The Western Porch and Wooden Doors of the Cathedral of Le Puy Threshold Between Nature, Human, and Divine
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Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta Seminář dějin umění Bc. Katarína Kravčíková The Western Porch and Wooden Doors of the Cathedral of Le Puy Threshold Between Nature, Human, and Divine Magisterská diplomová práce Vedoucí práce: doc. Ivan Foletti, MA 2019 Prehlasujem, že som diplomovú prácu vypracovala samostatne s využitím uvedených prameňov a literatúry. ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... .. 1 In this point, I would like to express my gratitude to my family, friends, and colleagues for their help and care. Without you, this work would not have been possible. I owe greatly to Filip K., Daniela K., Adrien P., Jotunn K., Cassandre L., and Filip F., for their advice, time and careful corrections. Thank you. I would like to thank Klára D. for her support, discussions, and company in Rome and beyond. I would also like to thank to head of the Department Radka Miltová, for her patience and goodwill to give me as much time as I needed. And finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Ivan Foletti for his counsel and guidance, but above all for constant encouragement. Thank you. 2 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 4 STATE OF RESEARCH ........................................................................................................... 8 The City and Its History, the Cathedral and Its Treasures ..................................................... 9 Oriented at the Porch and Wooden Doors ............................................................................ 12 I. THE OBJECT AND THE CONTEXTS: SIGNIFICANCE OF LANDSCAPE, SITE, AND SOIL, FOR PERSISTENCE OF REVERENCE ............................................................ 15 I.1 Approaching from Afar ................................................................................................... 15 I.2 Landscape and Cityscape ................................................................................................ 17 I.3 Old Theories, New Excavations, Constant Favor ........................................................... 18 I.4 Divinely Chosen Site and Christian Legends ................................................................. 22 I.5 Le Puy as a Place of Medieval Christian Pilgrimage ...................................................... 27 I.6 Description of the Cathedral’s Architectural Concept .................................................... 30 II. THE PORCH AND STAGING OF A LIMINAL EXPERIENCE ...................................... 33 II.1 Description of the Porch of Notre Dame-du-Puy .......................................................... 33 II.2 Intermediary Spaces ...................................................................................................... 38 II.3 Twofold Spirit of a Threshold ....................................................................................... 42 III. WOODEN DOORS AND IMAGES .................................................................................. 47 III.1 Position of Doors in Time ............................................................................................ 48 III.2 Position of Doors in Space ........................................................................................... 52 III.3 Strange Framework and Workmanship ........................................................................ 53 III.4 Iconography and Latin Inscriptions .............................................................................. 57 III.5 Harmony in Dichotomy ................................................................................................ 61 IV. CONCLUSION: PORCH AS PLACE OF PREPARATION AND EXPLANATION: WAITING AND THINKING WITH IMAGES ...................................................................... 63 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 71 List of Illustrations ................................................................................................................... 83 3 INTRODUCTION The Cathedral of Le Puy, one of the most fascinating creations of French-Romanesque1 church architecture, both “indigenous” and “eclectic”, comes across as extraordinary in many regards. Whether it is the church’s dominant location within the landscape of the valley of Le Puy and the unprecedented architectural solution which was used to accommodate to these given natural conditions; the religious prestige it embodies and the unceasing pilgrimage attractivity it held for centuries; its remarkable position in local legends and oral tradition; or its significant role in the cultural history of the whole region and the place it occupies in the history of art and architecture as such. It seems that every tangible or knowledgeable aspect of this astonishing church has a capacity to raise questions, facilitate fascination, or at least arouse curiosity. Because of this – meant in a most positive sense possible – perplexity, it is impossible to fit it wholly into almost any of the virtual “boxes” or formal categories we have intentionally used in the very first sentence of this introduction: it’s neither a typical pilgrimage church nor a French, Romanesque, or Auvergnat building type. Rather, it presents us with a strange composition, an obscure building history, as well as a number of other odd features – starting with the fact that it is rooted on an ancient site of worship. On the other hand, this perplexity is the reason why this building holds so many similarities with hundreds of objects of medieval cultural heritage scattered all over the Mediterranean area, as well as with ones from within the closest regions. In this sense, we can consider this church as perfect example of a coherent, yet multi-layered witness of the accordingly multifarious era of its conception. But, at the same time, the evidence of hundreds of generations and thousands of hands and minds which were imprinted into its present semblance. This overall richness of visual and intellectual stimuli it has, viewpoints it offers to adopt, or questions it raises, enchanted many modern scholars and led to a quite high number of studies trying to resolve its enigmas. The main impetus behind the conception of this thesis was thus not an impression that the cathedral Notre Dame du Puy has not been studied properly, nor that it deserves more exhaustive and systematic scholarly scrutiny and attention because it has been neglected and its role has been underestimated. Just the opposite2. In fact, Le Puy-en-Velay with its Cathedral was chosen as a well-documented highpoint of medieval pilgrimage – among other “case studies” like Conques-en-Rouerge, Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, Clermont-Ferrand, Nevers, Charité-sur-Loire, Saint Benoit-sur-Loire, or the Mont-Saint-Michel – so as to become the first of important destinations of the itinerary of the Migrating Art Historians project, in which I actively participated3. The main idea of this four-months long walking journey of twelve modern pilgrims was – after sitting in libraries, consulting books and gathering as much 1 For the notion of “Romanesque” see Xavier Barral I Altet, Contre l’art roman? Essai sur un passé réinventé, Paris 2006. 2 Cf. the bibliographic references given in the “State of Research” in this thesis. 3 The main result of the project was a collective volume Migrating Art Historians on the Sacred Ways, Ivan Foletti, Katarína Kravčíková, Adrien Palladino, Sabina Rosenbergová eds. (Brno/Roma 2018), to which this thesis will refer frequently. (note: the abbreviation MAH 2018 will be used to indicate the volume further in the text and footnotes.) 4 information as possible – to hit the road, walking for almost 1600 km in order to reach on foot certain key-monuments of the network of medieval pilgrimage roads of France. Therefore, the motivation to enter the discussion and to reconsider the case of the Cathedral of Le Puy finds its roots within this new methodological frame we have decided to apply to the chosen monuments. With the help of fresh stimuli and through the multi-sensorial reactions they have invoked in us, we had a unique chance to merge critical knowledge of the scholarly discourse and sources with the experience of our own bodies. We were walking towards number of monuments for hundreds of kilometers, while thinking about them and their position, we were observing them from a distance and faced them closely; tired, full of expectations and questions, and all of this in the hope of making the encounter itself more natural and possibly closer to the one that pilgrims had centuries before us4. The time-consuming and space- absorbing experience we were acquiring and developing on the long term became also formative for our instant, “on-the spot” reactions and perception of objects of art. But at the same time, using the same tools, this experience led to the progressive and unceasing re- evaluation of our own sensations, thoughts, and conclusions, which were changing especially with every new encounter and then for a long time afterwards. Therefore, the essential capacity of experience – which we sought after as theory-oriented art historians – might be understood in accordance with the transformative essence of every pilgrimage: what has been experienced cannot become unexperienced, and sensations that have been felt or impressions that have been seen cannot become