Bourgogne romane: l’abbatiale de Vézelay
The inspired hill of Vézelay
The Burgundy hill of Vézelay, which French writer Paul Claudel named “eternal”, has been drawing hundreds of thousands of pilgrims (nowadays more likely tourists) since time immemorial. It has also drawn strife, battles and pillage: the big monastery was no less than six times destroyed by fire, and always rebuilt. Here, the Second Crusade was preached on Easter Day of 1146 by Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, whom King Louis VII of France had summoned to be lectured on the sort of penance his royal person should submit to to atone for his many sins: Bernard chose the Crusade. Crusaders congregated here as well for the Third one, in 1190.
The history of Vézelay began around 850, when Count Girard de Roussillon founded a nunnery at the foot of the hill, in the locale now occupied by the village of Saint-Père-sous-Vézelay. Fifteen years later, the nuns had been replaced by monks for reasons that never reached us. What we know is that further to a Viking raid on Burgundy in 887, the monks took refuge at the top of the hill, in the remnants of a Roman oppidum, and never went down again.
Originally dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the monastery they built on the hilltop was placed in 1050 under the patronage of Mary Magdalene, further to the claimed transport of her bones from the Holy Land by a monk named Badillon. This so-called “transposition” was validated by the Pope, but the people of Provence rebelled fiercely against that ruling: it had indeed always been well known that the saint, who had been the very first, even before the apostles, to see Christ resuscitated, had left the Holy Land and come to France where she finished her life in the mountains of the Sainte- Baume, which were named after her. Her bones had been kept in the basilica of Saint-Maximin, the largest church in the whole of Provence.
Thus sanctioned by the Pope, and confirmed yet again by Pascal II in 1103, the claim of the Vézelay monks drew immense crowds (and brought enormous riches). The fact that they also claimed to have the bones of Martha and Lazarus were not for nothing in the considerable attraction the abbey had on a pilgrimage-hungry Christendom. However, the Provençal people were victorious in the end, when they revealed that the bones of the Magdalene, which had been hidden during the 900s as the Saracens drew nearer, were opportunely re-discovered in 1279. This time, Pope Boniface VIII found in their favor and that ruling was never overturned: the pilgrimage to Vézelay was dead, even though the big church kept its dedication.
The rest of the history of Vézelay is a long downhill walk. In 1537, the Benedictine monks are replaced by canons. In 1568, the Protestants seize the church and burn it again. Finally, in 1819, lightning strikes and sets the church aflame for the last time. When architect Viollet-le-Duc, mandated by Minister Prosper Mérimée, arrives on-site in 1840, the abbey church of Vézelay is but a gutted carcass, ready to collapse. That same year, the church was put on the first list of French Historic Landmarks (“Monuments historiques”) and restoration works were undertaken urgently; they were to last until 1861, and many other such works have been undertaken since.
The church was granted basilica status in 1920, and in 1979 it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, as it is the starting point of one of the major Paths to Compostela, the Via Lemovicensis, so-named because it runs through the large city of Limoges.
On that day of June 2024 I went to Vézelay as a side trip during a photographic expedition for the Fondation pour la Sauvegarde de l’Art Français, one of the non-profit heritage organizations I work for as a pro bono photographer, it was raining. Therefore, I took no photo of the outside, but instead concentrated on the inside. Furthermore, a lot of what can be seen on the outside, including the façade and the tympanum, are re-creations of the 19th century by Viollet-le-Duc, and thus much less interesting for our purpose.
This photograph is a good starting point to describe more in detail the famous tympanum of Vézelay.
First, it is installed in the narthex (there was another one on the façade [gable wall] of the church, but it hasn’t reached us; the mediocre one that can be seen there today was invented by Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century), i.e., the part of the church that is indoors, but yet not in the nave proper. It is a sort of antechamber to which certain people were restricted because they couldn’t attend Mass inside: non-baptized persons, or followers of other religions not yet converted. The narthex marks the separation between the profane world outside and the sacred world within.
The tympanum has a general fantail shape; a semi-circular archivolt crowns it. At the bottom, the lintel rests on two sculpted jambs and a central trumeau that delimit the twin doors. Built between 1120 and 1140, the tympanum is 9 meters long and 5.25 meters tall. It is sculpted in high relief; some figures are even done in ronde-bosse, or “in the round” in English, meaning that the stone has been hollowed all the way behind the subject to make it stand out more.
