The Western Porch and Wooden Doors of the Cathedral of Le Puy Threshold Between Nature, Human, and Divine

Masarykova univerzita Filozofická fakulta

Seminář dějin umění

Bc. Katarína Kravčíková

Magisterská diplomová práce

Vedoucí práce: doc. Ivan Foletti, MA 2019

Prehlasujem, že som diplomovú prácu vypracovala samostatne s využitím uvedených prameňov a literatúry.

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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.

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

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.)

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 unfelt and unseen5.

Taking into consideration this experimental methodology – I dare to say even “down- to-earth” and “full-body” approach – of the entire project6, it is probably not unexpected that the project’s multifaceted outcomes will also be reflected and incorporated into the present text. The main inquiry of this thesis will be limited to the physical boundaries of the porch of the Cathedral Notre-Dame du Puy, introduced and looked upon as an outstanding architectural feature, an element of first encounter, a physical barrier and vector of transition, and at least to a certain level – as a sovereign venue of spiritual elucidation with its own iconological message. The inseparable and eye-catching part of this loquacious7 porch that is the pair of wooden doors installed on both sides of the main staircase will constitute an essential part of this reflection too. We will try to regard these two doors as mostly unmovable objects but also as facilitators of the dynamic at play inside the porch. A decision to narrow down the focus of this text only to the western areas of the cathedral only was made for several practical and methodological reasons. Firstly, it is far beyond the capacities of the author, same as beyond the possible range of this master thesis, to handle a complete analysis of such a complicated and multi-layered building as Notre Dame in

4 It is necessary to state clearly and at a very beginning that the intention of this project was never “to play middle ages”, to pretend or to claim that our experience matches the one of medieval pilgrim. We have fully understood, embraced and further worked with the idea of impossibility of such an experience. 5 René Gothóni, “Pilgrimage = Transformation Journey” in Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis (1993), 15, pp. 101–116, p. 113. 6 For the thorough description of the project’s methodology, its aims, limitations and general results see Ivan Foletti, „Migrating Art Historians. Objects, Bodies, and Minds“ in MAH 2018, pp. 27–57. 7 Loquacious meant in both literal sense, having in mind the number of inscriptions the porch houses, but also figuratively or less directly, targeting its assumed iconological capacities.

Le Puy. Considering the state of art of this edifice, there is also no need for such an analysis8. Secondly, choosing elements of the aforementioned experimental point of view and in an attempt to proceed in our investigation in more inductive way, we have decided to use the area of the porch zone and its wooden doors as a case study for several art-historical questions prompted by our pilgrimage experience. For instance, what are the possible roles and statuses of this kind of liminal space, whether for a pilgrim who reaches it on foot, for local people who meet it daily, or for the overall architectural concept of the church as such? Were the iconographical program and its iconological outcomes conceived intentionally for a specific audience and in order to convey certain ideas? And consequently, what could have thus been the possible responses and understandings of such space? How does the materiality of the artwork itself and its setting influence the final picture? Had the potency of the terrain conditions and attractivity of the scenery been intentionally incorporated into the church’s or porch’s final semblance and voice? What does it mean to arrive to and to stand within the porch of Notre Dame du Puy? What does this place make one remember?

Attempting to answer these questions, the body of the text of this thesis, following the introduction and the state of research, will be structured as follows: the first chapter will discuss various types of contexts decisive for understanding the porch and its wooden doors. The question of our own physical approach towards the site is firstly linked with a reflection on the general potential of landscape within perception, as well as a re-evaluation of the specific local natural characteristics and their role for our art-historical purposes. The question of the landscape is then tightly connected with the historical development of the site, which was apparently used for devotional purposes even in pre-Christian times. We will, therefore, discuss the architectural development on the Mont Corneille, the very center of the sacred landscape of Le Puy, on the longue durée, aiming at understanding this process in harmony with the numerable legendary stories about the foundation of this church dedicated to Virgin Mary as well as archeological findings. Since the following chapters will be focused almost exclusively on the area of the porch, a short description of the overall architectural concept of the cathedral as well as a brief summary of the complex problematic of medieval pilgrimage to Notre-Dame du Puy will be included within the first chapter too. The second chapter will be dedicated to a description of the porch regarded in a twofold way. At first, it will be considered as a physical barrier and functional element of the architectural solution. Secondly, the iconological capacities of this specific porch as well as symbolical connotations connected with entrance spaces in general will be mentioned. We will try to understand and interpret this porch in connection with an already existent prolific debate about the liminal capacities of entrance and transitional spaces standing in front of church buildings, constituting a division between the profane and sacred worlds. Considering the fact that the Cathedral of Le Puy has undergone several major reconstructions, the genesis and changes to the porch at several epochs will be reflected on too. The third chapter will take a closer look at the famous pair of wooden doors hidden in the porch, which became, thanks to their iconographical content, known as Infancy and Passion doors. Tightly connected to the iconological interpretation sketched in the previous chapter, we

8 Cf. Bibliographic references given in the State of Research of this thesis.

will discuss their symptomatic iconography, epigraphic content but also their completely unique framework, number, and probable function. Besides the large Latin tituli that illuminate different episodes of the narrative, we will take a closer look also at enigmatic Kufic inscription swirling around registers of Infancy Doors. The final part of the text will try to connect all the points we have managed to make and to offer a possible interpretation of the porch of Notre Dame du Puy as a sovereign space envisioned for the physical and spiritual preparation and transition of incoming people.

STATE OF RESEARCH

As already stated, the tangible part of the Le Puy Cathedral considered within this thesis is narrowed down to the monumental western porch and the pair of wooden doors it houses. The bibliography dealing with the cathedral building as a whole, or sectional studies of its different aspects, are both quite profuse and exhaustive. This text does not aspire to offer a complete list of the extant bibliography dedicated to the cathedral, nor its full critical re-assessment. The following state of research might thus seem biased and incomplete. It will target primarily quite recent works which were fundamental for the scope of this text, including references to titles which are not directly related with Le Puy and its Cathedral but have played a decisive role in the genesis of the questions here formulated. It is also necessary to remark at the very beginning that number of questions asked and various ideas we will try to present are quite often, at least in their very essence, a “collective work” of a kind. It was twelve people, twelve bodies and twelve minds that underwent the journey of Migrating Art Historians. Having met the monuments together and having had innumerable discussions along the way, we eventually created a “think tank” of shared impressions, observations, and interpretations. These, as the author of this text believes, became decisive in the process of shaping individual points of view. The last thing to mention regarding the background of this thesis are the preliminary outcomes on which it builds and depends, and which are decisive for the genesis of specific questions it asks. Dealing with the same subject, the author of these lines had a chance to present two conference papers prior to the conception of this text, as well as to contribute with two articles to the collective volume Migrating Art Historians on Sacred Ways, published in December 2018. The paper presented at the conference Walking and the Iconic Presence in 2017, entitled “Opening to the Iconic Presence: The Narthex and the Doors of Le Puy-en- Velay”, has introduced the question of the physical approach and entry to the cathedral, culminating with the face-to-face encounter of the effigy of Notre-Dame du Puy. The main ideas of this paper became incorporated into the final part of this text dealing with the iconological reading of the porch. One year later, a joined contribution of the author with Ivan Foletti was presented at the conference Liminality and Medieval Art II. The paper called “Closed Doors as Constructors of Images” sought to explore the potential and implications of closed doors covered by narrative imagery9. Despite the fact that it was the significance and means of communication of wooden doors what was targeted primarily, this co-written paper helped to further specify the examination of the cathedral’s porch from the point of view of its possible iconological and factual meaning, as well as liminal capacities. These questions were reflected already in the article “The Western Porch of the Cathedral of Le Puy: Construction and Staging of a Liminal Space”, published within the MAH volume. Finally, for a different chapter of the same book, the article “Le Puy-en-Velay: The Meeting Place of Nature, Divine and Human” dealt with a question of a possible impact the exceptional landscape might have had on the long transformation process of this sacred site.

9 The outcomes of this paper will be published in the proceedings of the said conference in Convivium (2019) [in press].

The City and Its History, the Cathedral and Its Treasures

The single most exhaustive monographic volume dedicated to the church, entitled La cathédrale du Puy-en-Velay, was published in 200010. Having more than four hundred pages, gathering and systematically discussing all viable information about the cathedral and its context, the main body of the text of this survey was written by Xavier Barral i Altet, director of the musicographic project of the Musée d’Histoire de la Ville et des Pèlerinages du Puy-en- Velay, a leading figure of the scholarly debate concerned with Le Puy-en-Velay and its art- historical heritage. The monography further includes a number of shorter, thematic contributions written by authors such as Dominique Iogna-Prat, Alain Fourvel, Sophie Liégard, Christian Lauranson-Rosaz, Auguste Rivet, Frédérique Vialet or Walter Cahn – i.e. historians, archaeologists, architects, archivists, restorers, and other specialists – who have targeted and described a number of decisive historical aspects or specific parts of the cathedral building. The main text proceeds methodically and is sensibly interwoven with these shorter, thematic commentaries. It leads the reader from a description of origins of the ancient settlement to its Christianization, then proceeds with a description of the city, the cathedral precinct and the cathedral in different eras. It discusses the question of the phenomenon of pilgrimage to Le Puy and the role of the Marian cult in its formation, comments on the position of Le Puy within the network of medieval routes de la foi, and profoundly examines and explains the history of the constantly-growing multi-layered architectural concept of the cathedral. Describing and contextualizing every piece of decoration one could find in the cathedral, the authors reflect on the still extant pieces of fresco decoration, the famous statue of the Vierge Noire, the wooden doors within the context of the western porch, and a series of carved capitals from the whole precinct. A considerable part of the book is dedicated also to the life and changes of the monument in post-medieval and modern era, which makes one remember that these very transformations must be considered before any attempt to reflect on the medieval semblance of the church.

The most detailed art-historical notices dedicated to the cathedral before Barral’s monography from 2000 were definitely those of French art historian Marcel Durliat. In particular his contribution for the 133rd Congrès Archéologique de France, published in 1976, as well as later texts, offer valuable accounts regarding the topographical situation, history, pilgrimage favor of the place, and above all, a thorough description of architectural situation of the cathedral in the decisive steps of its construction11. Durliat also presents and illuminates exciting passages extracted from the correspondence or from official assessments of persons responsible for numerous interventions done in the course of eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, accompanied with several plans and sections of the church building made by Aymond Mallay and a number of painted or drawn views of the cathedral in different time horizons.

10 Xavier Barral i Altet ed., La cathédrale du Puy-en-Velay, Paris 2000. 11 Marcel Durliat, “L’art dans le Velay” in Congrès archéologique de France, 133° session Velay (1975), Paris 1976, pp. 9–54; idem, “La Cathédrale du Puy” in idem, pp. 55–163; idem, La Cathédrale du Puy, Rennes 1986. This volume of Congrès archéologique de France further comprises also Barral’s study important for our scope, see Xavier Barral i Altet, « La Chapelle Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe au Puy » in in Congrès archéologique de France, 133° session Velay (1975), Paris 1976, pp. 230–313.

Marcel Durliat also dedicated shorter separate studies to the analysis of the unfortunately lost fresco decoration in the transept12, or to the imposing solution of vaulting the main nave with a chain of domes13. From the same time frame of the 1970s, it is necessary to mention a fruitful enquiry by Auguste Fayard, who targeted various topics too, and published a number of studies concerned with the Le Puy Cathedral, the early Christian development of the area of Le Puy- en-Velay or pierre des fièvres and the statue of the Vierge Noire14.

The archeological situation and primarily pre-Christian development of the areas of Mont Anis were most recently analyzed in the study published in 2016 by Élise Nectoux in collaboration with Alain Witmann, who explained the architectural corpus and possible dating of a long chain of building and re-building activities on the top of Mont Anis15. In 2011, Nectoux cooperated with Laura Foulquier. In their joined contribution, they reassessed the intriguing question of re-use practices and re-used materials within the area of Velay16, a question opened and studied by Foulquier prior to this collaboration17. The most systematic modern archeological survey of the cathedral building and adjacent areas was conducted between the years 1992 and 1995 by Alain Fourvel and Sophie Liégard, with results published a few years later18. The fascinating pre-Christian and Christian political, religious and historical development of the area have gotten a reasonable amount of attention and we can remark at least studies written by Christian Lauranson-Rosaz19, Pierre Cubizolles20, Pierre Charbonnier21,

12 Marcel Durliat, “La clé des peintures du bras méridional de la cathédrale du Puy” in Bulletin Monumental, 150/2, (1992), pp. 180-182. 13 Idem, “Les coupoles de la cathédrale du Puy et leurs origines” in Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 120/3, (1976), pp. 494-524. 14 Auguste Fayard, “Saint Georges : les légendes et l’histoire” in Cahiers de la Haute-Loire. Revue d’études locales, (1971), pp. 1–5 ; idem, “Le Puy-Anicium, colonie romaine et ville sainte, l’évêque Aurèle II in VIe siècle” in idem, (1974), pp. 13–95; idem, “De Ruessium a Saint-Paulien” in idem, (1976), pp. 43-127 (first part); idem, ”De Ruessium a Saint-Paulien” in idem, (1978), pp. 27-78 (second part); idem, “Aux origines de l’église du Puy. La Vierge et le dolmen. Etude critique des légendes de Notre-Dame-du-Puy. La cathédrale de S. Scutaire et l’église Saint-Vosy. Les statues de la Vierge au Puy” in idem, (1978, special issue). 15 Élise Nectoux, Alain Wittmann, “Le Puy-en-Velay (Haute-Loire) et la monumentalisation du Mont Anis: de l’agglomération secondaire à la ‘civitas nuova’”, in Monumental! La monumentalisation des villes de l’Aquitaine et de l’Hispanie septentrionale Durant le Haut-Empire, (Conference proceedings, Villeneuve-sur-Lot, 10–12 September 2015), Alain Bouet ed., Bordeaux 2016, pp. 723–748. 16 Laura Foulquier, Élise Nectoux, “Les pratiques de récupération en Velay” in Hortus Artium Medievalium, XVII (2011), pp. 85–94. 17 Laura Foulquier, “De la destruction a la reconstruction. Réflexions sur les pratiques de récupération en Auvergne et Velay au Moyen Age” in Édifice & artifice, Robert Carvais, André Guillerme, Valérie Nègre, Joël Sakarovitch eds., Paris 2010, pp. 541–547. 18 Alain Fourvel, Sophie Liégard, “Résultats des interventions archéologiques menées de 1992 à 1995 dans la cathédrale du Puy-en-Velay (Haute Loire)”, Archéologie médiévale, XXIX (2000), pp. 115–144 ; idem, “Les données archéologiques récentes (1992–1995)”, in Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 56–67. 19 Christian Lauranson-Rosaz, “Alle origini della libertas urbana di Le Puy-en-Velay” in Studi Ascheri, Vol. II, Roma 2014, pp. 51–58. 20 Pierre Cubizolles, Le diocèse du Puy-en-Velay des origines à nos jours, Nonette 2005. 21 Pierre Charbonnier, Histoire de l’Auvergne des origines à nos jours: Haute et Basse-Auvergne, Bourbonnais et Velay, Sayat 1999.

Sylvie Vilatte22, Auguste Rivet23, Yves-Marie Froidevaux24, or Pierre-Roger Gaussin25, and Virginia Reinburg26. The authors opened and reconsidered a number of questions – be it regarding the chronology of colonization and later Christianization of the area27, the nature of pre-Christian devotion and the identity of the pagan cult, the history of Le Puy, its diocese and its medieval pilgrimage favor, the legends connected with the place28, or complicated moments in relationship of political and religious powers. Obviously, there is also a great number of studies dedicated to the statue of Notre Dame du Puy, the well-known Vierge Noire29. Even though our scope lies elsewhere, most of these texts shed a great deal of light not only on their main interest, but also help to imagine and comprehend the possible medieval use and perception of whole or specific sections of the cathedral’s architecture, which serves as a giant vessel, a giant reliquary, for the renowned statue. We can mention at least the most recent contributions to the long-lasting and prolific debate about this statue, for instance the ones written by Elisa Foster30, Xavier Barral i Altet31, Philippe Kaeppelin32 or Sylvie Vilatte33. The question that emerges quite often and plays a decisive role within the limited scope we have chosen to deal with in this text would be the question of the possible Islamic “influence” on the material culture of Le Puy, based especially on the “oriental” looks and Kufic inscription found on Infancy Doors34. The inscription was described for the first time in 1846 within the letter of Adrien Longpérier published in the Revue Archélogique35. The question of the origins of Islamic visual elements present in the artistic production of Romanesque southern

22 Sylvie Vilatte, “Anicium : du sanctuaire païen a la christianisation des Vellaves” in Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, LXXIV (1996), pp. 143–163; 23 Auguste Rivet, Histoire du Puy et de ses environs, Roanne 1981. 24 Yves-Marie Froidevaux, “La ville du Puy” in Les monuments historiques de la France, V (1977), pp. 23–32, sp. pp. 28–32. 25 Pierre-Roger Gaussin, “La ville du Puy-en-Velay et les pèlerinages”, Revue de géographie de Lyon, XXVI/3 (1951), pp. 243–271. 26 Virginia Reinburg, “Les pèlerins de Notre-Dame du Puy” in Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, LXXV/195 (1989), pp. 297–313. 27 Pierre Cubizolles, “Aux origines chrétiennes du Puy-en-Velay” in Bulletin historique scientifique, littéraire, artistique et agricole, illustré (Société académique du Puy et de la Haute-Loire), 68, (1992), pp. 95–140. 28 Charles Rocher, Les vieilles histoires de Notre-Dame du Puy, réimprimées d’après les manuscrits ou les éditions originales, Le Puy 1890. 29 This term is modern, not existing before the nineteenth century. See Sylvie Vilatte, “La ‘déoute Image noire de Nostre Dame’ du Puy-en-Velay: histoire du reliquaire roman et son noircissement” in Revue Belge de philosophie et d’histoire, 74, (1996), pp. 727–760, p. 30 Elisa A. Foster, “Out of Egypt: Inventing the Black Madonna of Le Puy In Image and Text” in Studies in Iconography, 37, (2016), pp. 1–30. 31 Xavier Barral i Altet, “Observations sur la statue romane de la Vierge à l’Enfant de Notre-Dame du Puy et sur son noircissement postérieur” in Jubilé et culte marial: Moyenâge - époque contemporaine. Actes du colloque international organisé au Puy-en-Velay par le Centre culturel départemental de la Haute-Loire (8 juin - 10 juin 2005), Bruno Maës, Daniel Moulinet, Catherine Vincent eds., (2009), pp. 49–61 ; cf. idem, “La Vierge Noire” in idem, La Cathédrale du Puy-en-Velay, Paris 2000, pp. 141–166. 32 Philippe Kaeppelin, “A propos d’une reconstitution de Notre-Dame du Puy” in Cahiers de la Haute-Loire, (1993), pp. 75–80. 33 Sylvie Vilatte, “Faux mystère et vrai problème historique: la question des Vierges noires” in Revue d’Auvergne, (1997), pp. 12–38; idem, “La ‘déoute Image noire de Nostre Dame’ du Puy-en-Velay: histoire du reliquaire roman et son noircissement” in Revue Belge de philosophie et d’histoire, 74, (1996), pp. 727–760. 34 Prosper Mérimée described them as reminding him of “bas reliefs indiens ou persans”. See Prosper Mérimée, Notes d’un voyage en Auvergne, Paris 1938, p. 558. 35 “Lettre a M. A. de Longpérier, sur l’emploi des caractères arabes dans l’ornementation chez les peuples chrétiens de l’occident, par M. Henry” in Revue Archéologique, 3/1, Paris 1846, pp. 406–412.

