Beyond the Barrier: The Unifying Role of the Choir Screen in Gothic Churches Author(s): Jacqueline E. Jung Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 82, No. 4, (Dec., 2000), pp. 622-657 Published by: College Art Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3051415 Accessed: 29/04/2008 18:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=caa. 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Jung Thomas Hardy's early novel A Laodicean (first published in in church rituals, "anti-pastoral devices"4 designed to prevent 1881) focuses on the relationship between Paula Power, a ordinary people from gaining access to the sacred mysteries. spirited young woman intent on breathing new life into a As aesthetic objects, they are (and were) perceived as disrup- ruined medieval castle, and George Somerset, a brilliant tive to the sweeping vistas of uninterrupted lines and open neo-Gothic architect she hires to carry out the renovations.1 space so admired by modern viewers, barriers that " [demon- Wavering between the romanticized medieval past and a strate] a contemporary trend toward the break-up of the speedily progressing era of modern technology, the two find traditional unity of the cathedral."5 Two important studies in each other the balancing pole between those worlds. Their published within the last twenty-five years can serve as mutual contentment and self-fulfillment are thwarted, how- paradigms of these viewpoints. ever, by obstacle after obstacle: rival suitors, greedy con men, In a groundbreaking 1977 volume, Dorothy Gillerman illnesses, and calculated misunderstandings combine to en- stressed the exclusive quality of the fourteenth-century choir sure that the lovers remain apart. enclosure in the cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris, both as an Toward the end of the novel, George, his reputation ruined enclosing structure that barred the laity from the privileged through the devious machinations of his rivals, falls into space of canons and bishop and as an ideologically charged despair and deserts the castle to study medieval molding sculptural program that foregrounded clerical authority and profiles on the Continent. Just then, of course, his blameless- power.6 In the context of a massive multimedia program, ness is suddenly revealed to Paula, and she undertakes a which, along with the sculptured choir screen, included a frantic rush around France and Germany, hoping "to casually series of stained-glass windows and tombs designed to rein- encounter Somerset in some aisle, lady-chapel, or crypt to force the chapter's institutional identity,7 the cloture served which he might have betaken himself to copy and learn the both "as an escape from the world in the form of the secret of the great artists who had erected these nooks" (402). congregation and as a declaration of the priesthood's exclu- Having barely missed him in several far-flung towns, she ends sive relationship to the body of Christ."8 This it accomplished, up in Caen, at the church of the Abbaye-aux-Dames-a by Gillerman's account, in two ways. As architectural construc- favorite haunt of Somerset's, we have already learned. Encoun- tion it blocked the view of the Eucharistic Host-the true tering Somerset's father, who is also seeking his son there, body of Christ-which played an increasingly important role Paula is relieved to be on the right track. But now, when the in popular devotions following the establishment of the feast loose ends are to be neatly tied up and all parties gratified at of Corpus Christi in 1264.9 On the other hand, the narrative last, Paula and the old man are confronted with a difficulty images on its outer surface, with their manifold references to seemingly more insurmountable than all the convoluted liturgical activities, including the Eucharistic ritual, rein- intrigues that have blocked everyone's happiness so far: a forced the privileged position of the clerics within. As Giller- choir screen. man presents it, the space of the choir was thus marked by a radical self-referentiality: the canons sought not only to The church seemed absolutely empty, the void being seclude themselves from the outside world but also to sur- emphasized by its graceful coolness. But on going towards round themselves with imagery that would mirror their own the east they perceived a bald gentleman close to the activities, interests, and roles. It is little wonder, then, that the screen, looking to the right and to the left as if much motivating concern of Gillerman's study was to determine perplexed. Paula merely glanced over at him, his back "when and why such divisions were introduced into the being towards her, and turning to her aunt said softly, "I formerly open interior space of France's major cathe- wonder how we get into the choir?" "That's just what I was drals"-a question that presupposes the intrinsic foreignness wondering," said the old gentleman.... (402) of screens there.10 Jean Bony's masterwork, French GothicArchitecture of the 12th Paula and Somerset Sr. cannot get past the screen and into and 13th Centuries,could hardly differ more from Gillerman's the choir-where they are certain, naturally, that Somerset social-historical account of Notre-Dame's liturgical accoutre- lingers. They must leave the church and reenter through a ments, but it shares the unspoken assumption that screens are separate door in the choir proper.2 fundamentally incompatible with the basic spatial plan of a Like Paula Power, scholars and churchgoers alike have long Gothic building.11 A tour de force of penetrating visual understood the function of choir screens to separate and analysis, his book manifests a modern reverence for clean exclude. Recent art historical scholarship has tended to lines and steady rhythms in medieval interiors. Bony's accor- present choir screens in much in the same way that their dance of primacy to the bare bones of Gothic architecture, Renaissance and Counter-Reformation dismantlers did: as unencumbered by the clutter of liturgical paraphernalia, has signs of either social or aesthetic disunity.3 As social signs, they come under fire by such scholars as Willibald Sauerlander, are (and were) understood as hindrances to lay participation who regards this approach as a "disturbing" "estrangement THE UNIFYING ROLE OF THE CHOIR SCREEN 623 1 Jan van Eyck, Madonna in a Church, 1437-38. Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin-Preussischer Kulturbesitz Gemaldegalerie (photo:J6rg P. Anders) 624 ART BUI.I.EIN DECEMBER 200() VO()IUME I,XXXII NUMBER 4 /1X 6 N '.X\\N ?f 2 East choir screen, ca. 1230. Naumbturg Cathedral (photo: author) 12 of the art-historian from actual history." But to proclaim this teristically covered a screen's nave-facing surface. As screen a peculiarly "modernist" trend, while certainly apt, does not ensembles at Strasbourg (known through drawings and frag- do full justice to a traditional and deep-rooted distaste for mentary remains) and Havelberg (still in situ) demonstrate, choir screens extending nearly uninterrupted from Giorgio designers exploited the dual orientation of these structures, Vasari. A common excuse for destroying screens in the using a distinctive visual vocabulary on each side for messages fifteenth through eighteenth centuries was, after all, aes- aimed at the socially differentiated viewers who inhabited the thetic: that choir screens were disruptive to the spatial unity of respective spaces.'4 The imagery on screen facades must be any church. understood, I argue, with respect as much to the lay audiences Despite its continued prevalence in much art historical to whom it was directed physically as to the clerical designers literature, however, this claim is not necessarily accurate. Even who conceived it. Through a particular stylistic idiom (tradi- disregarding their liturgical functions, the surviving en- tionally associated with the Naumburg workshop) and special- sembles in, for example, St. Elisabeth in Marburg or Meissen ized choices of imagery, choir screen sculpture addressed Cathedral appear seamlessly and harmoniously integrated itself to and thereby incorporated precisely those nonclerical into their architectural surroundings, indeed, enhancing viewers whom the screens appear structurally to exclude. rather than detracting from the overall space.13 It would be This represents a remarkable shift in the function of difficult to summon more dazzling testimony to the aesthetic monumental ecclesiastical sculpture. The primary purpose of impact choir screens held for contemporary beholders than these images is not simply to instruct by reminding illiterate Jan van Eyck's Madonna in a Church(Fig. 1), where it is not the people of the events of sacred history, but also to teach open sanctuary but the lacy, flickering surface of the sumptu- through empathy and identification-to draw their viewers ous sculptured screen that frames and echoes the Virgin's into the stories emotionally, both by couching these in solid, body.