The central scene depicted on the tympanum is very original, and probably even unique in all of the Romanesque sculpture. It seems to bring together the themes of Ascension and Pentecost, two important Christian holidays that are only separated by ten days in the yearly calendar. Jesus Christ occupies the whole height of the tympanum and appears to ascend, as His head pierces the arch that is above the central part of the tympanum. The multiple folds in His vestments appear stirred by the wind, reinforcing the impression of upward movement. As a reminder, the Ascension is the holiday that commemorates the last meeting of Jesus with His disciples and His being called to God’s side.
However, Christ is also depicted here inside a mandorla, an almond-shaped symbol (mandorla is Italian for almond) used to describe a person already in the Heavens. One then talks about Christ en gloire, i.e., “Christ in Glory” or “Christ in Majesty” (Lat. Maiestas Domini), and indeed He is seated on a throne, which is a posture not generally used when depicting the Ascension... Therefore, this main scene on the tympanum is usually associated with the Pentecost, or the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles, fifty days after Easter. This interpretation is reinforced by the rays emanating from Jesus’s hands.
Around Christ are the apostles, Peter on His right holding a key, and Paul (peering out of the lintel) also bearing a key, as both are regarded as founders of the Church. The fact that Paul seems to have been included as an afterthought in a space where he was not supposed to be (all the faces have been hacked off during the French Revolution) is not the only disturbing element in this composition. Indeed, some of the apostles are to the right of Christ under a harmless cloud and with their books open (normal), while the others are on His left (sinistra), under a stormy cloud and with their books closed (most definitely not normal). The reason for this arrangement has caused many debates among Mediævalists. Some seem to lean towards the fact that this represents what awaits those who do not believe: damnation after the Last Judgment. Others (apparently a majority) prefer to see an evocation of the power Christ confers upon the apostles: that of forgiving sins —although personally I am hard put to construe what I see here in that manner. Finally, some others believe it is an allusion to the symbolic closure of the Old Testament, replaced by the New one.
All apostles look in various directions towards the peoples of the Earth, depicted in the semi-circular register above the main scene. The eight representations show symbolic scenes about the benefits of the Christian faith. I will not explain them all in order not to make this caption lengthier than it already is, but I am ready to answer any question about them.
Finally, the archivolt above shows a Zodiac, i.e. a representation of each sign, associated with the corresponding month’s labor (say, pruning of trees in March and harvesting of crops in July), with the addition of the solstices and equinoxes. Those 29 small motifs make up the most comprehensive Mediæval Zodiac I have ever seen.
Bourgogne romane: l’abbatiale de Vézelay
The inspired hill of Vézelay
The Burgundy hill of Vézelay, which French writer Paul Claudel named “eternal”, has been drawing hundreds of thousands of pilgrims (nowadays more likely tourists) since time immemorial. It has also drawn strife, battles and pillage: the big monastery was no less than six times destroyed by fire, and always rebuilt. Here, the Second Crusade was preached on Easter Day of 1146 by Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, whom King Louis VII of France had summoned to be lectured on the sort of penance his royal person should submit to to atone for his many sins: Bernard chose the Crusade. Crusaders congregated here as well for the Third one, in 1190.
The history of Vézelay began around 850, when Count Girard de Roussillon founded a nunnery at the foot of the hill, in the locale now occupied by the village of Saint-Père-sous-Vézelay. Fifteen years later, the nuns had been replaced by monks for reasons that never reached us. What we know is that further to a Viking raid on Burgundy in 887, the monks took refuge at the top of the hill, in the remnants of a Roman oppidum, and never went down again.
Originally dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the monastery they built on the hilltop was placed in 1050 under the patronage of Mary Magdalene, further to the claimed transport of her bones from the Holy Land by a monk named Badillon. This so-called “transposition” was validated by the Pope, but the people of Provence rebelled fiercely against that ruling: it had indeed always been well known that the saint, who had been the very first, even before the apostles, to see Christ resuscitated, had left the Holy Land and come to France where she finished her life in the mountains of the Sainte- Baume, which were named after her. Her bones had been kept in the basilica of Saint-Maximin, the largest church in the whole of Provence.
Thus sanctioned by the Pope, and confirmed yet again by Pascal II in 1103, the claim of the Vézelay monks drew immense crowds (and brought enormous riches). The fact that they also claimed to have the bones of Martha and Lazarus were not for nothing in the considerable attraction the abbey had on a pilgrimage-hungry Christendom. However, the Provençal people were victorious in the end, when they revealed that the bones of the Magdalene, which had been hidden during the 900s as the Saracens drew nearer, were opportunely re-discovered in 1279. This time, Pope Boniface VIII found in their favor and that ruling was never overturned: the pilgrimage to Vézelay was dead, even though the big church kept its dedication.