France or in Le Puy specifically was dealt with in detailed way already in 1935 by Ahmad Fikry36, in 1936 by Louis Bréhier37, and in 1938 by Georges Marcais38, who used for example the mosques in Qayrawan and Cordoba and their asserted similarities with a number of Auvergnate monuments to support the theory of direct Islamic influence. The question was reconsidered and conclusions re-validated in more recent scholarship, notably by Marcel Durliat who dismissed the so-called “oriental myth” based e.g. on the use of multiple domes and colorful stonework39, Barral i Altet who tried to redirect the attention of possible transfer of ideas from Rome instead40, and Lauranson-Rosaz who pointed out that local artistic production of eleventh and twelfth centuries has been determined more by antipathy than sympathy to “Saracens”41. The Kufic inscription in particular was used within a number of specific studies, for instance, those of Katherine Watson42, who meticulously analyze formal aspects of the script and compare it with epigraphic material from Lavoûte-Chilhac, Moissac Toledo etc., or Moshe Barasch43, who dealt with the occurrence and readability of Kufic script as well as creation and connotations of pseudo-Kufic inscriptions present on various western monuments.

Oriented at the Porch and Wooden Doors

The porch as such, regarded more independently as a “spatial phenomenon” and not “practically” as an exceptional architectural or static feature of the building’s concept, has not been studied separately from the cathedral yet. Of course, great parts of the already mentioned study of Durliat from 1975 and Barral’s monography from 2000 were dedicated to the description of its ingenious architectural solution, decoration, progressive changes and restorations made on the entire western part of the cathedral44. In the case of Barral, who agrees and follows Palazzo’s explanations regarding the medieval understanding of Virginal and Marian symbolic as capable of being reflected also in the architecture, brief comments are made in different passages of the text, mentioning corporeal connotations of the cathedral’s architectural concept, but especially the ones of an intriguing access to the cathedral, colloquially known as par le nombril. The porch area of Notre Dame was also mentioned, even though very briefly and with a certain focus on its epigraphic material, within the study of

36 Ahmad Fikry, L’art roman au Puy et les influences islamiques, Paris 1934. 37 Louis Bréhier, “Les influences musulmanes dans l’art roman du Puy” in Journal des Savants (1936), pp. 5–19. 38 Georges Marçais, “Sur l'inscription arabe de la cathédrale du Puy”, Comptes rendus des séances de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 82/2, (1938), pp. 153-162. 39 Durliat 1976a, pp. 17–20. 40 Xavier Barral i Altet, “Sur les suppposées influences islamiques dans l’art roman : l’exemple de la cathédrale Notre-Dame du Puy-en-Velay” in Les Cahiers de Saint-Michel de Cuxa, XXXV (2004) pp. 115–118. 41 Christian Lauranson-Rosaz, “Le Velay et la croisade” in Le concile de Clermont et l’appel à la croisade, (Actes du colloque, collection de l’Ecole Française de Rome, 236), Rome 1997, pp. 33–64. 42 Katherine J. Watson, “The Kufic Inscription in the Romanesque Cloister of Moissac in Quercy: Links with Le Puy, Toledo and Catalan Woodworkers” in Arte Medievale, III/1 (1989), pp. 7–27. 43 Mosche Barasch, “Some Oriental Pseudo-Inscriptions in Renaissance Art” in Visible Language XXIII, 2/3, (1989), pp. 170–187. 44 Barral i Altet 2000, sp. chapters 6–10; Durliat 1976, sp. pp. 71–80.

Caroline Roux concerned with the question of the intermediary function of entrance spaces and symbolic connotations of church portals in France between eleventh and twelfth centuries45. The pair of wooden doors received their single, yet exhaustive monographic study in 1974, written by American art-historian Walter Cahn46. The outstanding work, entitled Romanesque Wooden Doors of Auvergne, is divided into eight chapters of which the first four are concerned by the wooden doors of Le Puy. The text closely analyzes their setting, style, and iconography, assessing their place within the history of the cathedral and offers dozens of iconographic or formal parallels found within several geographical contexts and among diverse artistic techniques. The rest of the book is dealing with three other still extant pieces of wooden doors that share a great amount of similarities with those of Le Puy, including same low relief carving technique and presence of Kufic inscription, minus the figural imagery and narrative content. All these examples are preserved in the close vicinity of Le Puy, namely in Chamalières-sur-Loire, Blesle and Lavoûte-Chilhac. Also, Barral’s monography from 2000 offers a new, short contribution of Walter Cahn47, as well as few pages dedicated to the same subject, written by the author himself. The wooden doors of Le Puy became scrutinized and further reconsidered in three other Barral’s articles dealing with the capacities of wooden decorative doors in the context of Romanesque façade, their blurred relationship to antique tradition of bronze doors, their iconographical content and materiality, and their supposable visual aspect that could have been associated with an opened centerfold of an illuminated manuscript48. This last comparison offers us an imaginary bridge to the final point we would like to mention – the prominent role and occurrence of inscriptions within the space of the cathedral. Besides Cahn’s 1974 study of the wooden doors that includes transcription of all the Latin tituli accompanying the narratives (taken from Thiollier’s study of 1900) and the Appendix dedicated to the epigraphy49, inscriptions found within the rest of the porch and cathedral constitute important material evidence for the studies of Robert Favreau focused on functions50, forms, and placement of medieval epigraphic material51. The case of Le Puy is recalled, for example,

45 Caroline Roux, « Entre sacré et profane. Essai sur la symbolique et les fonctions du portail d'église en France entre le XIe et le XIIIe siècle » in Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, 82/4, (2004), Histoire medievale, moderne et contemporaine - Middeleeuwse. moderne en hedendaagse geschiedenis, pp. 839–854. 46 Walter Cahn, The Romanesque Wooden Doors of Auvergne, New York 1974. 47 idem, „Les portes romanes en bois“ in Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 260–262. 48 Xavier Barral i Altet, “La porte-récit en bois dans la facade romane” in Medioevo: immagine e racconto Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Parma, 27–30 settembre 2000, (2003), pp. 278–286; idem, “Les images de la Porte Romane comme un Livre Ouvert à l’entrée de l’Église” in Mariëlle Hageman, Marco Mostert eds., Reading Images and Texts: Medieval Images and Texts as Forms of Communication, Papers from the Third Utrecht Symposium on Medieval Literacy, Utrecht, 7–9 December 2000, (2005), pp. 528–543; idem, "Riflessioni sull’elaborazione, la diffusione e le funzioni iconografiche delle porte lignee decorate negli edifici religiosi romanici" in Studi Medievali e Moderni, XV, (2011), pp. 365–393. 49 Cahn 1974, pp. 35–54; idem (Apendix), pp. 155–159; Noël Thiollier, L’architecture religieuse l’époque romane dans l’ancien diocèse du Puy, Le Puy 1900. 50 Robert Favreau, „Fonctions des inscriptions au moyen âge“ in Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 32/127, (1989), pp. 203–232. 51 Idem, „Le thème épigraphique de la porte“ in Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 34/135–136, (1991), La façade romane. Actes du Colloque international organisé par le Centre d'Etudes Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale, Poitiers, 26-29 septembre 1990, pp. 267–279.

due to the famous inscription carved into one of scales in front of the façade, denouncing anybody of touching the threshold or entering, until his soul is clean of offense and blame52.

As was already mentioned, the general methodology of the whole MAH project has resulted in a particular point of view that will be applied to the specific situation of the porch and wooden doors of the Le Puy Cathedral. The porch as a sovereign architectural feature will be studied using the optic of already existent prolific debate about the intermediary, liminal spaces standing in front of church buildings and their practical as well as allegorical capacities. There is a number of collective and monographic studies dedicated to this very question. We will frequently recall two collective volumes edited by Pickard, Sapin and van Opstall (published in 1989, 2002 and 2018 respectively), each comprising a number of thought- provoking contributions. Among the separate studies, those of Heitz, Chaix or Foletti and Gianandrea will be frequently recalled too53. Accordingly, the question of church doors with a narrative decoration and their possible function, rhetoric or perception have attracted a number of scholars. The possible reading of Le Puy doors will be thus based on general grounds of said studies dedicated to examples reaching from late Antiquity to Late Middle Ages54. Each of said two thematic chapters – dedicated to the porch and to wooden doors – will then include a short status quaestionis on its own.

52 Cf. Cahn 1974, p. 156. 53 Jean-Charles Picard, “L’atrium dans les églises paléochrétiennes d’Occident” in Actes du XIe congrès International d’archéologie chrétienne. Lyon, Vienne, Grenoble, Genève, Aoste (21–28 septembe 1986), Rome 1989, vol. I, pp. 505–542; Christian Sapin ed., Avant-nefs & espaces d’accueil dans l’église entre le IVe et lee XIIe siècle : Actes du colloque international du CNRS, Auxerre, 17–20 juin 1999, Paris 2002; Carol Heitz, “Rôle de l'église-porche dans la formation des façades occidentales de nos églises romanes” in Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, XXXIV/135–136 (1991), pp. 329–334 ; Ivan Foletti, Manuela Gianandrea, Zona Liminare: il nartece di Santa Sabina a Roma, la sua porta e l’iniziazione cristiana, (Studia Artium medievalium Brunensia; 3) Roma 2015; Valérie Chaix, Les églises romanes de Normandie : Formes et fonctions, Paris 2011; Delphine Hanquiez, „L’avant-nef de la priorale de Saint-Leu-d’Esserent (Oise) et les galilées clunisiennes: l'espace architecturale du porche à la lumière de son implication liturgique“ in Art sacré (2010), XXVIII, pp. 52-66; Emilie M. van Opstall ed., Sacred Tresholds. The Door to the Sanctuary in Late Antiquity, Leiden/Boston 2018. 54 E.g. Margaret E. Frazer, “Church Doors and the Gates of Paradise: Byzantine Bronze Doors in Italy” in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 27, (1973), pp. 145–162; Salvatorino Salomi ed. Le porte di bronzo dall’antichità al secolo XIII, Roma 1990; „Le thème épigraphique de la porte“ in Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 34/135–136, (1991), La façade romane. Actes du Colloque international organisé par le Centre d'Etudes Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale, Poitiers, 26-29 septembre 1990, pp. 267–279 (with rich bibliography); Antonio Iacobini, Le porte del paradiso: arte e tecnologia bizantina tra Italia e Mediterraneo [XI – XII secolo; convegno internazionale di studi Istituto Svizzerio di Roma, 6 – 7 dicembre 2006], Roma 2009; van Opstall 2018; Tina Bawden, Die Schwelle im Mittelalter: Bildmotiv und Bildort, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2014.

I. THE OBJECT AND THE CONTEXTS: SIGNIFICANCE OF LANDSCAPE, SITE, AND SOIL, FOR PERSISTENCE OF REVERENCE

I.1 Approaching from Afar55

It was almost three weeks that we spent walking the route from Lausanne in Switzerland, heading towards Conques in France56, crossing step-by-step the severe but ravishing countryside of the Massif Central and lands of Haute-Savoie in expectation of entering the Auvergne region and Haute-Loire department. During the first two and a half weeks, almost finishing this first walking phase of Migrating Art Historians’ plan, we, in fact, experienced only few brief contacts with rather small, unknown churches57. Considering the art-historical scope of our journey, which could be thought of as possible replacement of the spiritual dimension and pious motivation of a medieval pilgrim, we thus “hanged around” for a while practically unstimulated. The breath-taking landscape, on the other hand, revealed its true power as an omnipresent, formative element of our visual intake that was accompanying each of our steps towards the objects of art or sacred sites we sought to reach. Rich with different sceneries and with conditions changing greatly and rapidly, literally in front of our “mobile eyes”, it was keeping us occupied and surely determined our perception profoundly58. The woods and valleys, villages and fields, or freezing nights and the skin-burning sun awaiting on every hilltop of a sloppy terrain in combination with the physical exhaustion from walking as such, together enhanced our yearning for an encounter with “something”: a church, a partial aim, a reason to make a pause and change our daily routine. So, we were in quite tired, silent, or one would even say contemplative spirits when Le Puy- en-Velay, the long-awaited site, appeared for the first time in our line of sight. The different, mildly undulating volcanic terrain characteristic of the wider area around Le Puy made us curious and aware that we were getting closer, and we had thus started to discuss this “first place of encounter” a few days before we actually reached it. This slow approach allowed all the monuments and places in the landscape we expected to meet to essentially transcend their own walls and physical borders, and – in some way – to expand in time and space towards us. We agreed that the first picture was always drawn in our imagination progressively days before our arrival, and that the reality we eventually encountered was fitted into pre-existing soil of

55 The present chapter is modified and extended version of the already published article of the author. Katarína Kravčíková, “Le Puy-en-Velay: The Meeting Place of Nature, Divine, and Human” in MAH 2018, pp. 89–105. Having similar interest, this chapter will preserve, and re-use certain ideas, descriptions and conclusions which were already sketched in the article but attempting to put them into more specific frame after a more thorough research and decision to limit the interest to the porch of the cathedral only. 56 Cf. Adrien Palladino, „Liminality and Encounter(s): The Case of Notre-Dame de Lausanne” in MAH 2018, pp. 189–202; idem, “Captivated by Gaze. Sculpture as Witness at the Lausanne Cathedral’s Porch” in Hans Belting, Ivan Foletti, Martin F. Lešák eds., Convivium VI/I, Movement, Images and Iconic Presence in the Medieval World, (2019), pp. 88–106, and Ivan Foletti, “Meeting Saint Faith” in MAH 2018, pp. 295–315. 57 After Notre-Dame of Lausanne, it was e.g. church in Nyon-Suisse, Cathédrale Saint-Pierre in Geneva, Bardonnex, Charly, Desingy, Revel-Tourdan, Chavannay, Bessey, St. Albain, Aubrac etc. 58 Michele Bacci, „Remarks on the Visual Experience of Holy Sites in the Middle Ages“ in Mobile Eyes. Peripatetisches Sehen in den Bildkulturen der Vormoderne, Paderborn 2013, pp. 175–197, p. 175.

information, observations, memories, imaginations and expectations, where they jointly generated the final impression59. Thus, the definitive idea we received from each monument we met, had begun to be shaped days before and continued to be shaped days after the encounter itself60. This journey on foot, which we tried to use as an intellectual bridge to traverse time, allowed us to perceive the unity of the surroundings through all the senses. The landscape with all its features and objects thus acted unanimously and more like a “multidimensional process” not only as a visual image or endless row of images61. The first pages of this chapter will be, therefore, dedicated to the decisive topographical context of Le Puy62, its cathedral and western porch63. For instance, to the position of the church within the scenery and to harmonious collaboration between the naturally given scenic potential and man-made structures in the valley. This harmony is especially visible in the case of two most characteristic churches of the city – the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and the Chapel of Saint Michel d’Aiguilhe – which were obviously built so as to use these exceptional scenic qualities of the valley and partake in their notability. The peculiar character of the countryside based on the contrast of hollow aspect and verticality of rock structures could be thus regarded as a decisive visual input, in its essence reflected in a human building strategy within the area. This universal and omnipresent stimulus of the landscape became linked with the physical process of its discovery. Together with that, we will try to sketch a brief summary of the historical development of the city’s status and look at the site where the cathedral stands: it will certainly not be for the first time somebody pointed out that the charming and captivating landscape of the volcanic valley and surrounding lands might have been distinctly inspirational to human activity within this area, and that it could have affected the very process of its “humanization” and visible transformations. Therefore, the question of the natural attractiveness of the place should be understood as one of the inseparable factors of its historical success, even more so when reconsidered from an art-historical point of view64. The second half of this chapter will then

59 For a more thorough account on this aspect see Introduction to the MAH 2018, Ivan Foletti, “Migrating Art Historians: Objects, Bodies, and Minds” in MAH 2018, pp. 27–57. 60 For a reflection on the role of landscape, soundscape, and the importance of this aspect not only within the Migrating Art Historians pilgrimage see Martin Lešák, “Introduction. Sacral Architecture on the Horizon: The Sacred Landscape of Medieval Pilgrims” in MAH 2018, pp. 61–74, idem, “Sacred Architecture and the Voice of Bells in the Medieval Landscape with the Case Study of Mont-Saint-Michel” in Belting/Foletti/Lešák 2019, pp. 48–67. 61 Cf. Ivan Foletti, “Migrating Art Historians: Objects, Bodies, and Minds” in MAH 2018, pp. 27–57; Edmunds Valdemars Bunkše, “Feeling Is Believing, or Landscape as a Way of Being in the World” in Geografiska Annaler. Series B, Human Geography, LXXXIX/3 (2007), pp. 219–231, sp. pp. 222, 228, 229 note 6. 62 For a symbolical value of the urban concepts and city planning in medieval era Cf. Keith D. Lilley, “Cities of God? Medieval Urban Forms and Their Christian Symbolism” in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (September 2004), New Series, 29/3, (2004), pp. 296–313; Jean-Charles Picard, “L’espace religieux dans la ville médiévale (VIIIe – XIIIe siècles) Raport introductif” in Archéologie des villes dans le Nord-Ouest de l’Europe (VIIe – XIIIe siècle) Actes du IVe Congres International d’Archéologie Médiévale (1991), Actes des Congres International d’Archéologie Médiévale 4, 1994, pp. 115–124. 63 For a brief account on what the magnificence, splendor of an earthly architecture and city planning mean for a “mortal wanderer” or a “pilgrim on this earth” cf. part “Teologia della cittá” in Francesco Finotto, La cittá chiusa : Storia delle teorie urbanistiche dal Medioevo al Settecento, Venezia 1992, sp. p. 42. 64 Since a systematic description of cathedral’s complex volumes would require dozens of pages on its own, and the main concern of the thesis stays reserved to the porch of the cathedral, only essential information and a brief description of the whole building will be provided. The whole building will be thus considered as “context” too, and when its specific part or feature will be referred to, it will be described separately.

consist of a description of the foundational legend and its genesis, as well as a description of the church building as such.

I.2 Landscape and Cityscape

To describe the city territory using only one word, the creux or the “hollow” of Le Puy would perhaps most suitably express the looks and characteristics of the locality situated in the heart of the Haute-Loire department in the Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes region65. The small volcanic valley embracing the city of Le Puy, called simply Le Velay, is a lowered piece of terrain with a scenery pierced here and there by scattered volcanic crags. The valley is bounded within the wider ring of higher terrain and mountains springing from the borders between the Haute-Loire and neighboring departments. The closest and highest – exceeding 1000m above sea level – are mountains of Meygal and Mézenc on the side of the Ardèche department and the Monts du Velay and Margheride on the side of the departments of Lozère and Cantal.66 The city of Le Puy spreads on the crossing of rivers Borne and Dolaison across said lower areas, having the range of 600–800 m a.s.l,. This rather small section of the country we have described is renowned – after all, as the whole region is – for its uncanny geomorphologic diversity and the unquestionable visual attractivity [Fig. 1]. In the middle of the valley surrounded by said ring of mountains and high plateaus, where one can find the city of Le Puy, four different volcanic peaks significantly stand out from the scenery. The puy par excellence, the largest, widest and almost mountain-like is the 130 m high Corneille Rock, formerly known as Mont Anis, to which Mont Aiguilhe with its 80 m and almost needle-like looks stands as a slender and fine counterpart. Further up to the north-east of the valley belonging under the administration of Espaly-Saint Marcel, there are other two visible rock outcrops which partake on the Le Puy’s aerial scenery, but are not territorially part of the city67. As it is probably evident from the name, Le Puy-en-Velay truly is the place of visual dialogue between the peak and the valley, accompanied by the relationship of the peak and the construction or buildings. What one can discover looking towards the city from almost any direction is a picturesque example of the harmony between peculiar natural conditions and the creations of human hands, both inherited from the past, but uneased and preserved until the present day [Fig. 2].

