice” (134). This explanation unfolds along a route—not always easy to follow—from the definition of stone as a frozen mixture of earth and water, to its categories and hierarchies, to an extended interpretation of the scene of the Supper at Emmaus on the bronze doors that includes the figure of Suger. Operating in reference to the metaphors of Christ-Church, Christ-Rock, Christ-Bread, this post-Resurrection episode emphasizes the material change that could lead to the experience of divine presence (160-66). “In whatever way Christ appeared in the host, he also appeared in the material of the door and altar” (175). However, in the end, Crow asserts, Suger’s aims extended beyond the doors and altar. The restoration that transformed Saint-Denis into a “stained glass robe” witnessed the fulfillment of God’s plan for the abbey, the kingdom of the Franks, and the entire world.
Suger’s De Consecratione and De Administratione spotlight stone’s starring role in the abbey’s construction story—not just cabochons and precious gems, but the limestone of the architectural fabric. There is a story to tell here, one that is curiously absent given Crow’s declaration that he will “argue that knowing what stone is, what stone can be and how stone changes demonstrates how the divine project of creation will be completed and how humans can participate in that completion” (141). De Consecratione chronicles the stone of the church and its skillful assembly through every step of the project from conception to realization, from earth to heaven. Let us follow.
In the planning phase, Suger evaluated the task at hand. “(W)e began, with the help of God, strenuously to work on this part (the west block and nave extension), having laid very strong material foundations...and most strong spiritual ones of which it is said, ‘For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ’” (I Corinthians 3:11). [8] His first concern was to secure building materials, since importing columns from Rome was logistically impossible. Through “a gift of God” a quarry yielding high-quality stone was discovered in the region, complemented by the arrival of “a skillful crowd of masons, stonecutters, sculptors, and other workmen,” certainly an apt illustration of the union of material and craft described by Theophilus. Another quarry near Pontoise was the stage for two dramatic events: in the first, “pious neighbors, nobles and common folk alike,” joined the workers to haul columns out of the chasm, an early instance of the cult of the carts devotional phenomenon; in the second, during a rainstorm, an unlikely group of seventeen “weak and disabled persons” moved a column that normally required at least 100 men up to the waiting teamsters to keep building on track. As construction advanced, the capitals and bases of the supports of the Carolingian nave were repaired, “respect(ing) the very stones, sacred as they are, as though they were relics.” The foundations of phase two, the new chevet, were laid, enriched by the deposit of gems that Crow (176-78) recognizes as a reference to the Heavenly Jerusalem of Revelations chapter 21. Columns, arches, and vaults rose quickly thanks to “the numerous crowd of workmen.” But at its most vulnerable, “not yet held together by the bulk of the severies,” gale-force winds struck the work site, “the arches…threatened baleful ruin at any moment, miserably trembling and swaying hither and thither.” Only the intrepid Geoffroy, bishop of Chartres, wielding the relic of St. Simeon, and “the power of God” saved the incomplete structure. Finally, during the consecration ceremony of 1144, the celebrants “sprinkled the holy water onto the exterior” to complete the transformation of the terrestrial stone of the church into a vessel filled with divine presence.
Jason R. Crow’s Reconstructing the Abbey of Saint-Denis illuminates the complex and expansive significance of the materials from which twelfth-century architecture, its liturgical objects, and shrines were fashioned. It insists that we approach this art, not in terms of style or technical development, but instead imagine it back into its contemporaneous context of thought. Suger, like Maurice de Sully at Notre-Dame, engaged with his building project on multiple levels: practically, there was stone to quarry and roofs to be made; at the same time, both prelates clearly believed that their efforts participated in a divine plan for perfection.
In the end, I find the relation between the material theology, expounded at length throughout the book, and the architecture it purports to explain too attenuated and generalized. Although theological discourse employed architecture as a ubiquitous metaphor, it did not offer prescriptions that might be translated into actual buildings. On the one hand, Abbot Suger and Bishop Maurice referred to their churches in transcendental terms as Sion, the Heavenly Jerusalem, or “a celestial and eternal mansion.” On the other, Bernard of Clairvaux, who apparently shared in the theology that the material and the artisanal offered a way of understanding mystical experience, viewed the final product of those materials and work quite differently. He and his Cistercian brethren describe their churches as functional, even industrial, “workshops of prayer,” and “meaningless hulls of stone.” [9] Peter the Chanter, a member of the Notre-Dame clergy, goes even further, grumbling that “men sin even in building churches.” [10] Crow suggests that the same material theology covers both Cistercian Le Thoronet and Saint-Denis; does it also extend to Cluny III and Sens Cathedral? Twelfth-century architecture in France, not to mention the rest of western Europe, was a period of bewildering diversity. While A New Material Interpretation of Twelfth-Century Architecture: Reconstructing the Abbey of Saint-Denis explores the medieval thinking about earthly material and its artefacts, it does not account for the strikingly different creative manifestations that arose from this foundation.
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Notes:
1. P. Gilles Drouin, “Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, enjeux théologiques d’une restauration,” La cathédrale immortelle? Pascal Bermon and Dominque Poirel, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), 201-18.
2. Suger explicitly confirms the existence of a choir inscription: “To these verses of the inscription (of the 1140 west block consecration on the gilded bronze doors) we chose the following ones to be added…” See Abbot Suger: On the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and its Art Treasures, trans. and ed. Erwin Panofsky and Gerda Panofsky-Soergel, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 50-51, 168-69; also, Suger, Oeuvres, trans. and ed. Françoise Gasparri, 2 vols. (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2008), I:120-21, 210-11.
3. Conrad Rudolph, Artistic Change at St-Denis: Abbot Suger’s Program and the Early Twelfth-Century Controversy over Art (Princeton, 1990), 74; also 8-11.
4. Laurence Terrier Aliferis, “La fontaine du cloître de l'abbatiale de Saint-Denis: programme iconographique et contexte de création,” Revue de l’Art 191/1 (2016): 27-36, suggests that the fountain elaborated a moralizing program addressed to the monks. For the history and meaning of the cloister, consult Gesta 12 (1975), which gathers the essays of The Cloister Symposium of 1972. Of especial relevance is Paul Meyvaert, “The Medieval Monastic Claustrum,” 53-60.
5. For a discussion and translation of Maurice de Sully’s sermon, Jean Longère, “Maurice de Sully, l’évêque du diocese de Paris, le prédicateur,”in La cathédrale immortelle? ed. Pascal Bermon and Dominque Poirel (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), 67-79.
6. Laurence Hull Stookey, “The Gothic Cathedral as the Heavenly Jerusalem: Liturgical and Theological Sources,” Gesta 8/1 (1969): 35-41 includes the full text of this hymn.
7. Guillaume Durand de Mende, Manuel pour comprendre la signification symbolique des cathedrals et des églises (Fuveau: Maison de Vie, 1996), 118-19 (translation mine). Also, The Rationale Divinorum Officiorum of William Durand of Mende, trans. Timothy M. Thibodeau (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), 63.
8. Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 88-89. For the full text of this libellus, see Panofsky, 82-121; Gasparri, Suger. Oeuvres, II:53.
9. Roger Stalley, The Cistercian Monasteries of Ireland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 79; François Bucher, “Cistercian Architectural Purism,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 3 (1960): 89-105 at 93.
10. For a discussion of Peter’s criticism of monumental architecture and, implicitly, Notre-Dame, John Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle, 2 vols. (Princeton, 1970), I, 63-72; also Gothic Art 1140-c.1450, ed. by Teresa G. Frisch, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1971), 32-33.