The rest of the history of Vézelay is a long downhill walk. In 1537, the Benedictine monks are replaced by canons. In 1568, the Protestants seize the church and burn it again. Finally, in 1819, lightning strikes and sets the church aflame for the last time. When architect Viollet-le-Duc, mandated by Minister Prosper Mérimée, arrives on-site in 1840, the abbey church of Vézelay is but a gutted carcass, ready to collapse. That same year, the church was put on the first list of French Historic Landmarks (“Monuments historiques”) and restoration works were undertaken urgently; they were to last until 1861, and many other such works have been undertaken since.
The church was granted basilica status in 1920, and in 1979 it was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site, as it is the starting point of one of the major Paths to Compostela, the Via Lemovicensis, so-named because it runs through the large city of Limoges.
On that day of June 2024 I went to Vézelay as a side trip during a photographic expedition for the Fondation pour la Sauvegarde de l’Art Français, one of the non-profit heritage organizations I work for as a pro bono photographer, it was raining. Therefore, I took no photo of the outside, but instead concentrated on the inside. Furthermore, a lot of what can be seen on the outside, including the façade and the tympanum, are re-creations of the 19th century by Viollet-le-Duc, and thus much less interesting for our purpose.
This photograph is a good starting point to describe more in detail the famous tympanum of Vézelay.
First, it is installed in the narthex (there was another one on the façade [gable wall] of the church, but it hasn’t reached us; the mediocre one that can be seen there today was invented by Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century), i.e., the part of the church that is indoors, but yet not in the nave proper. It is a sort of antechamber to which certain people were restricted because they couldn’t attend Mass inside: non-baptized persons, or followers of other religions not yet converted. The narthex marks the separation between the profane world outside and the sacred world within.
The tympanum has a general fantail shape; a semi-circular archivolt crowns it. At the bottom, the lintel rests on two sculpted jambs and a central trumeau that delimit the twin doors. Built between 1120 and 1140, the tympanum is 9 meters long and 5.25 meters tall. It is sculpted in high relief; some figures are even done in ronde-bosse, or “in the round” in English, meaning that the stone has been hollowed all the way behind the subject to make it stand out more.
The central scene depicted on the tympanum is very original, and probably even unique in all of the Romanesque sculpture. It seems to bring together the themes of Ascension and Pentecost, two important Christian holidays that are only separated by ten days in the yearly calendar. Jesus Christ occupies the whole height of the tympanum and appears to ascend, as His head pierces the arch that is above the central part of the tympanum. The multiple folds in His vestments appear stirred by the wind, reinforcing the impression of upward movement. As a reminder, the Ascension is the holiday that commemorates the last meeting of Jesus with His disciples and His being called to God’s side.
However, Christ is also depicted here inside a mandorla, an almond-shaped symbol (mandorla is Italian for almond) used to describe a person already in the Heavens. One then talks about Christ en gloire, i.e., “Christ in Glory” or “Christ in Majesty” (Lat. Maiestas Domini), and indeed He is seated on a throne, which is a posture not generally used when depicting the Ascension... Therefore, this main scene on the tympanum is usually associated with the Pentecost, or the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles, fifty days after Easter. This interpretation is reinforced by the rays emanating from Jesus’s hands.
Around Christ are the apostles, Peter on His right holding a key, and Paul (peering out of the lintel) also bearing a key, as both are regarded as founders of the Church. The fact that Paul seems to have been included as an afterthought in a space where he was not supposed to be (all the faces have been hacked off during the French Revolution) is not the only disturbing element in this composition. Indeed, some of the apostles are to the right of Christ under a harmless cloud and with their books open (normal), while the others are on His left (sinistra), under a stormy cloud and with their books closed (most definitely not normal). The reason for this arrangement has caused many debates among Mediævalists. Some seem to lean towards the fact that this represents what awaits those who do not believe: damnation after the Last Judgment. Others (apparently a majority) prefer to see an evocation of the power Christ confers upon the apostles: that of forgiving sins —although personally I am hard put to construe what I see here in that manner. Finally, some others believe it is an allusion to the symbolic closure of the Old Testament, replaced by the New one.
All apostles look in various directions towards the peoples of the Earth, depicted in the semi-circular register above the main scene. The eight representations show symbolic scenes about the benefits of the Christian faith. I will not explain them all in order not to make this caption lengthier than it already is, but I am ready to answer any question about them.
Finally, the archivolt above shows a Zodiac, i.e. a representation of each sign, associated with the corresponding month’s labor (say, pruning of trees in March and harvesting of crops in July), with the addition of the solstices and equinoxes. Those 29 small motifs make up the most comprehensive Mediæval Zodiac I have ever seen.