Looking at the scenery of the city from afar, the consolidation and harmony of that given by nature and that constructed by man was ingeniously accomplished especially in the case of the Chapel of Saint-Michel consecrated in 96268. The pinnacle of the Mount Aiguilhe “that even agile men could barely reach” is a rather small, irregularly shaped chapel with a massive bell-

65 See for example Gaussin 1951, p. 243; Durliat 1976a, p. 9; François-Hubert Forestier, “Géologie et paléotopographie du site” in Barral i Altet 2000, p. 50; Nectoux/Wittmann 2016, p. 725. 66 Gaussin 1951, p. 245. 67 idem 1951, p. 244. 68 Xavier Barral i Altet, « La Chapelle Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe au Puy » in in Congrès archéologique de France, 133° session Velay (1975), Paris 1976, pp. 230–313, sp. p. 234; idem, „La chapelle Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe“ in Art roman en Auvergne, Rennes 1984, pp. 63–66; cf part „Sait-Michel d’Aiguilhe“ in idem 2000, pp. 217–222.

tower, which closely resembles the cathedral’s one69. The chapel stand atop a volcanic pinecone and with the help of its dominant position easily plays with the eye of the viewer. Unexpectedly elevated, it seems as it was floating above the landscape. Thanks to this peculiar position, it in fact looks as much grander than it really is, since the rock cone underneath has become an inherent part of its somehow monolithic architectural concept and visual result [Fig. 3]. The cathedral with its massive volumes, visible transept, chain of domes and number of other, closely adjacent buildings forming its precinct, is in addition tightly surrounded by other houses of the city. Considering the visual outcome – especially in comparison with the Chapel of Saint Michel – the cathedral building uses a slightly different method of contextualization. The final effect is less conspicuous than in the previous case, but composition which seems quite clear from afar becomes utterly strange the closer one gets. Standing on the foot of the highest and most visible part of the massive Mont Corneille, the cathedral and its precinct constitute a sizeable stack of what was created by human hands – nearly as massive in size as the natural stripped rock crag next to it. The architectural density and massiveness of the buildings under the highest part of the hill formed essentially the second artificial summit of the rock, comparable with the natural one. This simplicity of what once could have been a harmonious, easy on the eye couple, is today not so apparent. The modern era left its trace too, and the very top of the Corneille rock is today crowned with the monumental statue of Notre Dame de France. Built between years 1856–1860 and fashioned by Jean-Marie Bonnassieux, this statue today constitutes the most dominant element of the surrounding landscape and cityscape70 [Figs. 4a, b].

I.3 Old Theories, New Excavations, Constant Favor

If we wanted to switch the point of view and took a closer look at the beginning of the historical development of the region, it would seem that humans had favored the area of Le Puy in a sustained way and its colonization is attested even for Paleolithic and Neolithic era. This favor probably rests upon the presence of three essential elements: availability of water secured by the Borne and Dolaison rivers, fertility of the local soil, and stability of volcanic rock slopes, which at the same served as a source of a great amount of easily accessible building material71. The medieval city that will interest us the most inherited, followed, and further developed the urban concept of the former Gallo-Roman agglomeration known as Civitas Vellavorum with a

69 “ [...] in quadam prealta sílice que usitata locutione vulgi Acus vocatur, prope Aniciensem urbem sita, ubi quondam vix agilium hominum erat adscensus. ecelesiam collocare gestiens.” See Abb. S. Michaelis de Segureto in Gallia Christiana, t.II col. 755; “[...] Que même des hommes agiles atteignaient avec peine […]” Collette Lamy-Lassalle, “Les peintures de Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe” in Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France, V, (1958–1959), p. 86. 70 Antoinette Le Normand, “Six esquisses du sculpteur Bonnassieux (1810-1892)” in Revue de Louvre (1982), XXXII, Paris 1982, pp. 366–372 ; Anne Pingeot, “Les vierges colossales du Second Empire” in La Sculpture française au XIXe siècle, Paris 1986, pp. 208–213 ; Ministère de l’instruction publique et des beaux-arts, Inventaire général des richesses d’art de la France : Province, monuments civils, IV : statues historiques, Éditions Plon, Paris 1911, pp. 267–269. The statue of Notre Dame de France has a counterpart in the statue of Saint Joseph in Espaly-Saint-Marcel, inaugurated in 1911. See Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 385–386. 71 Barral i Altet 2000, p. 47; Forestier 2000, pp. 50–51.

sacred site at its center72. Considering the spiritual favor, devotional practices and reverence connected with the site of the present cathedral then originate in pre-Christian times (practically discernible with naked eye thanks to number of spolia)73 and probably reach as deeply into the past as the human presence in the area itself74. Besides legendary stories and traditional beliefs that the place had always been reserved for devotional purposes, we can trace the written account of this hypothesis at least to the first half of the seventeenth century. Expressed without any further arguments by a chronicler Jacmon in 163775, the idea was recalled two hundred years later by André Aymard after his inspection of the area during the restoration works of 1865-1866, and the presence of Gallo- Roman temple on Mont Anis became a generally accepted theory repeated by later bibliography76. Even though this idea was later proven as valid, it was for a long time based solely on legends, antique fragments incorporated into the present church building, and on a generic belief that “every cathedral stood on the place of a former Antique sanctuary”77. The site and hypothesis were thus waiting for a proper investigation and validation until modern archeological inspections were conducted in the second half of the twentieth century78. The excavation under the guidance of Alain Fourvel and Sophie Liégard launched and carried out between years 1992 and 1995 during the restoration of the cathedral complex shed a great deal of light on the probable genesis of the pre-Christian and Christian building activity on the site79. The most recent results reviewing the archeological situation of the cathedral precinct were published in 2016 by Élise Nectoux and Alain Wittmann80. A thorough study maps the genesis of the ancient man-made terrace and of a monumentalizing process of Mont Anis’ areas in general. Together with the ground-plan, possible access points and orientation of the antique temple, it is specified that the former antique sanctuary was to be 13 meters wide and 26 meters long, with a cryptoporticus standing on the west (discovered only in 2009)81, and with the access from the south side82. In spite of that, the line of hypotheses and educated guesses of what this ancient temple might have looked like (especially in elevation), how it might have functioned and how precisely the transformation of the former Gallo-Roman sacred site and its vestiges went on after the Christianization of the area, will probably never be crossed. Based on conclusions and findings of said survey that interprets archeological situation of the current cathedral precinct, including a few sections of baptistery of Saint John dated to the fifth century

72 Cubizolles 2005, p. 11 73 Foulquier/Nectoux 2011, pp. 85–94; Foulquier 2010, pp. 541–547. 74 Cf. Vilatte 1996a, pp. 143–163, sp. pp. 155–162; Froidevaux 1977, pp 28–32 ; Gaussin 1951, p. 246; Rocher 1890. 75 Nectoux/Wittmann 2016, p. 723, n3. 76 The partial reason for disinterest or omission of this question in further research into the cathedral could be the fact that after his death in 1874, Aymard’s archives were dispersed into private collections, which made them inaccessible for a long time. See idem 2016, p. 723, n2. 77 Idem 2016, pp. 723–748, sp. p. 723: “L'historiographie s'appuyait alors sur l'idée selon laquelle chaque cathédrale a succédé à un sanctuaire antique”. 78 See idem, p. 723; Fourvel/Liégard 2000b, pp. 115–144. 79 Fourvel/Liégard 2000a, pp. 56–67; idem 2000b, pp. 115–144. 80 Nectoux/Wittmann 2016. 81 See idem 2016, pp. 723–748 (note 19) 82 Idem 2016, pp. 733, 741–742.

(the oldest representatives of early Christian architecture in the cathedral precinct)83, and number of evidently re-deployed antique fragments, which are still present on the place and visible with naked eye, what we can discuss is only a hypothesis of certainly intricate evolution [Fig. 5].

Taking into account Nectoux’s and Wittmann’s proposition of an older dating and funerary origin of the Gallo-Roman spolia used in the walls of the baptistery of Saint John, and the slightly later date of the Gallo-Roman spolia used in the oldest portions of the walls of the cathedral and coupled them with the postulate that these spolia came from the former Antique sanctuary, two inferences could be made. At first, the initial phase of Christian use of this site seems to relate to the body – or at least with its extant portions – of a former Gallo-Roman sanctuary, which turns out to be incorporated into the body of the very first Christian shrine and complemented with the baptistery building84. The latter seems to have been built as a completely new structure but by quarrying and re-using fragmentary material from the closest possible source (except for the temple itself): the former Roman necropolis85. The fact that the spolia used for the baptistery did not originate from the body of the Antique sanctuary implies that the latter had probably not been dismantled yet. The new baptistery and the church comprised of reused material from the former temple could thus have served as a first simple episcopal group, for at least a brief period of time86. The complete decomposition of walls of the Antique temple and the creation of the first brand new Christian church thus probably happened only after the baptistery had been built. The present cathedral building does not bear any noticeable material connection neither with the very first Christian foundation, nor with later but first brand-new Christian church, or with the even later Carolingian sanctuary. What it does display are already mentioned re-used Gallo-Roman bas-reliefs inserted into the walls of chevet, a decorative frieze as well as the tombstone above the door in Porche du For87. Even though the reasons behind “recycling” of this kind could be manifold, one of the main was probably the intention to visibly point out ritual continuity and ancient memory of this sacred site88 [Fig. 6]. In this sense, the cathedral seems to be literally showing off the incessancy of the local reverence through visible “digesting [of] its ancestral roots in its stones”89 but at the same time, and using the same means, claiming the superiority of the present Christian cult built over and on the base of the older one. The process of re-utilization of a former pagan site or even of the building material of the former temple to create a Christian church, as in our case, is not an unknown scenario90. However, in

83 About the baptistery see idem 2016, p. 743–745; and part „Le baptistére Saint-Jean“ in Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 205–208. 84 Nectoux/Wittmann 2016, p. 745. 85 Idem 2016, sp. p. 745. 86 Idem 2016, pp. 743–744. 87 Vilatte 1996a, p. 148. 88 For the question of spolia in general cf. Dale Kinney, „The paradigm of ‚spolia‘“ in Mittelalterliche Mythenrezeption, 173–192, (2018), pp. 32–37; Stefan Altekamp, Zentren und Konjunkturen der Spoliierung, (Perspektiven der Spolienforschung; 2), Berlin 2017; Giulia Marsili, „Il riuso razionale: cantieri di smontaggio e depositi di manufatti marmorei nella documentazione archeologica ed epigrafica di età tardoantica“ in Paesaggi urbani tardoantichi, 149-156, (2016). 89 Nectoux/Wittmann 2016, p. 744. 90 Isabelle Fauduet, Les temples de tradition celtique en Gaule romaine, Paris 1993, sp. pp. 94–96.

the case of Mont Anis, we can imagine that the intention to compete with and to refashion “pagan geography” into a Christian one was more an effort to appropriate, to enclose within the walls of a man-made structure, to consecrate, and to make holy, in the Christian sense, the exceptional natural place as such, together with its undeniable intrinsic power or aura91.

To follow up, it might be thought-provoking to ask what cult, or what deity could have been worshipped on this exceptional place prior to its Christian appropriation? Is it possible to think about a “typological” continuity, a reminiscence of a special type of worship or a special reason for the reverence transmitted from a pagan cult to its Christian successor? Or, is it possible to think about a connection or impact of distinctive natural conditions of the sacred site to virtues or power associated with a deity celebrated on the spot? In the very beginning of her article about the pagan, Gallo-Roman temple on Mont Anis, Sylvie Vilatte comments on the debates and hypotheses born in the nineteenth century that ascribe such typological continuity to Le Puy. It was believed that the center of later Christian veneration – the statue of Virgin and Child – somehow follows in the steps and carries a reminiscence of the previous feminine deity, the pre-historic Mother Earth, a symbol of fertility. The author however to some extent agrees with Barral i Altet, who expressed his reserved attitude to such claim and considers the phenomenon of cult continuity as much more complex92. It seems that the original cult venerated on the site of Anicium was a certain Adidon, a unknown deity, an indigenous genius loci but likely of an “apollonic” type93, i.e. associated with the cult of Apollon-Hélios or the roman Sol Invictus, having strong imperial connotations at the same time. We can learn this information from the above mentioned, preserved and re- used roman stone slab placed above the door of Porche du For, carved with the inscription which reads “Adidoni et Augusto Sex(tus) Talonius Musicus d. s. p. p.”94, which could be freely transcribed and translated as “To Adidon and Augustus, Sextus Talonius Musicus installed/established on his expenses.” Following this path, while having in mind said supposed relation with the cult of Apollon, the ancient name Anicium itself – apparently of a Greek origin – has an interesting etymology too. The adjective άνίκιος, a quite rare term, is by all means similar to the more common term έπινίκιος, which, according to Vilatte, signifies „concerned with victory“ 95, and was quite often used in greek poetry as an epithete for gods. Both of the above mentioned terms are congeneric with ανίκητος, the most common adjective out of these three, which translated into latin would sound as invictus, or invincible in english. It is also possible that term ανίκητος might have been transcribed into latin as anicetus – an adjective

91 John M. Howe, “The Conversion of the Physical World: The Creation of a Christian Landscape” in Varieties of religious Conversion in the Middle Ages, James Muldoon ed., Gainesville 1997, pp. 63–78, sp. p. 67. 92 Vilatte 1996a, p. 143 ; Francois Avril, Xavier Barral I Altet, Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, Le Royaumes d’Occident. Le monde roman, Paris 1983, pp. 346–348. 93 Vilatte 1996b, p. 730. 94 To French by Vilatte translated as “[…] à Adidon et Auguste, Sextus Talonius Musicus a installé à ses frais." 95 Translation to English is mine.

often used in connection with Apollon or Apollon-Hélios96, what would correspond with the assumed „apollonic“ nature of the local deity worshipped on the mountain top97. Considering the ancient name of Anicium as we know it, e.g. from Historia Francorum of Gregory of Tours98, this practically ceased to exist somewhere around the tenth century and was replaced by the Podium or Podium sanctae Mariae, and, in the twelfth century, the place became known as Le Puy or Puy Saint-Marie99, as we are about to see later. Therefore, as Vilatte and Barral had pointed out, the Virgin Mary was never directly connected with the original appellation of the former pagan site, for instance “Anicium sanctae Mariae”100. Instead, what was highlighted within the new “descriptive” Christian name of the sacred site was its two crucial characteristics: Le Puy or Podium as a literal indication of the topographical characteristics of the sacred site located on the terrace on the peak of a mountain, and Mother of God, Virgin Mary, to veneration of whom the place served. To conclude, we would say that in the case of Le Puy-en-Velay, it’s an undeniable fact that the exceptional characteristics of the locality chosen for devotional purposes had a decisive role in the process of creation of its recognized holiness. Thus, the history we can virtually observe happening on the terrace on the foot of Corneille Rock is a centuries-long transformation of ritual practices, which, regardless of its pagan or Christian origins, have always acknowledged the exceptionality of the site and its position in the wider landscape, as the essential part of their cult. Then, even though the Christian faith does not regard remarkable instances in the landscape as being automatically or inherently sacred, the recurring pattern of a Christian structure constructed on a place of this type does imply that the virtue connected with such places was acknowledged, taken into consideration, and, in a certain sense, used. Human inclination and capacity to be struck and inspired by harmony and beauty of natural surroundings is something that apparently persists across time and religious beliefs.

I.4 Divinely Chosen Site and Christian Legends

Even though it is true in our case and the cathedral Notre-Dame du Puy really does stand on a place of a former Antique temple, we believe that it is the question of the original, primary choice of this specific spot so as to serve for devotional practices that is noteworthy. Why this specific site was chosen in the first place, and then, why and how it has been re-used for spiritual purposes. When we look back to pre-Christian times, the understanding of countryside with all its aspects seems to be basically soaked by its assumed metaphysical value with fluctuating

96 The full analysis of etymology of the term Anicium and nature of the cult of Adidon were discussed by Vilatte 1996a, sp. pp. 146–150. 97 Cf. Raffaele Renzulli, La valle dei Dolmen sul Gargano. Megaliti e riti del sole nel territorio di Monte sant'Angelo, Manfredonia 2015. 98 Historia Francorum, X, 25. “[…] Ingressus autem Vellavae urbis terminum, ad locum quem Anicium vocitant accedit et ad basilicas propinquas cum omni exercitu restitit, instruens aciem, qualiter Aurilio, ibidem tunc consistentem episcopo, bellum inferret, mittens etiam ante se nuntios, homines nudo corpore saltantes adque ludentes, qui adventum eius adnuntiarent,” 99 Barral i Altet 2000, p. 54; Gaussin 1951, p. 247; Thiollier 1900, p. 29. 100 Vilatte 1996a, p. 147; Barral i Altet 2000, p. 54.

spiritual attractiveness of various places101. It doesn’t come as striking that mountains, caves, fountains, or outstanding rock structures are landscape features that have always had a certain potential to naturally attract one’s attention. More specifically, we can say that they might evoke several degrees of fascination, fear, or awe too – regardless of one’s religion102. These noticeable points in the landscape have always been understood and considered as especially numinous and have become easily connected with various sacred resonances and ritual activities103. So, even though venerability of the environment was in pre-Christian times perceived as something natural, all-pervading and connected to one vast hierophany104, we can talk about certain landscape features that were thought of as being charged with higher degrees of energy, holiness, or – so to say – sacrality. Following the studies of Mircea Eliade, we can thus describe these special places as naturally fixed points, sudden impulses for human perception and understanding of an otherwise “homogenous” environment, which were essential for the creation of a sense of organization of space105. The older, for our purposes e.g. Gallic conception of how a sacred site could be visibly defined, would not automatically or necessarily result in the creation of a permanent structure to cover it and relied more on said natural organization. The exceptionality of the site itself or already present natural “indicators”, such as imposing trees or marking stones were understood as sufficient106.

It seems that Christian culture didn’t operate with the concept of sacred places or sacred space in at least first two centuries of its existence107. Its initial attitude to the idea of localized sanctity (so natural for its predecessors) could thus be characterized as much more hesitant. This can be spotted e.g. in writings of Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – 215) in the end of the second century, who claimed that “[…] Now I call church not the place, but the gathering of chosen […]”108. That could call-forth Paul, addressing “very religious” people of Athens full of pagan shrines, proclaiming that “the God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man”109, but also proverbial words

101 Stefan Brink, “Myth and Ritual Landscape in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Landscape” in Stefan Brink, Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide eds, Sacred Sites and Holy Places: Exploring the Sacralization of Landscape through Time and Space, Turnhout 2013, pp. 33–52, sp. p. 22. 102 Veronica Della Dora, Landscape, Nature, and the Sacred in Byzantium, Cambridge 2016, p. 147. 103 Howe 1997, p. 66; Brink 2013, p. 23. 104 Mircea Eliade, Le sacré et le profane, Paris 1965, p. 17. 105 Cf. idem, “Sacred Places: Temple, Palace, ‘Center of the World’”, in idem, Patterns in Comparative Religion, New York 1958, pp. 367–387. 106 Tesse Stek, “Monumental Architecture of Non-Urban Cult Places in Roman Italy” in Caroline K. Quenemoen, Roger B. Ulrich eds., A Companion to Roman Architecture, Hoboken 2014, pp. 228–247, p. 229. For a clearer definition of a holy place and sacred space see Michele Bacci, „Performed Topographies and Topomimetic Piety. Imaginative Sacred Spaces in Medieval Italy“ in Alexei Lidov ed., Spatial Icons. Performativity in Byzantium and Medieval Russia, Moscow 2011. pp. 101–118. 107 Cf. Robert Wilken, The Land Called Holy, London/New Haven 1992; Peter W. L. Walker, Holy City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the Fourth Century, Oxford 1990. 108 "Οὐ γὰρ νῦν τὸν τόπον, ἀλλὰ τὸ ἄθροισμα τῶν ἐκλεκτῶν ἐκκλησίαν καλῶ" Clement of Alexandria, Stromata 7.5.9. Taken from Alain Le Boulluec ed., Clément d’Alexandrie, Les Stromates, 7. SC, 429, Paris 1997, p. 110; For translation to English see Vasielos Marinis, „The Historia Ekklesiastike kai Mystike Theoria: a symbolic understanding of the Byzantine church building“ in Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 108, (2015), pp. 753–770. 109 Acts 17:24; „So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples

of his epistle to Ephesians where Paul explains less reticently that […] in Him the whole building is fitted together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together into a dwelling place for God in His Spirit110. Having in mind this un- material, man-oriented, at best “ephemeral” understanding (constituted and defined by the presence of a community) of a sacred space or place, one could contemplate unanimously with the poetic title of Markus’ paper from 1994 and wonder, “how on Earth could places become holy?” 111, and maybe add, “how could spaces become sacred?” In the course of his arguments, Markus recalls Eusebius’ early writings where Eusebios, in kindred spirit as Paul in Athens, remarks that holy places might have been necessary for Jews and pagans, but such spiritual religion as Christianity doesn’t have need for a physical definition of a holy place. At the end of his life, though, apparently following Constantin’s building spree e.g. in Jerusalem, Eusebius progressively held down his conservativism and adopted newly accustomed idea of existence of Christian holy places (at least) in Jerusalem, as well as the concept of sacredness of a church building. It is possible to hear a slight shift in Eusebios’ reasoning already in the words of his dedication of the Basilica in Tyre in 315, where, elegantly adapting the very same words of Ephesians we have already brought up, states: “[…] in the eyes of Him we name God, when He looks at the live temple consisting of us all, and views the house of living and immovable stones, […] (with) Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone”112. He thus addresses unanimously both the people and/as the “immovable stones” of a church building or of the church, with Jesus Christ as the “cornerstone”113. The material metaphor of Jesus being the cornerstone becomes reflected in conflation of people and stones of (metaphorical) body of the church, what could be understood as a break from the initial reluctance to localized sanctity and as a basis of later dual-understanding of the church114. To recall the simple and quite elegant definition of this accepted double nature of ecclesia, we can call forth words of patriarch Germanos (c. 634 – 733/740) who delineated this twofold relationship as follows: „ […] the church is the temple of God, a holy precinct, a house of prayer, a gathering of people, the body of Christ. [...] The church is earthly heaven, where the heavenly God dwells and walks about […]“115. The Christian sites or shrines of devotion thus have to be consecrated by Man, the image of God, made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. (Acts 17:22-25) 110 „Therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens of the saints and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. In Him the whole building is fitted together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together into a dwelling place for God in His Spirit.” (Eph 2, 19–22) 111 Robert A. Markus, „How on Earth Could Places Become Holy? Origins of the Christian Idea of Holy Places“ in Journal of Early Christian Studies, 2 (1994), pp. 257–271, sp. pp. 258–260. 112 “Οὐ μὴν ὅσα καὶ οἷα τὰ τῆς τῶν πεπονηκότων προθυμίας κέκριται παρ’ αὐτῷ τῷ θεολογουμένῳ τὸν ἔμψυχον πάντων ὑμῶν καθορῶντι ναὸν καὶ τὸν ἐκ ζώντων λίθων καὶ βεβηκότων οἶκον ἐποπτεύοντι εὖ καὶ ἀσφαλῶς ἱδρυμένον ἐπὶ τῷ θεμελίῳ τῶν ἀποστόλων καὶ ροφητῶν, ὄντος ἀκρογωνιαίου λίθου αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.” Ekklesiastike Historia 10.4.21. „But less importance attaches to the efforts of those who have laboured, in the eyes of Him we name God, when He looks at the live temple consisting of us all, and views the house of living and immovable stones, well and securely based on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone“. English translation taken from Geoffrey A. Williamson, Eusebius: The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, London/New York 1989, p. 310. 113 Eph 2:20, cf. n107 supra. 114 Marinis 2015, pp. 755–756. 115 Patriarch Germanos on a church building in his tretise Historia Mystagogica. For the english translation see Cyril Mango, Sources and Documents. The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312–1453, Buffalo/London/Toronto 1972, pp. 141–143; Cf. Marinis 2015, pp. 755–757.

who acts on His behalf and through his presence and acts “turns” regular places and human constructions to sacred sites and sanctuaries. Besides the act of consecration as a human aspect or involvement in the process of sacralization of a specific place, it is possible to consider also tombs/bodily remnants of saints and confessors, places of their martyrdom, altars with relics, etc.116. Or, there are special places such as Jerusalem connected with a holy memory and earthly presence of Christ117, and places of theophanies, where a personal manifestation of certain holy or angelic figures was to occur. It is thus through this direct contact with the divine presence, sacred act or holy remnants they are transformed, endowed with a special status118, sanctity and prominence. The last instance seems to apply also to the site of the Cathedral of Le Puy, whose primal special status was recognized by the divine will in a vision and pre-obtained thanks to the divine presence on the site that was later enshrined and consecrated. As we are about to see, the “haptic memory” of the very soil of this divinely chosen site will thus serve as an unmovable but tangible witness of the miracle, on which the faithful could partake through direct physical or visual contact.

Following this brief account on pre-Christian and Christian understanding of landscape, holiness and spiritual capacities of various places and spaces, it is finally time to take a closer look at the founding legend of the church whose content and later modifications might serve as indicators or mirrors of contemporaneous theological discourses but also of lay, local piety. The story is based on quite common and well-known topos of a dream-vision119, calling for the construction of a church on the very place where the vision occurred120. Revelatory dreams were well-known from Old Testament stories of Jacob, Joseph and Daniel121, New Testament episodes of Joseph’s dream encounters with God’s angel who is predicting him his path (Mat. 1:20–24, 2:13, 2:19–22), or associated with Church Fathers122. Anyhow, dreams or dream- visions were always understood quite ambiguously as something potentially dangerous, on the one hand tightly associated with pagan practices, but on the other, valued and under certain circumstances respected as a source of divine wisdom and inspiration. According to Steven Kruger, the experience of dreaming as such and the validity of a message dreams might have conveyed were treated with “simultaneous anxiety and fascination”123. We know that

116 Brink 2013, p. 22. 117 Bacci 2013, pp. 174–175. 118 Mario Sensi, “Santuari mariani e pellegrinaggi nel Medioevo” in La Madre del Signore dal Medioevo al Rinascimento. Itinerari mariani dei due millenni, 3 vols, Rome 1998, vol. III, pp. 54–80, p. 55. 119 Cf. Gábor Klaniczay, „Dreams and Visions in Medieval Miracle Accounts“ in William A. Christian Jr., Gábor Klaniczay eds., The „Vision Thing“: Studying Divine Intervention, Budapest 2009, pp. 37–64; Carolyn M. Carty, Dreams in Early Medieval Art (Volumes I and II), Michigan 1991, [doctoral dissertation]; idem, “The Role of Medieval Dream Images in Authenticating Ecclesiastical Construction” in Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, LXII/1 (1999), pp. 45–90. 120 Carty 1999, pp. 48, 53; Gaussin 1951, p. 244. 121 Genesis 28: 17, 37, 40, 41; Daniel 2, 4, 7–8, 10–12. 122 E. g. Saint Jerome’s dream-journey or dreams of Sulpitius Severus, see further explained in Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, Cambridge 2005, p. 168, n1. (Jerome: Letter 22 to Eustachium, in The Principal Works of Saint Jerome, translated by W. H. Fremantle, A selected Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Catholic Church, s. II, New York/Oxford/London 1893, pp. 35–36; Sulpitius Severus: Sulpitius Severus’s Dream of Saint Martin, Letter 2 to Aurelius, in The Works of Sulpitius Severus, translated by Alexander Roberts, A selected Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Catholic Church, s. II, New York 1894/Michigan 1978, pp. 19–21.) 123 Kruger 2005, p. 7.

foundational legends based on a similar scenario of apparitions or dream visions have been often connected with other shrines occupying naturally high-positioned or else remarkable sites – for instance, among the most famous examples, the church of Saint-Michel on Monte Gargano124 or Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy125. This kind of sacred sites was also often connected with the veneration of Virgin Mary or reverence to saint Michael, who thus regularly shared not only exegetical relation, but also material, terrestrial and therefore devotional association126.

The oldest extant transcription of the foundational legend of the Le Puy Cathedral was written by the monk Bernard Gui and dates from the beginning of the fourteenth century127. The essence of the legend claims that there was a noble woman, newly converted to Christian faith by Saint George, companion of Saint Front, who was miraculously healed from a strong fever on the top of Mont Anis, while lying on the volcanic stone later called the pierre des fièvres [fever stone]128. The instructions about the specific place where to look for recovery were revealed to her in a dream. She obeyed, went to Mount Anis and on the top of the hill she witnessed a miraculous vision of Virgin Mary, Mother of God, surrounded by angels and saints on the top of the stone, who asked her to guard and protect the place, which from that moment on would be reserved for God. After what woman witnessed, she was ordained to go and tell the bishop. Saint George, hearing the story and recognizing she is telling the truth, didn’t hesitate and ordered the place of the apparition to be enclosed “in order to protect it from the impious”, and he began with the construction of the first sanctuary129. The essence of the story about divinely illuminated dream, healing, and miraculous vision identifying the place as sacred, was slightly modified in the beginning of the sixteenth century. The version of the legend as we know it from the later transcription of Étienne Médicis acquired new adjustments130. These were probably inspired by well-known legendary occurrences of the miraculous foundation of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, where the outlines of the floor-plan of the cathedral were to be drawn in snow by miraculously appeared deer131.

124 For an exceptional study of the church of Saint Michel on Monte Gargano focused on visible and functional capacities of its famous bronze doors see Stefano D’Ovidio, “The Bronze Door of Monte Sant’Angelo on Mount Gargano. Use and Perception” in MAH 2018, pp. 137–157; For the foundational legend cf. Marco Trotta, Il santuario di San Michele sul Gargano dal tardoantico all’alto medioevo, Bari 2013, pp. 63–73. 125 The similarity and a dream aspect as a unifying point is mentioned also by Barral i Altet 2000, p. 52. For a foundational legend of Mont Saint Michel in Normandy and further bibliography cf. Sabina Rosenbergova, “The Presence of the Archangel. The Relics, Reliquaries and Statues at Mont-Saint-Michel” in MAH 2018, pp. 335– 347. 126 Archangel Michael’s role as a protector of the Church is based on exegetical reading of the twelfth chapter of Revelation. Cf. Katherine Allen Smith, “Mary or Michael? Saint-Switching, Gender, and Sanctity in a Medieval Miracle of Childbirth” in Church History, LXXIV/4, December 2005, pp. 758–783, pp. 771–771. 127 Barral i Altet 2000, p. 50. 128 Contrary to the “collective memory” or to the traditional belief that this volcanic slab might have been a part of what once was a pagan dolmen, an important object for the ancient pre-Christian devotional acts, the archeological surveys have never brought any evidence to this claim and the stone is today regarded as much more recent – probably late antique – artifact. See Fourvel/Liégard 2000a, p. 66. 129 On the struggle of 1182-1184 which arose in Le Puy and challenged the foundation legend of a cathedral based on the apparition of Virgin Mary see Martin de Framond, “Les Capuchons (1182–1184)” in Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 81–82, p. 79. 130 See Augustine Chassaing ed., Le livre de Podio ou Chroniques d’Étienne de Médicis, Le Puy 1869–1874, pp. 19–24; Barral i Altet 2000, p. 51. 131 Barral i Altet 2000, p. 52; Carty 1999, p. 48.

There is another thought-provoking idea to mention – according to Auguste Fayard, the oldest version of the legend might have been even simpler, depicting only the woman who has had a dream-revelation in which she got instructions to arrange that a church will be constructed on the very place under the top of Mont Anis132. Anyhow, according to Fayard and Vilatte, it was only later, apparently in the course of the tenth century and influenced by newly renowned position of wooden statues of Virgin Mary with Child on her knees sitting on a throne – the type known also as Sedes Sapientiae133 – that the legend became transformed, and acquired more precise, more affluent narrative that included also the well-known reference to the image of Virgin Mary seated in glory among angelic figures134.

I.5 Le Puy as a Place of Medieval Christian Pilgrimage

The veneration of Virgin Mary in Le Puy-en-Velay thus eventually “got a face” and became strongly re-focused on the statue of Virgin and Child installed on the main altar from the beginning of the eleventh century at the latest135 [Fig. 7]. But the famous statue was still coupled to the pierre des fièvres, which has been, with the help of local legends, strongly associated with the incessant religious prominence of the site [Fig. 8]. As such, inside the church, these two have jointly continued to attract and amaze pilgrims seeking physical or spiritual relief136. The recognition and strong belief in power or aura of the local terrain became embodied and condensed into the pierre des apparitions [stone of the apparitions], which is thus in a certain sense close to the concepts of both a contact relic and the one of acheiropoieton137. This is clearly noticeable in the description written in 1523 by Mathurin des Roys who described long-lasting praxis happening on the site as follows:

132 Fayard 1978b, p. 97. 133 The bibliography to this topic is vast, cf. Dominique Faunieres, Jean-René Gaborit, Une vierge en Majesté, Paris 2009; Abbé René Laurentin, Raymond Oursel, Vierges romanes. Les Vierges assises, Zodiaque 1988; Marie en Basse-Auvergne. Deux milles ans d’images et d’imaginaire, (catalogue of exhibiton, Puy-du-Dôme), Clermont-Ferrand 1980; Ilene Hearing Forsyth, The Throne of Wisdom: Wood Sculptures of Madonna in Romanesque France, Princeton 1972. 134 Vilatte 1996a, p. 156. 135 The first statue of the Virgin is said to have been present on the place since the end of the tenth century or beginning of the eleventh. Its existence was mentioned for the first time in 1095. See Cahn 1974, p. 151; Reinburg 1989, p. 299; Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 154, 182. For the possible “physiognomy” of cultic, pilgrimage sites and re-orientation or conversion of the original non-figural cultic focus to the iconic, figurative objects or images see Michele Bacci, “Site-Worship and the Iconopoietic Power of Kinetic Devotions” in Hans Belting, Ivan Foletti, Martin F. Lešák eds., Convivium VI/I, Movement, Images and Iconic Presence in the Medieval World, (2019), pp. 21–45. 136 Regarding the beginning and growth of the Christian cult and pilgrimage in Le Puy cf. Elisa A. Foster, “Moveable Feasts: Processions as Multimedia Performance in Le Puy-en-Velay” in Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art & Architecture, V/1 (2015), pp. 37–67, p. 38 ; Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 121–135; Reinburg 1989, p. 297. 137 Vilatte 1996a, p. 144. Concepts of acheiropoieta (i.e. images ”not made by human hands” by Kitzinger defined as "either they are images believed to have been made by hands other than those of ordinary mortals or else they are claimed to be mechanical, though miraculous, impressions of the original."), and contact relic (a secondary relic, i.e. a material substance that have come into contact with a saint during his or her life) are both based on physical contact, on the touch with a sacred body. Cf. Scott Montgomery, “Contact Relics” in Encyclopedia of Medieval Pilgrimage. [Consulted online on 04 June 2019]; and Ernst Kitzinger, "The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm" in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 8, (1954), pp. 83–150, p. 113.

“[…] often, there are three, four or many [people] sleeping on the said stone, when they are feverish, and from the virtue of the said stone and the divine permission they receive health, and healing, which has been experienced and approved by all, and which is very corroborative of faith, et sic locus sanctificat hominem et non homo locum [and thus the place sanctifies men and not men the place].”138

What is thus possible to extract from legendary stories and historical development of the site, and what seems to be crucial for the identity of Le Puy-en-Velay are two elements. On the one hand, there is a simple yet essential idea of the indisputable importance of the very site where the cathedral stands. Located on a mountain and governing the landscape around, fiercely protected against the impious by Saint George in the legend, the exceptionality of the site stands on the very beginning of the long chain of devotional practices and in all probability launch the very process of creation of Christian legendary stories139. On the other hand, there is the existence and presence of a visible, palpable witness of physical presence of the Mother of God on this very piece of earth – the miraculous black stone which thus embodies a direct link between the local terrain and the divine. Both the mountain-top with its natural understanding as being something “between heaven and earth” – the axis mundi of a kind, and the stone – a reminder of physical contact between the divine and terrestrial, have their precursors described in the Bible. The stone could be related, for instance, to the one in the story of Jacob’s dream in the book of Genesis140, while the mountain-top is in the Bible a really quite frequent, recurrent geographical motif acting as a place of epiphany, protection, sacrifice and contact with God141.

One of the people who decided to visit this always growing place of worship was also the famous Bernard d’Angers, who in the beginning of the eleventh century made a stop in Le Puy and left a few of his remarks in the Liber Miraculorum142. We learn that the small village or locus previously known as Anis or Anicium had been growing constantly143, and in the tenth century started to be referred to as burgus, to be even later, by Bernard himself, recalled as an “illustrious and populous city”144. It was probably in the second half of the tenth century too,

138 See Mathurin des Roys, “S’ensuyt la charge, noblesset bonne ordonnance de l’hospital de Nostre Dame et ville du Puy, pour esmouvoir et inicier tous devotz crestiens et crestiennes a doner et eslargir de leurs bien temporelz, affin d’estre remunerez et participans des spirituelz”, Lyon, 1523, p. 67 in Reinburg 1989, p. 299.; “[...] plusieurs foys en y a trois, quatre ou plusieurs sur ladite pierre dormans, quant sont febricitans, dont illec par vertu de ladite pierre et permission divine recoyvent santé, et guérison, et ce tous est experimenté et approuvé, qui est chose de foy moult corroborative, et sic locus sanctificat hominem et non homo locum”. Translation by Adrien Palladino. 139 See pp. 22–24 in this thesis. 140 See Gen. 28: 17; Barral i Altet 2000, p. 52. 141 Della Dora, 2016, p. 147. 142 For the original see Bernardus, Liber Miraculorum Sancte Fidis, Auguste Bouillet ed., Paris 1879. English translation with an introduction and notes by Pamela Sheingorn, The Book of Sainte Foy, Philadelphia 1995. 143 Historia Francorum, X, 25; “Ad locum quem Anicium vocitant” , Gregory of Tours in 591, as quoted in Chassaing/Jacotin 1907, p. 224; Albert Boudon-Lashermes, Le Grand Pardon de Notre Dame du Puy de 992 à 1921, Le Puy 1921, p. 16; cf. Gaussin 1951, p. 246. 144 “Namque peregre profecti sunt nuper quidem ex nostris Andecavinis orationis causa ad illustrem et populosam illam urbem, quam, pene deleto antiquiore nomine, quod Anicium ni fallor fuisse videtur, nunc

when the regional and national prestige of the city rose to an international level145. The city became known as Puy Sainte-Marie146, a destination for great masses of pilgrims, and later the departure point of one of the principal itineraries to Santiago de Compostela147. Regarding the pilgrims who decided to visit this “Lourdes of Middle Ages”, as Gaussin called Le Puy, they had always had more than one motivation to come148. According to Anne Osterrieth, there are three main “deficiencies” or general motivations of a medieval pilgrim to undertake a pilgrimage: seeking for salvation (sinner), seeking for a bodily cure (ill), or seeking for revelation (lonely)149. And, apparently, Le Puy has it all. Besides pierre des apparitions and the statue of Notre Dame du Puy we have already mentioned150, the place was attractive also for those who wished to set off from Le Puy to another destination or to obtain indulgences. For a pilgrim who paid a visit to Le Puy during the feasts of Nativity, Annunciation, Purification, Assumption, Ascension, and three days of Rogations, it was possible to obtain from one year and forty days up to perpetuity of indulgences, while in the later Middle Ages, in years when Good Friday coincided with the feast of Annunciation, masses of pilgrims would head to Le Puy for the so-called Jubilé or Grand Pardon, during which it was possible to acquire plenary indulgences151. We can also talk about memorable or “trendsetting departures” of important individuals who set off from Le Puy that further nourished and glamorized the always rising pilgrimage attractivity of the city, which reached its apex during the twelfth century152. Crucial figures in this respect were Bishop Godescalc of Le Puy, who traveled to Compostela in 950 and whose trajectory later became what we know as Via Podensis, the said southernmost itinerary towards Compostela, starting in Le Puy. It is possible to mention also Bishop Guy of Le Puy and his departure to Rome sometime after 977, or Bishop Adhemar of Le Puy, who led the first crusade towards the Holy Land in 1095153. Whatever the motivation of a pilgrim or any individual to pay a visit to the Cathedral of Le Puy might have been, we can still discuss several decisive and unchangeable characteristics constituting common ground on which each of possible sovereign and personal experiences was built. At first, the knowledge of the history and the knowledge of the legends of the place could be mentioned, as we believe these prepared a comparable mindset for every person visiting Le Puy and possibly led to a higher sensitivity to certain aspects of one’s visual intake (e.g.

Podium Sanctae Mariae vulgares appelant”, in Liber Miraculorum sanctae Fidis (ed. Bouillet 1897, p. 30); Boudon-Lashermes 1921, p. 3. 145 Reinburg 1989, p. 297. 146 Gaussin 1951, p. 247; Thiollier 1900, p. 29; Bouillet 1897, p. 30. 147 Jeanne Vielliard, Le Guide du Pèlerin de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle, Macon 1969, p. 2; Diana Webb, Pilgrims and Pilgrimage in the Medieval West, London/New York 2001 [1999]; idem, Medieval European pilgrimage, c. 700 – c. 1500, Basingstoke 2002, p. 126; Durliat 1977a, pp. 17–18. 148 Gaussin 1951, p. 252. 149 Anne Osterrieth, “Medieval Pilgrimage: Society and Individual Quest” in Social Compass (1989), 36, pp. 145–157, p. 146. 150 Its existence was mentioned for the first time in 1095. See Cahn 1974, p. 151; Reinburg 1989, p. 299; Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 154, 182. 151 For indulgences see Foster 2015, p. 49; For the Jubilé or Grand Pardon of Le Puy see Cahn 1974, p. 3, Boudon-Lashermes 1921. 152 Barral i Altet 2000, p. 76. 153 Roger E. Reynolds, “A Precious Souvenir Given to the First Pilgrim to Santiago de Compostela” in Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art & Architecture, IV/3 (2014), pp. 1–30, p. 4; Lauranson Rosaz 1987, pp. 281–291.

climbing the steep hill would be reminiscent of the journey the ill woman in the legend had to undergo). It is possible to discuss at least the power of exceptional landscape and the capacity of architecture to impress and to evoke fascination, which don’t change and could be applied more or less generally. But in the end, the crucial aspect for the conception of awareness of this type is probably the “pre-final”, liminal experience of arriving to a specifically fashioned threshold of a sacred site. And the threshold of Notre Dame du Puy, spatially augmented into the massive western porch of the cathedral, is the very place where the aura of a fascinating landscape and the power of intriguing architecture meet each other to facilitate said thoughts, sensations, memories and desires.

I.6 Description of the Cathedral’s Architectural Concept

The foot of Corneille Rock, the greatest of four volcanic outcroppings that pierce said picturesque skyline of the valley described at the beginning of this chapter, is the place where the Cathedral of Notre-Dame-du-Puy grew continuously throughout the centuries154. Thanks to the uniqueness and boldness of the architectural solution used, the cathedral is often referred to as “the most beautiful” among French churches. The resounding architectural concept of the cathedral was brought into being as a consequence of the peculiar terrain disposition of the hill on which it stands155. The whole district around the cathedral known as the close (cloître) was encircled and protected by walls erected between 1220-1240, and its borders could be marked by Rue de Frenerie, Rue des Portes and Rue de Vienne156. The origins of the Cathedral of Le Puy, like those of the whole diocese, are almost unknown or at least in doubt, since the church archives were destroyed during a fire in eighteenth century157. Thus, to reconstruct a possible genesis of the cathedral, we have to work with a combination of eloquent legends, archeological or architectural findings and formal analysis of movable and unmovable decorative elements of the architecture. In short, the very first structure used for Christian worship – as we already mentioned before – probably made use of the still extant pieces of the previous building standing on the site and could be dated to end of the fourth century or to the beginning of the fifth century158. In the ninth century, the sanctuary seems to have been fundamentally remodeled and enlarged

154 For a thorough description of possible genesis of the cathedral building see Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 47–56, 305–310; Cahn 1974, pp. 59–75; Fourvel/Liégard 2000a, pp. 56–67; idem 2000b, pp. 115–144; Durliat 1976a, pp. 9–54, sp. pp. 9–25; idem, 1976b, pp. 55–163, with the latter providing a vital synthesis of sources and descriptions of the reconstructions of the nineteenth century. 155 The monumental terrace on which the cathedral stands was created already in the second century AD. See Foulquier/Nectoux 2011, p. 85. 156 Foster 2015, p. 63. 157 Barral i Altet 2000, sp. pp. 47–56, 305–310; Cahn 1974, pp. 59–75. For a concise description of the archeological findings see Fourvel/Liégard 2000a, p. 56. 158 There is a debate about the transfer of the episcopal seat from Saint-Paulien, previously known as Ruessio, to Le Puy, with the former traditionally considered as the capital of the area in the Gallo-Roman era. According to Barral i Altet, we do not have any reliable sources about religious activities in the area before the tenth century, but he sees Le Puy as an equal candidate for the original episcopal seat. See Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 50, 52, 54; Fourvel/Liégard 2000a, p. 58.

together with its surroundings159. Still, we do not have much certain information about the appearance of these initial phases of the building and the present cathedral does not have any visible part of these older phases incorporated into its superstructure. Subsequently, between the tenth and eleventh century, the site likely underwent a major reorganization which dismantled almost the entire earlier architecture and started building ex-novo on the remains. The present body of the cathedral thus acquired its volumes in the course of the eleventh and twelfth century, possibly beginning of the thirteenth century160. The church stands on a plan of a Latin cross, it has a rectangular, slightly prolonged apse flanked by rectangular chambers on both sides, and a wide transept ended on each of its ends by two semicircular side chapels with airy galleries above. Counting from the west, the main nave and two aisles of the church consist of six bays, meeting the volumes of the generous transept in a square crossing where the main altar stands [Fig. 9]. The said six bays of the main nave as well as the altar area in the crossing of the transept are evenly vaulted with high domes resting on squinches [Fig. 10a, b]. The chain of domes vaulting bays of the nave are not visible from the outside, while the octagonal dome above the crossing stands out sharply, paired with the near bell-tower, both well-visible especially from afar. The ground-plan and the composition of the church described like this (or on first sight) doesn’t seem complicated, but in fact the opposite is true. The peculiarity of the overall architectural concept starts to emerge when one decides to look at cross sections of the building or starts to compare the idea grasped from the ground-plan with the division of space unites visible from the outside [Fig.11]. Again, starting from the west, what appears in the plan as two westernmost bays of the church traditionally positioned on the ground level, is in fact a “second floor” of the massive western porch. That is, the two westernmost bays of the church – even though unperceivably from within – rest on six massive pillars delineating the porch. Consequently, the cathedral lacks a traditional “western” access – even though the flat main façade that hides the porch provides an access to the church, it is not an access from the west in the literal sense [Fig. 12]. The massive staircase, one of the most noticeable features of the church, leads from the street, through the porch, under the nave and ends almost directly in front of the main altar. In the eastern perimeter of the cathedral, there are other two entrances – one at each end of the transept – and the said multistoried bell-tower attached to the eastern exterior walls of the northern side chamber of the apse. The entrance on the southern arm of the transept is covered with a baldachin-like porch known as Porche du For, while the northern entrance has been known as Porte Saint Jean.

In the following pages, the area of the western porch will be dealt with at length in an attempt to take a closer look at its intriguing spatial, dynamic, iconological and light dramaturgy. The ground section of the porch which lies under the nave of the church also houses two small chapels embedded under the penultimate bay of the nave: the chapel of Saint Martin

159 This piece of volcanic stone is often regarded (mostly within the oral-legendary tradition), as a “former pagan dolmen” which originates from the old Gallo-Roman temple. There is no evidence to support this hypothesis. There is also a hypothesis that the volcanic slab might have been used as the altar, having the same dimensions as the interval between supportive colonettes discovered in the supposed altar zone of the Carolingian phase of the structure. See Fourvel/Liégard 2000a, p. 66. 160 idem 2000a, pp. 55, 60–66; Cf. also chapter “Le chantier de la cathédrale et sa chronologie » with plans and sections of Bernard Galland in Barral I Altet 2000, pp. 305–331.

and the one of Saint Gilles, each screened by one of the wooden doors which we will discuss together with the porch. These two doors, each covered with a Christological narrative rendered in vivid colors and described with large lettered tituli, have been constituting an inseparable part of the complex dramaturgy of the western entrance into the Notre Dame of Le Puy we would like to reconsider.

II. THE PORCH AND STAGING OF A LIMINAL EXPERIENCE161

The following chapter will discuss an idea of a threshold-like character of the whole city of Le Puy, as well as the notion of transitional and liminal qualities of the porch of the cathedral Notre-Dame specifically, with its capacity to exemplify the essence of the sacred identity of the site. The outstanding structure of the porch with its tangible, as well as immaterial characteristics will thus constitute a virtually second step of the gradual approach that has already started internally with a knowledge of history and legendary stories, with an experience of a wider landscape and of local terrain, and with the opportunity to observe progressively changing aspect of the cathedral’s architecture from afar. Thinking about the experience of a medieval pilgrim, on the one hand, we can regard Le Puy and its cathedral as a starting point from the perspective of somebody who waited here for a blessing, for a safe onward journey to Compostela, Rome, or Jerusalem, but on the other, the city with the cathedral could have been also pilgrim’s destination. Having traveled just here and seeking to kneel in front of the Madonna of Le Puy or to touch the pierre des apparitions, the pilgrim could have expected and experienced fulfillment of his desire162. And the porch of the cathedral is the ambiguous place standing on the very limit of this transitional experience. We will start with a description of porch’s specific external and internal architectural aspect and ensue with a reflection on possible purposes and capacities of intermediary spaces in general. These two parts will then merge into one in the final passages of the chapter, which will seek to explain the intrinsic double nature of this transitional space, further developed with use of narrative imagery.

II.1 Description of the Porch of Notre Dame-du-Puy

Exterior The truly unique architectural concept of the porch of the Cathedral of Notre Dame du Puy answers to a determination to overcome the difficult terrain situation while prolonging the cathedral’s nave and fashioning an attractive, yet functional entrance space, destined especially for the rising number of believers visiting the site163. Because of the steep inclination of the hill and limited dimensions of the original ancient terrace on which the cathedral progressively grew during the centuries, the two newly-created westernmost bays of its nave had to be erected “in the air”, carried upon six massive pillars, which then delineate the area of the porch164. To start

161 This chapter is based on preliminary results and questions formulated in the article “The Western Porch of the Cathedral of Le Puy: Construction and Staging of a Liminal Space” published within the collective volume Migrating Art Historians (Brno/Roma 2018). Having similar interest, the present chapter will preserve, reuse and reconsider certain ideas and conclusions which were already sketched in the article. 162 Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 69–67; Magali Cheynet, “La route des pèlerins: introduction” in Questes, XXII (2011), pp. 9–23, sp. pp. 12, 14. 163 Unique in general, thanks to its outstanding volumes and concept, but following Thiollier, unique also considering the regional building praxis. He remarks that “L’usage des porches à l’époque romane, semble avoir été inconnu dans la région, (nous exceptons les superbes porches du Puy, nécessaires dans un lieu de pèlerinage) […].” Thiollier 1900, p. 19. 164 For the bibliography offering a thorough description of a possible genesis of the cathedral building see part I.6 in the previous chapter.

with a physical description, we have decided to virtually follow the approach of a pilgrim who travelled on foot, arrived in the city, and sought to reach the cathedral. In this sense, we would say that the final visual sequence connected with one’s sensation of having arrived, starts already outside the church, at the bottom of the rather narrow Rue des Tables leading to the front of the Le Puy Cathedral. Raising the gaze, a peculiar game of perspective is awaiting the onlooker: standing at the beginning of the said steep narrow street vis-a-vis the elevated cathedral, the latter suddenly becomes reduced to the iconic façade only [Fig. 12a, b]. In this sense, one can feel the predominance exerted by the cathedral’s architecture on the entire cityscape, and on the steps and gaze of visitors. The impression of reduction of the whole building to the western façade only and this virtually “guided view” are both quite peculiar, since from a certain distance, the cathedral as we described it with its well discernible transept, high octagonal dome and tall bell tower, announces its volumes in a really imposing way. From this first more distant phase, the cathedral building observed from afar acts like a “solid object” whose silhouette and mass offer only vague hints about the inner space they render and into which the viewer seeks to enter165. After one gets closer, this impression of volume changes dramatically and the whole church “dissolves” behind the two-dimensional screen of its massive stone façade, pierced with three dark arches. From the west, there is no other possible approach. And as was already said, it is at this pompous western entrance that pilgrims likely arrived and entered the church, except for special situations when the entrances of the eastern perimeter – known as Porte Saint Jean and Porche du For, were prescribed in the itinerary166. The semi-opened structure of the porch then stands on a rectangular ground-plan divided into six independent square bays by said pillars. The two-story construction – porch on the bottom and two bays of the nave on the top – is masterly hidden behind the flat, polychromatic façade of the church, opened towards the city with three great archways. The fact that the porch lies rather under the cathedral that in front of it is thus not clear on the first sight. As we have already mentioned within the description of the overall architectural concept, without a chance to pay a visit to this church, and even after having a closer look on its plan and cross section, it could be difficult to understand fully how this peculiar division of space units works. Another prominent, striking feature of this spacious entranceway is the monumental staircase which leads from the street in front of the façade steeply upwards into the dimness behind the middle archway [Fig. 13]. After it reaches the main gate to the church – the so-called Porte Dorée – the staircase continues further upwards through a tunnel-like passage and emerges almost right in front of the main altar inside the church167.

165 Rudolf Arnheim, The Dynamics of Architectural Form, New York/Berkley 1977, p. 77; for more information about the significance of a silhouette of a church cf. Martin Lešák, „Sacral Architecture on the Horizon. The Sacred Landscape of Medieval Pilgrim” in MAH 2018, pp. 61–73. 166 Cahn 1974, p. 3; Reinburg 1989, p. 299. 167 Beside a clear symbolical relation to the Gate of Jerusalem or to the Heavenly City, this appellation of the main gate was traditionally used in processional books, and still survives in the oral tradition. For instance, the Palm Sunday procession was provided with instructions to take place “ante portam auream”, similarly, the expression “ad portam ecclesiae deauratam” is used to describe the moment of entry of the newly elected bishop through the main gate into the church. See: Processionale ad usum ecclesiae cathedralis Beatae Mariae Aniciensis, Le Puy 1763, Bibliothèque Municipale, Fond Cortial, MS 170, fol. 105ff; Jean-Baptiste Payrard, “Ancien cérémonial-coutumier de l’Eglise du Puy” in Tablettes historiques du Velay, VIII (1877–1878), Le Puy/Paris/Saint-Etienne, pp. 377–439, p. 438; Cahn 1974, p. 2. Even though the entranceway to the church has been heavily restored and partially remodeled – after all as the whole church – the access solution is in its essence original.

The overall organization of forms of the façade, in both the horizontal as well as the vertical sense, is tripartite. Above each of the three tall, arched openings, there are three small blind arcades which terminate the lowermost massive section. The middle horizontal section of the façade then consists of three window openings, while the uppermost zone is divided into three independent triangular frontons. Two peripheral frontons are pierced with a triple arcade topped with a single arch, while the middle one has two rows of blind arcades above each other, with a centrally positioned window in a lower level. Inside, the porch consists of two bays each divided into three said parts. Each of six units is vaulted with a simple groin vault, within the outer section of the porch also with use of ribs. Without the scheme of elevation of the church, or unless observed from a certain distance, it is difficult to recognize that the bays of the porch are not a fluid continuation of the nave, but rather a solemn, semi-opened unit. This, so to say anti-église par excellence is housing and providing the front entrance to the cathedral, traditionally used by pilgrims168. From the first glance, it is difficult to overlook the façade’s obvious conceptual and architectural resemblance to a Roman triumphal arch169. As we have already stated at the beginning of this description, the porch’s monumentality and chosen form were definitely subjected to difficult terrain conditions and to a will to elongate the church’s nave and regulate the flow of people. But if we wanted to reflect purely on its visual qualities, this structure, massive and unprecedented in form, must have been conceived and understood also as a suggestive aesthetic token testifying of the triumphal prosperity and prestige of the local church. In Rome at the same time, for instance, it seems that a later addition of a porch to an already standing church was a common praxis developed probably by way of a papal endeavor to claim more authority and prestige170. Certainly, a monumentalized or otherwise adorned western or principal entrance to a church which attracts attention from afar is not an uncommon feature171, especially when we think of pilgrimage churches and their intention to present the idea crucial for pilgrims on their journey in as immediate way as possible: this is the right place to arrive, this is a threshold of a sacred place you sought to reach, come closer, slow down, take a look, expect, and enter.

Interior Practically speaking, the inner space of the porch between the said three arch openings on the façade and the main gate hidden further up is divided into three sectors: the middle part stays reserved for the monumental staircase, while two lateral ones constitute of several

168 Heitz 1991, pp. 329–334; Cahn 1974, p. 3; Reinburg 1989, p. 299. 169 The nearest possible example of a still standing Roman triumphal arch would be the one in Orange, c. 160 km to the southeast of Le Puy. It shows a similar tripartite division of volumes, usage of horizontal rims to differentiate between sections and “entrances” in the form of two slightly lower lateral arches framing the higher main one. 170 Nancy Spatz 2001, Church porches and the liturgy in twelfth-century Rome” in Thomas J. Heffernan, Ann E. Matter eds., The Liturgy of the Medieval Church, pp. 327–367, p. 330. Between the years 1100–1217, there are at least 27 attested examples of this tendency. 171 Cf. Volume „La façade romane“ of Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, XXXIV/135–136 (1991).

platforms placed along the main axis172. To get directly inside the church without wandering around the porch, one must follow the main trajectory and climb the staircase which literally dives into it and vanishes into the dimness. It was reconstructed simultaneously with the façade during Mallay’s 1844 intervention173, however, we do know for sure that in a reduced size, the staircase was a part of the original concept. We can learn this information e.g. from a letter of 1133 written by Humbert, bishop of Le Puy, to Guillaume, bishop of Mende and to Jaucerand, bishop of Viviers, which attempts to make them urge the Christian community entrusted to them to show charity for those in need, gathered in the hospital of Le Puy. This should have been standing right next to the cathedral, “quod est proprium ejusdem ecclesiae ejusque adheret gradibus” [adjacent to the stairs]174. Also, while he dealt with a dedication of the chapel of Saint Gilles, Walter Cahn mentioned the document of 1204 attesting the sale of land, that portrays a man who, in order to sell his properties, was described as swearing an oath on the Gospels “en la Graza devant Saint Giri” [on the staircase in front of Saint Gilles]175. The lower parts of the staircase substitute what once was the Rue des Grazes, intersecting the Rue des Tables176. The said middle section of the porch’s interior is completely reserved for the staircase which fluidly continues and ascends through the elevated Porte Dorée, to reach the cathedral’s nave in the moment of crossing, topped with the dome in front of the choir. This type of extended entranceway with a monumental staircase leading from the street, through the porch up to main door and then through the tunnel-like passage directly in front of the main altar is completely unique177. If we wanted to recall some other examples which use a similar spatial concept with a staircase as a dominant, indispensable feature of the plan, the closest resemblance could be seen in case of Sacra di San Michele on top of Mont Pirichiano in Piedmont and its famous Scalone dei Morti178, former monumental staircase reaching the main entrance of Mont-Saint- Michel179, or unsurprisingly, determined by the same peculiar topographic situation, we can talk about the Chapel of St. Michel d’Aiguilhe in Le Puy, that has a narrow staircase as a substantial part of its design swirling all-around the volcanic cone on which it stands. Nonetheless, neither of these two examples work with the staircase in a same, intentionally theatrical way as in Notre Dame.

172 The approach to the chapels with small stairs in front of each doors is a work of the nineteenth century Mallay’s reconstruction. Cahn 1974, p. 5; Durliat 1976a, p. 22. 173 See Durliat 1977a, p. 18. In 1843, due to serious static problems, the overall remodeling of two westernmost bays of the cathedral was recommended by the general inspector Auguste Caristie. The reconstruction started in 1844 and was carried out under the guidance of Aymond Mallay, who was involved in several other church reconstructions in Auvergne. 174 See Thiollier 1900, p. 29; Cahn 1974, p. 6; Barral i Altet 2000, p. 67, n. 52. “Custodiant hospitale beate semperque virginis Mariae, illud scilicet quod est proprium ejusdem ecclesiae ejusque adheret gradibus.” 175 See Cahn 1974, p. 6; Barral i Altet 2000, p. 67, n. 52. 176 Larroche, Le Puy-en-Velay: L’ensemble cathédrale Notre-Dame, Paris 2005, p. 23. 177 Xavier Barral i Altet, “La Chapelle Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe au Puy” in Congrès archéologique de France, 133° session Velay (1975), Paris 1976; idem 2000, p. 217; Durliat 1986, p. 12. 178 The staircases are providing entrances to these churches, but the access is not by any means as direct as in case of Notre Dame du Puy. For Piedmonts’ example cf. Claudio Bertolotto, Giuseppe Sergi, La Sacra di san Michele, Borgone Susa 2016; for Saint Michel d’Aiguilhe see Barral i Altet 1976, pp. 230–313, sp. p. 234; idem, „La chapelle Saint-Michel d’Aiguilhe“ in Art roman en Auvergne, Rennes 1984, pp. 63–66; cf also part „Saint- Michel d’Aiguilhe“ in idem 2000, pp. 217–222. 179 Yves Gallet, “L’espace du pèlerinage et les circulations dans l’abbaye” in Dossiers d’Archéologie. Le Mont- Saint-Michel, 388, (2018), pp. 28–32, sp. p. 29.

Since the cathedral was built on a plan of a Latin cross with a simple rectangular apse and transept without an ambulatory, the statue of Notre-Dame of Le Puy, the main object of pilgrimage favor, was placed on the main altar and the spacious solution of the western perimeter thus practically might have substitute the regulatory role of an ambulatory180. No matter how many people gathered inside the porch in order to enter through the main entrance to look in the eyes of the Vierge Noire, they all had to proceed through the final narrow passage to emerge in smaller, better organized groups or in front of the choir. Unfortunately, the main entrance was remodeled and deprived of its original door between 1778 and 1781, and the former position of Porte Dorée has become occupied by a metal grill181, still present in situ [Fig. 14]. If we thus wanted to reflect on the possible appearance of the original door, we can do it only with the help of a few descriptions, which are however of unclear interpretation. For instance, Bochart de Sarron noted in 1693 that doors were “couverte(s) de lames de cuivre” [covered by copper strips]; or later, in 1776, two years prior to the said remodeling, the Abbé de Mortesage described the cathedral and referred to its main doors as to “deux battans de bronze cizelés” [two swing doors of chiseled bronze]182. The original doors are also briefly mentioned in a processional book from 1763 among the instructions for Palm Sunday processions. It seems there would have been two stations before entering the church: the first at the foot of the stairs on Rue des Tables and the second one ante portam auream183. And it was also up the stairs and through the Golden Gate [ad portam ecclesiae deauratam] where newly elected bishops of Le Puy would perform their solemn entry into the cathedral184. Besides the obvious symbolic connotations pointing to the gate of Jerusalem or Heavenly City, we cannot say with a certainty whether there was also a material basis for the appellation “Golden Gate”. We can only speculate and imagine them, for instance, as being covered with golden leaf or even made from polished bronze, which could have created the “golden” appearance later reflected in their name185. What is preserved until today and what could make us imagine supposed former grandeur of the main entrance is the still extant fresco decoration of two lunettes along the staircase and two subtle antique porphyry columns186. One on each side of the door, and both topped with fine twelfth-century capitals, these precious porphyry columns voice a clear message of the sanctity of the place one is about to enter187. A pair of said lunettes rendering

180 The first statue of the Virgin about which we have no certain information, should have been present on the place since the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century. Regarding the prominent and rather unusual placement of the Virgin on the main altar, according to Bernard d’Angers, e.g. the statue of the Saint Géraud in Aurillac would have been displayed in the same position. See Reinburg 1989, p. 299; Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 154, 182. 181 Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 204–205; cf Bruno Phalip, “Les grilles de chœur liturgique dans le Massif Central (XIe–XIIe siècles). D’infranchissables transparences.” in Stéphanie-Diane Daussy ed., L’église, lieu de performances : in locis compentibus, Paris 2016, pp. 39–54. 182 Cahn 1974, p. 2; Barral i Altet 2000, p. 184. 183 “Processionale ad usum ecclesiae cathedralis Beatae Mariae Aniciensis.” Le Puy, Bibliothèque Municipale, Fond Cortial, ms. 170, fols 105ff as quoted in Cahn 1974, p. 2. 184 Payrard 1877–1878, p. 438. “Pergit deinde ad portam ecclesiae deauratam, in qua alius canonicus paratus pluviali aspersorium et crucem osculandam porrigit.” Larroche 2005, p. 27. 185 Cf. D’Ovidio 2018. sp. p. 152. 186 Barral i Altet 2000, p. 188. 187 For the importance of material and colour of medieval artworks cf e.g. Herbert Kessler, Seeing Medieval Art, Peterborough/Ontario 2004, sp. chapter „Matter“ pp. 19–44.

two heavenly visions was positioned parallelly with the staircase opposite each other, just in front of the Porte Dorée. The south lunette offers the scene of Transfiguration of Christ, who was depicted standing in a mandorla with prophets Moses and Elijah on his sides and apostles John, James and Peter under his feet [Fig. 15]. The north one contains a frontal depiction of Mother of God holding Child on her knees, sitting on the throne, with angels behind her back holding a curtain [Fig. 16]. Concluding the “heavenly dimension” of this space, there is also the bust of archangel Michael in porphyry robe located right above the head of one who stands in front of Porte Dorée188 [Fig. 17]. The very same color which we can spot on the upper mantle of the Mother of God and robes of other angelic figures around, harmonizes with the two porphyry columns on both sides of the main gate and invites the viewer standing amidst these visions to see that this place was conceived and understood as standing in between heaven and earth.

To conclude this descriptive part, if we would recall again our own experience of arrival to Le Puy and to the Cathedral of Notre-Dame, after we climbed up the steep staircase and entered the porch, we have undoubtedly remained stunned by the particularity of its concept and spaciousness. But the “inner perspective” of the porch that has opened in front of us dominated by the long view towards the main entrance or several views to its side zones, was not the only breath-taking one. On previous pages, we have several times attempted to remind of the importance of the landscape in the process of formation of one’s experience with architecture. The porch of Notre-Dame is an incredibly conductive place in this sense. Three great archways of the façade which appear to be shadowy and enigmatic while regarded from the outside, luring one to come closer to see better and to enter, from the inside, they at once transform into three great “picture frames” that have an undeniable capacity to reverse one’s attention – at least for a while – back to the attractivity of a surrounding landscape [Fig. 18]. In this sense and in this moment of outward gaze, the porch makes one perfectly aware of his elevated and ostensibly prominent position above the profane lands and the city, but still under, or precisely not yet within the sacred space. In other words, we believe that in the very moment of stepping in, one could easily become physically and symbolically conscious of his “borderline”, liminal position.

II.2 Intermediary Spaces

Mirroring the prominent position the phenomena of intermediary spaces and question of liminality have represented in our discussions and thoughts during the Migrating Art Historian project, in the eponymous volume published as a result in 2018, there was a whole chapter dedicated to this problematic, named “Liminal Zones and Pilgrimage Churches”. The introduction of the section, entitled symptomatically “Liminality. Space and Imagination”, was written by Ivan Foletti and followed by five independent case studies from five different authors. And unsurprisingly, discussions we have had and thoughts which we shared touching

188 Barral I Altet 2000, pp. 266–269. These frescoes will be recalled again within the final part of the text dealing with possible iconological explanation of the whole area.

upon this subject, have often occurred precisely while we were staying inside some of these liminal zones. Foletti, who already used similar optics to reflect on the initiatory function of the narthex and particularly on the role of the doors of Basilica of Santa Sabina in Rome, here suggested several other possible natures and meanings of entrance spaces of pilgrimage churches, appealing on their [spi]ritual as well as essentially natural usage – thus, regarded physically, from the point of view of a tired body, as well as intellectually, from the point of view of a yearning mind189. To partake on this line of thought and making use of already mentioned notions of space and imagination, we would like to start too with a brief general reconsideration of intermediary spaces, their forms and capacities, asking for both practical as well as more profound than the merely transitional purpose they might have. Even if we limited our attention to ones standing in front of church buildings only it seems we are facing a rather heterogeneous group that is impossible to be defined generally190, nor ascribed with one unique role or character191. In fact, the architectural concept embodied by different vestibules, porches, narthexes or porticos, as well as chosen decorative programs or possible meanings and specific usage of these liminal spaces differ greatly: they all seem to have been modified according to territorial and contemporary requirements of the site, to reflect local liturgical, or other customary praxis192. Despite the formal and functional heterogeneity that we will discuss later and which has been remarked already in the study of church’s porches by Jean-Baptiste Thiers as early as in 1679193, we however believe there are certain competences and meanings of entrance spaces they all have in common and we would like to recall. To start with a possible forms of entrance spaces, one can imagine simple and luminous narthexes of late antique basilicas194; narrow and often multiplied narthexes of Byzantine

189 Ivan Foletti, „Liminality. Space and Imagination“ in MAH 2018, pp. 109–117. For narthexes we have encountered see especially articles of Cécile Voyer, “The Tower Porch in Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire : The Liminal Zone” in MAH 2018, pp. 159–172; Adrien Palladino, “Liminality and Encounter(s) : The Case of Notre-Dame de Lausanne” in MAH 2018, pp. 189–202. 190 This decision was made in order to prevent factual inconsistencies in text and unnecessary bibliographical suggestions. For a general overview to the subject and rich list of bibliography see chapter “Liminal Zones and Pilgrimage Churches” in MAH 2018, pp. 109–202. Cf e. g. Ivan Foletti, Manuela Gianandrea, Zona Liminare: il nartece di Santa Sabina a Roma, la sua porta e l’iniziazione cristiana, (Studia Artium medievalium Brunensia; 3) Roma 2015, sp. pp. 33–39; Chaix 2011; Delphine Hanquiez, „L’avant-nef de la priorale de Saint-Leu- d’Esserent (Oise) et les galilées clunisiennes: l'espace architecturale du porche à la lumière de son implication liturgique“ in Art sacré (2010), XXVIII, pp. 52–66; Christian Sapin ed., Avant-nefs & espaces d’accueil dans l’église entre le IVe et lee XIIe siècle : Actes du colloque international du CNRS, Auxerre, 17–20 juin 1999, Paris 2002; Tina Bawden, Die Schwelle im Mittelalter: Bildmotiv und Bildort, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2014; Emilie M. van Opstall ed., Sacred Tresholds. The Door to the Sanctuary in Late Antiquity, Leiden/Boston 2018. For a broader, multi-media understanding and occurrence of the concept of liminal spaces see e.g. Sharon E. J. Gerstel ed., Thresholds of the Sacred. Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West, Dumbarton Oaks 2006; Elina Gertsman, Jill Stevenson eds., Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces, Woodbridge 2012. 191 Sapin 2002, p. 8. 192 Sible de Blaauw, “The church atrium as a ritual space: the cathedral of Tyre and St Peter’s in Rome” in Frances Andrews ed., Ritual and space in the Middle Ages. Proceedings of the 2009 Harlaxton Symposium, Donington 2011, pp. 30–43; Roux 2004. 193 Jean-Baptiste Thiers, Dissertation sur les porches des églises, Órleans 1679, pp. 67–68. 194 Picard 1989, vol. I, pp. 505–542; de Blaauw 2011, pp. 30–43; Foletti/Gianandrea 2015.

churches195; atria and porticos adjacent to first Episcopal churches in Gaul196 or massive opus occidentalis of numerous later churches in the same area197; there are majestic gavits or zhamatuns in front of Armenian monasteries198; airy colonnaded porticos of titular churches in Rome199; huge and almost autonomous Carolingian and Ottonian westverks200, various examples of porch halls from monastic environment201, or, formally diverse porches and porticos of medieval churches along pilgrimage roads we have been mentioning, disseminated all over the Mediterranean area202. It doesn’t have to be described in detail how profoundly these spaces could differ on a first sight. This variability makes us question if it is it even legitimate to use same tools and to formulate similar questions in attempt to study a narthex of an early Christian basilica, an Ottonian tower-porch, an Armenian zhamatun or a porch of twelfth-century pilgrimage church. Is it possible to use similar questions and interpretational techniques in the face of their distant locality and timeframe? What we certainly can do is to virtually gather and start to build upon ground of shared qualities. We can think of and discuss certain thoughts and characteristics associated with the entrance spaces, that have been existing over centuries and re-appearing without geographical

195 Cf. Nebojša Stankovič, At the Threshold of the Heavens: The Nathex and Adjacent Spaces in Middle Byzantine Churches of Mount Athos (10th-11th centuries) – Architecture, Function, and Meaning, [dissertation presented to the faculty of Princeton University] June 2017; cf. also part “The Narthex” in Vasileos Marinis, “Defining Liturgical Space” in Paul Stephenson ed., The Byzantine World, London/New York 2010, pp. 284– 302, sp. pp. 294–295; Svetlana Tomekovic, “Contribution à l'étude du programme du narthex des églises monastiques (XIe – première moitié du XIIIe siècle)” in Byzantion, Revue internationale des Études Byzantines, Bruxelles 1988, pp. 140–154. 196 See e.g. Charles Bonnet, “Atrium, portique et circulation en Gaule” in Sapin 2002, pp. 24–29; Nancy Gauthier, “Atria et portiques dans les églises de Gaule d’aprés les sources textuelles“ in idem, pp. 30–36. 197 Joëlle Tardieu, "Les massifs occidentaux de l’abbatiale de Cruas (Ardèche)" in idem, pp. 215–232; Laurence Cabrero-Ravel, “Traitement et fonctions des massifs de façade Auvergnats” in idem, pp. 168–179. 198 Murad Hasratian, “L’architettura armena” in Vardan Karapetyan, Paolo Lucca, Mowrad Hasratian eds., Armenia. Il popolo dell’Arca [Roma, 6 marzo – 3 maggio 2015, catalogo a cura di Vartian Kararpetian, Apolo Luca. Testi di Murad Hasratian…], Milano 2015, cf. sp. pp. 53–55; Paul M. Mylonas, “Gavits arméniens et Litae byzantines, observations nouvelles sur le complexe de Saint-Luc en Phocide” in Cahiers archéologiques (1990), 38/1990, pp. 99–122; Mnatsakanyan Stepan, L’architecture des narthex arméniens, Erevan 1952. 199 Spatz 2001, pp. 327–367. 200 Andreas Hartmann-Virnich, “Westbau und Westempore im romanischen Kirchenbau Südostfrankreichs” in Mareike Liedmann, Verena Smit eds., Zugänge zu Archäologie, Bauforschung und Kunstgeschichte - nicht nur in Westfalen, I, Regensburg 2017, pp. 359–368; Francesca Dell’Acqua Boyvadaoǧlu, “Carlomagno, la conversion dei Sassoni e il Westwerk di Corvey” in Rosa Fiorillo, Chiara Lambert eds., Medioevo letto, scavato, rivalutato, VII, Firenze 2012, pp. 157–172; Uwe Lobbedey, “Les Westwerke de l’époque ottonienne dans l’Allemagne du Nord” in Sapin 2002, pp. 67–75. 201 Regarding our personal experience, we can mention specifically Abbey of Saint Benoit sur Loire and its outstanding porch hall, cf. article in MAH 2018 Voyer 2018, pp. 159–171; Éliane Vergnolle, Saint-Benoît-sur- Loire. The Romanesque Abbey, Paris 2018; idem, Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire et la sculpture du XIe siècle, Paris 1985. 202 Cf. Roux 2004, pp. 839–854, sp. pp. 839, 843, 847–851; Robert Favreau, “La thème épigraphique de la porte” in La façade romane. Actes du Colloque international organisé par le Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale, Poitiers 26–29 septembre 1990, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 34/135–136 (1991), pp. 267–279. The whole chapter of the MAH book has been dedicated to the question of liminal zones of pilgrimage churches, objects within these spaces or wider understanding including the urban conception. For the French milieu see Marguerite David-Roy, “Les galeries-porches” in Archeologia, 89, (1975), pp. 53–65; Henri Heliot, Marguerite David-Roy, “Les galeries-porches des églises dans l’ancienne France” in Bulletin archéologique du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques, (1978), pp. 1–51.

boundaries and formal limitations. Standing in front of the church and protecting its entrance203, the narthex or porch is usually the first or intended place of arrival. It could be used and understood as a place of physical and symbolical admittance or exclusion (i.e. space destined for catechumens and penitents)204, and it could have housed certain processional acts or at least their exterior parts205. The entrance space of church often served as a funerary area206, it’s the public space on the very edge of sacred interior and mundane exterior207, and a place where in some cases passing-byers or pilgrims could have taken rest or simply waited208. It’s also a place where extra-liturgical acts and parts of stationary liturgy could have been performed209, or, observed from a certain distance, it could have constituted an attractive and symptomatic feature of the church’s architectural concept, simply accentuating its status and authority even from the outside210. If a church’s bell-tower and silhouette are what attract an eye and ear from a long distance211, what communicate and slowly guide the steps of one who wants to reach the church, the entrance space of a church is, just on the opposite, the place of a first close contact and reception. And finally, there is another obvious, yet essential characteristic that intermediary

203 Jean-Michel Spieser, „Réflexions sur le décor et les fonctions des portes monumentales“ in Antonio Iacobini ed., Le porte del paradiso. Arte e tecnologia bizantina tra Italia e Miditerraneo, Roma 2009, pp. 65–79, sp. p. 66; Barral I Altet 2011, pp. 365–393, p. 367. 204 For council in Orleans on penitence 511: "The function of the narthex as a site of spiritual cleansing where one could be freed from sin through confession and penance and returned to a child-like innocence." Cf. Stefan Alkier, Annette Weissenrieder eds., Miracles Revisited: New Testament Miracle Stories and Their Concepts of Reality (Studies on the Bible and Its Reception), Berlin/Boston 2013, p. 278; Rossitza B. Schroeder, "Prayer and Penance in the South Bay of the Chora Esonarthex" in Gesta. International Center of Medieval Art, XLVIII, 2009, pp. 37–54. For catechumens see Foletti/Gianandrea 2015, pp. 33–39; Jean Guyon, “Cours et atrium paléochrietiens, retour sur les prototypes romains” in Sapin 2002, pp. 13–23. 205 For Le Puy specifically, there is already mentioned procession of newly elected bishop through the porch to main entrance of the church, Easter processions etc. Cf. Foster 2015; Durliat 1976b, p. 59. 206 Xavier Dectot, “Abbayes cisterciennes et monuments funéraires” in Dossiers d'Archéologie, 311, (2006), pp. 38-41; Elzbieta Dabrowska, “Le rite funéraire propre à l'ordre de Cîteaux : son développement, sa réception, ses filiations” in Nicole Bouter ed., Unanimité et diversité cisterciennes : Filiations – Réseaux – Relectures, du XIIe au XVIIe siècle [Actes colloque Dijon, 1998], Saint-Étienne 2000, pp. 223-231; Guillaume Grillon, L'ultime message : étude des monuments funéraires de la Bourgogne ducale, XIIe – XVIe siècle, [doctoral dissertation, Université de Bourgogne] 2001; Jackie Hall, “The Legislative Background to the Burial of Laity and other Patrons in Cistercian Abbeys” in idem, Christine Kratzke eds., Sepulturae cistercienses : Sépulture, Mémoire et Patronage dans les monastères cisterciens au Moyen Âge, Cîteaux 2005, pp. 363–371; Christian Sapin, “Dans l’église ou hors l’église, quel choix pour l’inhumé?” in Henri Galinie, Élisabeth Zadora-Rio eds., Archéologie du cimetière chrétien [Actes du 2e Colloque ARCHEA Orléans, 1994], Tours 1996; Picard 1989, pp. 532–534. According to Liber Tramitis written between 1027 and 1048, western areas of cluniac churches appear to be customary used during the celebration of the dead, cf. Kristina Krüger, „Tournus et la fonction des galilées en Bourgogne“ in Sapin 2002, pp. 414–423. 207 Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, Chicago 1960 [1909], p. 20. 208 Foletti 2018, pp. 109–117; Sible de Blaauw, “Paradise of Saint Peter’s” in van Opstall 2018, pp. 160–186. 209 Cf. Jean Evenou, “Processions, Pilgrimages, Popular Religion” in Robert Cabié, Jean Evenou, Pierre Marie Gy eds., The Church at Prayer. The Sacraments, 3, Collegeville 1988, pp. 241–250. 210 Cf. Alain Dierkens, “Avant-corps, galilées, massifs occdentaux : quelques remarques méthodologiques en guise de conclusion” in Sapin 2002, p. 501; cf. also introduction and part “Les extrémités occidentales”, pp. 9– 72 in Chaix 2011. Cf. also pp. 42–44; Spatz 2001. 211 Cf. Lešák 2019; Mojca Kovačič, „The bell and its symbolic role in Slovenia“ in Studia Instrumentorum Musicae Popularis, 16, [Tarptautinės tradicinės muzikos tarybos Liaudies muzikos instrumentų tyrimų grupės XVI tarptautinės konferencijos straipsniai / ICTM Study Group on Folk Musical Instruments Proceedings from the 16th International Meeting], (2006), pp. 106–116, sp. pp. 107, 114. For an importance, or „iconicity of a silhouette“ cf. Ivan Foletti, Sabina Rosenbergová, „Holy Site, Place of Memory or Art Object? Some Considerations on Mont Saint-Michel in the ‘(très) longue durée’ (708 [?]–2017)“ in Opuscula historiae artium, 66/2 (2017), pp. 118–133.

spaces share, and which we will discuss in the following chapter – the presence of doors within them. Again, we can talk about various numbers, positions and forms of doors, but the key point stays fixed – entrance spaces house, protect, surround and display fundamental element and symbol of a physical transition between profane and sacred212. The entrance spaces are thus becoming “extensions of the threshold”213, places in between, participating on symbolical understanding and value of both, door as well as threshold214.

To sum up types and roles of intermediary spaces standing in front of church buildings we have mentioned above, it seems that their essence doesn’t change even though their roles might have oscillated and maintained various functions. Be it one function at time or even a combination of few in a same time, a porch of a church could have been a place of encounter, place of public get-togethers, sometimes a place of remembrance and memory, place of processions and para-liturgical acts, or place of preparation and expectation. In this sense, it seems that besides the unchangeable, intrinsic, liminal understanding of the entrance space of the church, there were also more specific readings that could have occurred and created another level of interpretation. Remembering our own experience, arriving to always new and unknown cities after several hours of walking, whether sunburnt, freezing, soaked or just tired, the porch of the local church was always the first thing we wanted to find, reach and enter (reception, protection). Putting down the baggage, all we wanted to do was to sit on a bench or a ground (still “enough mundane” place, yet the part of the desired sacred site), lean on the cold stone wall and rest for a while (waiting, expecting). But the premediated concept of several porches we have had a chance to meet on our pilgrimage almost always offered us more than a shelter or place to rest. Usually, there was some visual material to observe (communication, preparation, education), which stimulated our imagination and expectations and worked as an introduction to the sacred interior we were about to reach subsequently215.

II.3 Twofold Spirit of a Threshold

Having in mind all above mentioned rather practical functions for which intermediary spaces might have served, for which they were intended, or which they could have acquired eventually, in following lines, we will try to reflect more thoroughly on the very last instance. That is, an entrance space of any church grasped as the spatially augmented threshold. We

212 E.g. Van Opstall 2018. 213 Foletti/Gianandrea 2015, p. 33. 214 The importance of the context of a door cf. Spieser 2009, p. 65. 215 In this regard, to pin-point at least most captivating cases we have had a chance to meet on our way – besides the porch and cathedral of Le Puy, the very first one was the thirteenth century porch of Notre Dame of Lausanne filled with sculptural decoration (cf. article of Adrien Palladino in MAH 2018, pp. 189–202; idem 2019, pp. 88–106); we arrived to the lavishly sculpted southern porch of the church of Saint Pierre in Beaulieu- sur-Dordogne with walls covered in reliefs above benches on both sides (cf. Michele Luigi Vescovo, “An eschatological mirror. The Romanesque portal of Beulieu-sur-Dordogne” in Gesta, International Center of Medieval Art 56/1, [Spring 2017], pp. 53–80); the church of Saint-Menoux in Saint-Menoux (Allier) with an outstanding narthex dated to the tenth century, now used as lapidarium (cf. Patricia Duret, “L’ancienne église abbatiale de Saint-Menoux” in Bourbonnais. Société Française d’Archéologie (1991), [Congrès Archéologique de France. Société Française d’Archéologie, 146/1988], pp. 353–365.); famous tower porch of the abbey church of Saint Benoit-sur-Loire (cf. articles of Cécile Voyer in MAH 2018, pp. 159–170, pp. 247–263).

believe that in mind of the one who is about to enter a sacred space, its threshold and adjacent areas are essentially always able to transcend their own factual or functional meaning. And this capacity might be considered as the fundamental uniting idea for all kinds of intermediary spaces. Art history owes the notion and specific awareness of threshold spaces, their ideological capacities, and rituals connected to them, to the inquiry of “rites of passage” [rites du seuil], different marginal situations of one’s life, which were for the first time defined by anthropologist Arnold van Gennep in the beginning of the twentieth century216. The concept that originally described “marginal actions” in one’s life and a “certain place/space” of their occurrence, have later become adopted and quite freely transposed for the art-historical studies, famously e.g. by Victor Turner217.

Including this notion to our interpretation, we know that the porch of Notre Dame du Puy is a later, twelfth-century structure built during the apex of the pilgrimage activity in the city218. Added to the already standing church, it apparently evolved into quite crowded, vibrant place full of locals, pilgrims, merchants, and stalls219. The context of its daily, public use in combination with probable occurrence of waves of arriving groups of pilgrims can elucidate several physical features it has – beginning with its spaciousness220. But if we would, for a while, put aside its functional dimension and intention of the construction, and if we shifted to the opposite end to reconsider its possible perception and message, we believe that it has never worked as a mere divisional or regulative element, albeit built in order to congregate and organize circulation or behavior of crowds of people. No matter if we would recall its geographical, architectural and physical characteristics, or if we would target its probable iconological message, the porch of Notre Dame du Puy embodies one’s first substantial encounter with a materialization of the notion of transition between the profane lands and sacred

216 “[…] Therefore to cross the threshold is to unite oneself with a new world. It is thus an important act in marriage, adoption, ordination, and funeral ceremonies. Rites of passing through the door […], rites carried out on the threshold itself are transition rites. […] The rites of the threshold are therefore not “union” ceremonies, properly speaking, but rites of preparation for union, themselves preceded by rites of preparation for the transitional stage. Consequently, I propose to call the rites of separation from a previous world, preliminal rites, those executed during the transitional stage liminal (or threshold) rites, and the ceremonies of incorporation into the new world postliminal rites.” The original see Arnold Van Gennep, Les rites de passage. Étude systématique des rites De la porte et du seuil, De l'hospitalité De l'adoption, de la grossesse et de l'accouchement De la naissance, de l’enfance, de la puberté De l'initiation, de l'ordination, du couronnement Des fiançailles et du mariage Des funérailles, des saisons, etc., Paris 1969 [1909]; The English translation from idem 1960 [1909], pp. 20–21. For the more thorough commentaries on van Gennep and our experience cf Foletti 2018, pp. 109– 110; idem 2015, pp. 33–34. 217 Victor Turner, “The Center Out There: Pilgrim’s Goal” in History of Religions, 12, (1973), pp. 191–230; Edith Turner, Victor Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. Anthropological Perspectives, New York 1978. For a critical reassessment of discrepancies within Turner’s understanding of pilgrimage based on van Gennep’s work see René Gothóni ,”Pilgrimage = Transformation Journey” in Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis (1993), 15, pp. 101–116, sp. pp. 102–103, who frequently operates with text from Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt, The Enigma of Arnold van Gennep (1873-1957): Master of French Folklore and Hermit of Bourg-la- Reine, Helsinki 1988, cf. sp. pp. 24–26. For a broader, multi-media understanding and occurrence of the concept of liminal spaces see e.g. Sharon E. J. Gerstel ed., Thresholds of the Sacred. Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West, Dumbarton Oaks 2006; Elina Gertsman, Jill Stevenson eds., Thresholds of Medieval Visual Culture: Liminal Spaces, Woodbridge 2012. 218 Barral i Altet 2000, p. 76. 219 Fabrice Denise, “Le marché des Grazes” in Barral i Altet 2000, p. 135. 220 Cf. Paule Le Rider, “Le festival de l’Assomption au Puy au XIIe siècle” in Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 74–75.

space. In the same way as city walls marked the clear division between the “inner” and “outer” world, between humanized and organized areas and wild lands, it is the entrance area of any church that, on the one hand, delineates and holds the division, but on the other, channels one’s steps towards the encounter with the sacred or divine in various forms221. As we are about to see later, with the help of a precisely planned and unusual dramaturgy of access to the porch of Notre-Dame, proceeding through it, and especially while being inside of it, these very notions of transition, liminality, but also of diachronic relationship of beginning and end or status of being “in-between” might have obtained several outlines and connotations. The evidence of the spiritual and metaphorical understanding of a church’s porch as such a polyvalent liminal space is clearly present in the words of Durandus, bishop of Mende, who in his renowned description and symbolic explanation of a church’s arrangement stated that:

“Atrium ecclesie significat Christum per quem in celestem Ierusalem patet ingressus, quod et porticus dicitur, sic dicta a porta a uel quod sit aperta222.”

[The porch of the church signifies Christ, through whom it opens for us the entrance to Heavenly Jerusalem. It is also called portico /sic dicta a porta: “doorway”/, from a door which is open to all.]223” It is evident that the basis of his thought is the parable of John, in which Jesus declares “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved […]224”. Durandus takes Jesus’ words and expands their validity to the whole entrance area of any church. The porch, which houses, protects and accentuates the doors of a church, therefore seems to partake on their acknowledged symbolic characteristics225. We could say that words of John’s epistle that promise the salvation to everyone who will “go through”, follow Jesus Christ, use quite the same reasoning as van Gennep’s claim “[…] to cross the threshold is to unite oneself with a new world”226. So, the person who awaits in front of the entrance or a door for a transition (yearning pilgrim/repentant sinner/disoriented soul – entrance of the church/Jesus words – spiritual aim/sacred interior/salvation/heaven) is after crossing of the threshold and entering through the door not the same person as the one who awaited at the entrance. The pilgrim has reached his goal, the sinner has been saved etc. This might recall once again famous words of Saint Paul, who in his letter to Ephesians offers his reflection on how the whole Church is One in Christ, and assures people that they “[…] are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens of the saints and members of God’s household, […] with Christ Jesus Himself as the

221 Cf. W. Seston, “Les murs, les portes et les tours des enceintes urbaines et le probléme des res sanctae en droit romain” in Mélanges d’archéologie et d’histoire offerts a André Piganiol (1966), III, Paris 1966, pp. 1488–1498, sp. p. 1489; Manuel de Souza, La question de la tripartition des catégories du droit divin dans l’Antiquité romaine, Saint-Étienne 2004, p. 97–98. 222 „Le porche de l’église signifie le Christ par qui s’ouvre pour nous l’entrée de la céleste Jérusalem, il est appelé aussi portique, de la porte, ou de ce qu’il est ouvert a tous.“ Guillame Durand, Rationale divinorum officiorum, I-IV, as translated in Chales Barthelemy, Guillame Durand, Rational ou Manuel des divins offices ou raisons mystiques et historiques et historiques de la liturgie catholiques, I, Paris 1854, p. 22. 223 Translation to English is mine. 224 John 10:9. 225 Spieser 2009. 226 Van Gennep 1960, p. 20.

cornerstone”227. So, entering and being part of the church, physically as well as spiritually, changes one status. An going back to the specific porch we are dealing with, the idea of a symbolical association of the porch housing the main entrance and archetypal gates to Heavenly Jerusalem, in Notre Dame du Puy, we have already mentioned the literal connection of these two with said appellation of the main entrance – Porte Dorée. Through the porch and the main gate, one can physically enter the “earthly heaven”228, “the holy temple in Lord”, material precursors or mirrors of the eternal Heavenly Jerusalem.

It is thus conceivable that through the eyes of a medieval pilgrim, similarly as in our case, basically the whole city of Le Puy could have constituted both a virtual (approaching the mental or spiritual aim) and physical (reaching the substantial boundaries, material aspect of the sacred site) threshold. Since if we decided to skeletonize a determination of medieval pilgrim to undergo a pilgrimage journey to its very essence, we would probably get to the simple “to arrive at the pilgrimage center”229, in order to fulfill some of “deficiencies” or motivations we have already mentioned: salvation or redemption (sinner), bodily cure (ill) or revelation (lonely)230. In due course, putting our finger on the original notion and understanding of a threshold as a place where liminal rites (preparation for the transition)231 were happening, it could be a church door, an entrance space, or the whole city what could acquire qualities and act like a mental or physical threshold. This twofold understanding of the idea of a threshold (intellectual/material) and subsequent response to it, might have been evoked since the moment when one finally enters the city he sought to reach, but more obviously, we believe that this feeling was obtained especially was within the entrance area of the church, its frontal and frontier area, the materialization of “the expectation of entering”: the porch. We believe that to enter or to step out of this immense threshold where the time-spatial sensation of being “in- between” resides clearly (mountaintop = positioned between heaven and earth; entrance space = stands between mundane and sacred; “pilgrimage” aspect = between the journey and its aim) must have been a highly stimulating experience.

To conclude this part dedicated to the architecture of the porch and discourse concerned with intermediary spaces in general, we have seen that the porch – so far only thanks to its unique spatial solution – reveals its power to bring to one’s mind associations connected with the mental concept of a threshold as a place of transition between sacred and profane, heaven and earth, human and divine232. The city and the cathedral thus constituted an imaginary

227 Eph 2, 19–22 „Therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens of the saints and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone. In Him the whole building is fitted together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord. And in Him you too are being built together into a dwelling place for God in His Spirit.” 228 „The church is the temple of God, a holy precinct, a house of prayer, a gathering of people, the body of Christ. (...) The church is earthly heaven, where the heavenly God dwells and walks about […]“ Germanos in his tretise Historia Mystagogica. We used the english translation found in Cyril Mango, Sources and Documents. The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312–1453, Buffalo/London/Toronto 1972, pp. 141–143. 229 Gothóni 1993, p. 112. 230 Osterrieth 1989, p. 146. 231 Van Gennep 1960, p. 21. 232 Cf Françoise Prévot, “La cathédrale et la ville en Gaule dans l’Antiquité tardive et le Haut Moyen Age” in Histoire urbaine, I/7 (2003), pp. 17–36, sp. p. 27.

borderline where thoughts of a beginning or fulfilment might have been evoked by various means, and the porch, the very last step or one’s journey, served as a great stage for this kind of viewer’s liminal experience233. We believe that the architectural setting of the porch of Le Puy cathedral was conceived so as to offer a unique corporeal and spiritual experience. Considering its volumes and counting in the decoration – as we shall do in following pages – the porch of Notre Dame du Puy has definitely allowed visitors to extend the moment of “stepping in” by inviting them to wander around and observe spaces and decoration preceding the main gate, away from the main trajectory. The “crossing of the threshold” thus became extended in both spatial and temporal sense from an act to the process, since the whole porch could be understood as one monolithic threshold filled with important messages.

233 See Claudia Damari, Yoel Mansfeld, “Reflections on pilgrim identity, role and interplay with the pilgrimage environment” in Current Issues in Tourism, XIX/3 (2016), pp. 199–222.

III. WOODEN DOORS AND IMAGES

The following chapter will discuss the pair of carved polychromatic wooden doors present in the porch of Le Puy Cathedral. Covered with narrative imagery, conceived for a highly public place, and perceived by a variety of audiences, these objects seem to be rare survivals of a quite widespread and prominent component of many church buildings234. This section of the text will start with a material and formal description of the doors, followed by a reflection on their rather untraditional position, framework, number, and looks. It will also convey few points which the discourse about the narrative doors already has established by considering the group of wooden doors with narrative decoration fashioned within the similar time horizon consisting of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The second part of the chapter then aims to offer a concise description of their complementary Christological narrative and exceptional epigraphic material. It will try to reconstruct a possible message conveyed by the inscriptions within their literal frame as well as beyond. Making use of the information gathered, in the final part of the chapter, these doors will be reconsidered, on the one hand, as functional objects subordinate to their locations sharing qualities and characteristics typically associated with entranceways (i.e. doors as parts of an ambiguous arrangement that is “neither outside, nor inside”). On the other hand, they will be regarded as solemn objects capable to re-define the space around them and present, evoke, or explain narratives and ideas that are essential for the process of preliminary understanding and preparation of the individual who is about to cross the threshold of this particular sacred space235. Whether it was someone who did so after accomplishing a long spiritual or physical journey, someone in an anticipation of a departure to one, someone seeking for a body cure or forgiveness and indulgences, or even local people under circumstances depending on the liturgical moment of the year which can enter in strong resonance with the imagery. This chapter thus aims to offer a number of possible views on the doors of the Le Puy Cathedral and the multiple messages and contents they might convey to their audience. The question of the distribution and potential function of Romanesque wooden doors with a focus on their possible semantic and decorative roles within the church’s façade – i.e. in combination with other iconographic aspects as tympana, capitals, archivolts, etc. – has been already targeted

234 About the phenomena of decorated doors in a more general frame and further, more specific bibliography see e.g. Margaret E. Frazer, “Church Doors and the Gates of Paradise: Byzantine Bronze Doors in Italy” in Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 27, (1973), pp. 145–162; Salvatorino Salomi ed. Le porte di bronzo dall’antichità al secolo XIII, Roma 1990; Robert Favreau, „Le thème épigraphique de la porte“ in Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 34/135–136, (1991), La façade romane. Actes du Colloque international organisé par le Centre d'Etudes Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale, Poitiers, 26-29 septembre 1990, pp. 267–279 (with rich bibliography); Jean-Michel Spieser, “Portes, limites et organisation de l’espace dans les églises paléochrétiennes”, Klio, LXXVII (1995), pp. 433–445; Antonio Iacobini, Le porte del paradiso: arte e tecnologia bizantina tra Italia e Mediterraneo [XI – XII secolo; convegno internazionale di studi Istituto Svizzerio di Roma, 6 – 7 dicembre 2006], Roma 2009; van Opstall 2018; Tina Bawden, Die Schwelle im Mittelalter: Bildmotiv und Bildort, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2014. For wooden doors with figural decoration in particular cf. Barral i Altet 2003, pp. 278–286; idem, “Les images de la Porte Romane comme un Livre Ouvert a l’entrée de l’Église” in Mariëlle Hageman, Marco Mostert eds., Reading Images and Texts: Medieval Images and Texts as Forms of Communication (2005), Papers from the Third Utrecht Symposium on Medieval Literacy, Utrecht, 7–9 December 2000, pp. 528–543; idem, 2011, pp. 365–393; Ute Götz, Die Bildprogramme der Kirchentüren des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts, maschinenschriftliche Dissertation, Tübingen 1971. 235 Foletti/Kravčíková 2019 [in press].

by Xavier Barral i Altet236. The author remarks on their former wide diffusion and apparently prominent position within the premeditated church’s visual vocabulary, points out their decorative as well as informative or educational capacities. In terms of visuality, Barral i Altet used the specific example of Le Puy to explain a possible association of the polychromatic narrative doors with the opened centerfold of a manuscript237. The following pages attempt to undertake a similar path and take a closer look at communicational capacities of these eye-catching and mind-stimulating objects positioned within the already introduced suggestive context of the porch. In an attempt to join the already existing discussion about doors as metaphorical as well as tangible thresholds to the sacred, this chapter will try to present these doors as constructors of different messages, united on the common ground of enriching and shaping one’s liminal experience.

III.1 Position of Doors in Time

Doors, especially ones leading to sanctuaries have always been understood as essential articulations of the basic spatial organization of any sacred space238. It is good to remind at the very beginning that the specific type further dealt with here, that is, doors with a figural or narrative decoration, is not an uncommon one. Neither is the idea of symbolic or allegorical meanings any door might have. And as it was already discussed in a previous chapter, the chosen architectural solution as well as the symbolic understanding of the whole entrance space of any church building can rarely be dissociated from the doors it houses, and with the connotations they add to the whole space239. The door as a practical object, and as a closed one in particular, can always be understood as a protective barrier. But within the context of a sacral building, it naturally acquires other, apotropaic connotations240. These are, again, still not necessarily connected with a content level of the decoration which might be present on them. Functioning as elements decisive for a process of inclusion or exclusion and having both basic practical function as well as number of symbolic connotations and readings, doors seem to have been understood in more metaphorical ways. So, it does not come as striking that doors with all their transitional and apotropaic connotations have become frequently depicted as an independent iconographic

236 Cf. Barral I Altet 2011. The question of romanesque facade was studied quite profoundly, cf. thematic volumes „La façade romane“ of Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, XXXIV/135–136 (1991); and “Le portail roman – XIe-XIIe siècles. Nouvelles approches, nouvelles perspectives” of Les Cahiers de Saint-Michel de Cuxa, 45 (2014), [Actes des XLVes Journées romanes de Cuxa 8-13 juillet 2013]. Cf. also Roux 2004. 237 Barral I Altet 2003, pp. 278, 281; idem “Les images de la Porte Romane comme un Livre Ouvert a l’entrée de l’Église” in Mariëlle Hageman, Marco Mostert eds., Reading Images and Texts: Medieval Images and Texts as Forms of Communication (2005), Papers from the Third Utrecht Symposium on Medieval Literacy, Utrecht, 7–9 December 2000, pp. 528–543. 238 Cf. e.g. Van Opstall 2018; Foletti/Gianandrea 2015; Bawden 2014; Barral I Altet 2011; Spieser 2009; Favreau 1991 etc. 239 Cf. Chapter II. Porch in this thesis; Roux 2004, pp. 839, 843, 847–851. 240 See for example Ann Marie Yasin, “Prayers on Site : The Materiality of Devotional Graffiti and the Production of Early Christian Sacred Space” in Antony Eastmond ed., Viewing Inscriptions in the Late Antique and Medieval World, Cambridge 2015, pp. 36–60, sp. p. 52 ; Anxo Fernández Ocampo, “Dessins sur le pas de la porte: notes pour une anthropologie visuelle du seuil en Galice” in Conserveries mémorielles, 7 (2010), online: http://cm.revues.org/435, [20.06.2019]; Spieser 2009.

theme too, e.g. in Egyptian, Greek, Etruscan, and Roman funerary imagery (stelae, sarcophagi, etc.) symbolizing doors to the afterworld241. It is also possible to recall use of a mental picture of doors as markers of subsequent phases of learning within the philosophical context of Neoplatonic thought242. In the Christian understanding, there is the already mentioned example with Jesus as the metaphorical door to salvation243, or, doors more generally understood as a symbol of a transition from the earthly presence to the afterlife, from the mundane world to house of God244. Only within the Old Testament, the word “door” has been used at least three hundred times, most often meant as an entrance to a city245, but also as a place designated to materially hold the words of God’s commandments (Deut 6:9). In the same context, doorframes were to be marked with blood to signify that the household kneels before God’s words, in order to save the firstborns from arriving death (Exodus 12:7-13). It is thus possible to state that door as an object as well as the door as a picture, in both pre-Christian and Christian understanding, have always had a capacity to evoke the idea of physical and mental transition, bodily and spiritual protection, or inclusion and exclusion246. Of course, there is a diversity of situations, dependent on chosen material, importance of specific architectural contexts and designation, or, the question of the regular audience for which they were intended247. Nonetheless, the intrinsic connotations of a door as an object standing on the limen of the sacred space seem to stay unchanged regardless it was made of

241 The resume on the question, as well as some notions on the Christian appropriation of this idea, are to be found in Jaś Elsner, “Closure and Penetration: Reflections on the Pola Casket” in Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia, 26 (2013), pp. 183–227. Cf. Roberta Casagrande-Kim, The Journey to the Underworld: Topography, Landscape, and Divine Inhabitants of the Roman Hades. PhD. Thesis, Columbia University, New York 2012, in part. pp. 180–198; Jean-René Jannot, Religion In Ancient Etruria, Madison 2005, p. 56; Christiane Ziegler, “Catalogues des stèles, peintures et reliefs égyptiens de l'Ancien Empire et de la première période intermédiaire” in Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux (1990), Paris, pp. 222–227; Guntram Koch, Hellmut Sichtermann, Römische Sarkophage, Beck 1982, pp. 220–221, fig. 253; John R. Clarke, The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 B.C.–A.D. 250: Ritual, Space, and Decoration. Berkeley and Los Angeles 1991 pp. 113–115; Licia Vlad Borelli, “La porta romana” and “La Porta del Pantheon” in Salvatorino Salomi ed., Le porte di bronzo dall’antichità al secolo XIII, Rome 1990; pp. 1–11, and pp. 11–23; Jean-Louis de Cénival, “A propos de la stèle de Chéchi. Étude de quelques types de titulatures privées de l'Ancien Empire” in Revue d'égyptologie (1975), pp. 62–69. 242 Lucia M. Tissi, “Sanctuary Doors, Vestibules and Adyta in the Works of Neoplatonic Philosophers” in Van Opstall 2018, pp. 139–159; idem, p. 15. 243 John 10:9, cf. Chapter II in this thesis. 244 The notion of a transition will be dealt further in the text. 245 Favreau 1991, p. 267. 246 Foletti/Kravčíková 2019 [in press]; For the question of religious exclusion or conversion of a region with use of material culture, e.g. with decorated doors cf. the article of Ittai Weinryb, “Hildesheim Avant-Garde: bronze, columns, and colonialism” in Speculum, 93/3 (2018), pp. 728–782. 247 For further bibliography, examples and concise analysis of doors as communicational elements of a decorated façade, a persistence of antique tradition and ambiguous relationship of bronze and wooden doors, or on the narrative techniques and potential they have, see Barral i Altet 2011 and Jane Geddes “Wooden Doors Decorated with Iron in the Middle Ages” in Le porte di bronzo dall’antichità al secolo XIII, Roma 1990, pp. 493–504, sp. pp. 494, 496.

wood, bronze, iron, or even in combination of materials248; as well as regardless of the presence or iconographic content of its possible decoration249. Besides these theoretical aspects, taking a look at surviving doors from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages, it is particularly useful to sketch out similar characteristic as presented by the Le Puy doors dealt with in this chapter. Looking for the oldest still extant examples with narrative decoration from a Christian sanctuary250, one can remember the preserved wooden panels from the no longer extant 4th century doors of the Basilica of Saint’Ambrogio in Milan251. There are the famous and excellently preserved 5th century cypress doors of the Basilica di Santa Sabina on the Aventine hill in Rome252, or slightly later and outside of the Italic peninsula, the 6th-century doors from the monastery of Saint Catherine on Sinai and doors of the church of Santa Barbara in Cairo253. Following this late antique tradition of storytelling church doors but originating from a similar time frame as Le Puy doors, it is possible to mention e.g. the group of wooden doors from 12th century preserved in the Abruzzo region (especially ones of Santa Maria in Cellis and San Pietro Alba Fucense, formally akin to Auvergnate examples)254. There is also an exceptional example made of wood at the end of the 11th century, preserved in St. Maria im Kapitol in Cologne255, or, of course, the famous bronze doors of Bishop Bernward in Hildesheim256. The latter piece points towards the group of luxurious bronze doors covered with biblical narratives and ornaments preserved also in cathedrals of Augsburg, Gurk, Gniezno, Novgorod, Verona, Rome, Monreale, Salerno and Amalfi, or already mentioned

248 The combination of two materials could be basically of two types. Firstly, an adjustment of bronze decorative plaques to the wooden core, i.e. covering the whole surface of door (visible e.g. in Monreale or Verona, for bibliography see below), and secondly, as an adjustment of net of iron bands, scrolls, foliage and other geometric ornaments (exceptionally also figures) that covers lesser extent of the surface. Cf. Geddes 1990, pp. 493–504. The last instance apparently applied also to unfortunately lost doors from Porche du For in Le Puy cathedral, cf. Apendix II. In Cahn 1974. 249 See Foletti/Gianandrea 2015, p. 34. 250 Cf. Alexandra Melucco Vaccaro, “Le porte lignee di S. Ambrogio alla luce dei nuovi restauri” in Felix temporis reparatio. Atti del convegno, 1992, pp. 117–136; Margherita M. Trinci Cecchelli, „Le piú antiche porte cristiane: S. Ambrogio a Milano, S. Barbara al Vecchio Cairo, S. Sabina a Roma“ in Salvatorino Salomi ed., Le porte di bronzo dall’antichità al secolo XIII, Roma 1990, pp. 59–69.. 251 For the Milanese doors cf. e.g. Mariantonia Reinhard-Felice, Ad sacrum lignum: la porta maggiore della basilica di Sant'Ambrogio a Milano, Bellinzona 1996; idem, "Die Holztüre von Sant’Ambrogio in Mailand. Ein Entwurf von Bischof Ambrosius?" in Hans-Rudolf Meier, Carola Jäggi, Philippe Büttner eds., Für irdischen Ruhm und himmlischen Lohn. Stifter und Auftraggeber in der mittelalterlichen Kunst, Berlin 1995, pp. 21-30; Margherita M. Trinci Cecchelli, “La porta di S. Ambrogio in Milano” in Rivista cultura classica e medioevale, 9 (1967), pp. 66–77. 252 For the thorough study of these doors in the context of the narthex and complete bibliography see Foletti, Gianandrea 2015, sp. sp. 95–199. 253 Barral i Altet 2003, p. 278; Margherita M. Trinci Cecchelli, „Notes sur la porte de Sainte Barbre au Vieux Caire“ in Enchoria, 8 (1978), pp. 71–79. 254 Cf. Maria Andaloro, “Le porte lignee medievali in Abruzzo e nel Lazio” in Salomi 1990, p. 325–340; Barral i Altet 2003, p. 278; Cahn 1974, p. 26. 255 Ralf van Bühren, “Porta fidei salutisque. Der Bildzyklus der romanischen Türflügel in St. Maria im Kapitol zu Köln” in Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 22 (2013), pp. 175–189; Wolfgang Stracke, St. Maria im Kapitol Köln: die romanische Bildertür, Köln 1994. 256 For further bibliography and an excellent account on Hildesheim’example cf. Weinryb 2018, pp. 728–782; Isabelle Marchesin, L’arbre et la colone: la porte de bronze d’Hildesheim, Paris 2017; Adam S. Cohen, Anne Derbes, „Bernward and Eve at Hildesheim“ in Gesta, 40/1, (2001), pp. 19–38; Bernhard Gallistl, “Die Hildesheimer Bronzetür und die sakrale Vorbildlichkeit in der bernwardinischen Kunst” in Hildesheimer Jahrbuch, 64 (1993), pp. 69–86.

Monte Gargano257. Regardless of the different materials employed and provenance of these doors, it is possible to find certain formal similarities (i.e. two-winged composition, division into registers, polychromy, presence of inscriptions) or iconographic parallels (New Testament/Christological scenes) with the doors of Le Puy258. Focusing more precisely on the geographical and temporal frame of the present doors, there are three wooden doors preserved within Auvergne region that were made with use of a similar technique referred to as “champlevé”. Thus, in close vicinity to Le Puy – namely in Chamalières-sur-Loire, Blesle and Lavoûte-Chilhac259 – there are preserved church doors constructed in a similar manner and carved in a same flat relief, but, lacking the narrative decoration. To recall at least one piece of comparison with Le Puy that brings an instant sensation of “similarity”, one could discuss the case of the doors from St. Maria im Kapitol260 [Fig. 19]. The Cologne door is one independent two-winged piece made in wood dated to the second half of the 11th century, once entirely polychromed and having red color as the base of the color scheme. It is almost entirely covered by reliefs presenting a New Testament narrative. The story is rendered on separate panels with alternating size, that are divided and encircled with high floral cornices pinned in every corner with decorative carved spheres. The doors at Le Puy are dated to the second half of the 12th century: it is a pair of two-winged doors made in wood that were once entirely colored in a similar color scheme as mentioned above, with the red color having a prominent role [Fig. 20]. They are also carved with a relief decoration presenting a New testament narrative but divided into two halves. That is, one half of the story rendered on

257 Bernd Wißner, Das Bronzeportal des Augsburger Doms, Augsburg 2012; Dorothea Diemer, Peter Diemer, „Die bronzetür des Augsburger Domes“ in Zeitschrift des Deutschen Vereins für Kunstwissenschaft, 65, (2011); Duard W. Laging, „The Methods Used in Making the Bronze Doors of Augsburg Cathedral“ in Art Bulletin, 49/2, (1967); Friedrich Dahm, “Die romanischen Türreliefs aus dem Dom zu Gurk: Überblick und Ausblick” in Bernd Euler-Rolle ed., Die romanischen Portalreliefs aus dem Dom zu Gurk: [aus Anlass der Ausstellung Die Romanischen Portalreliefs aus dem Dom zu Gurk in Kooperation mit dem Kunsthistorischen Museum Wien, 30.9.2014 - 12.4.2015], pp. 83–111; Tomasz Weclawowicz, “The Romanesque Bronze Doors at Gniezno Cathedral Church: Some New Remarks” in Folia historica cracoviensia, 23 (2017), pp. 105–118; Jadwiga Irena Daniec, “The bronze door of Gniezno Cathedral in Poland” in The Polish Review, 11/4 (1966); Ryszard Knapiski, "Die romanische Tür von Pock in Welikij Nowgorod in Russland als Glaubensbekenntnis" in Der Kunst Anuario de Historia de la Iglesia, 22 (2013), pp. 191–201; Jadwiga E. Daniec, “An Enigma: The medieval bronze church door of Plock in the cathedral of Novgorod” in The Polish Review, 36/1 (1991), pp. 21–45; Adolf Goldschmidt, Die Bronzetüren von Nowgorod und Gnesen“ in Die Frühmittelalterlichen Bronzentüren, II, Marburg 1932; Fabio Coden, Franco Tiziana, San Zeno: le porte bronze = the bronze doors, Sommacampagna 2017; Natalija Ristovska, „Medieval Byzantium in the context of artistic interchange between East and West. The illuminating example of the inlaid brass door at Saint Paul Outside-The-Walls in Rome“ in Discipuli dona ferentes, 11, Tassos Papacostas, Maria Parani eds., Turnhout 2017, pp. 363–445; Beat Brenk, “Bronzi della Sicilia normanna: le porte del duomo di Monreale” in Iacobini 2009, pp. 471–640; David A. Walsh, “The Iconography of the Bronze Doors of Barisanus of Trani” in Gesta, 21/2 (1982), pp. 91–106; Frazer 1973; Favreau 1991, p. 268; D’Ovidio 2018 in MAH 2018, pp. 137–157; Pietro Herausgeber Guerra, Monte Sant’Angelo del Gargano: storia, arte, cultura, Foggia 2016. 258 Besides the above-listed examples with figural and narrative decoration, there are still several unmentioned Hispanic pieces, Scandinavian examples, or doors from the Balkans and the Islamic world. Cf. Barral I Altet 2011, p. 382–383. 259 For the separate studies of three said examples See Cahn 1974, pp. 84–144. 260 For the full list and commentary of depicted scenes see Bühren 2013, pp. 183–185. There are 22 New Testament scenes on Cologne doors, 12 on each valve. They have been ordered so as to start from the top of the left valve reading down, and accordingly, joining the narrative of previous scenes, the second half of the story initiates on the top of the right valve and proceeds downwards. The order of reading is thus completely different in comparison with Le Puy, where reading of each doors starts at the bottom left and proceeds to the right across both wings and then up, to finish in the top-right corner.

each door. The scenes are then depicted on separate panels in simple horizontal registers of equal dimensions, with a division secured by ornamental bands and number of inscriptions. It is, however, especially the highly protruding, almost fully sculptural relief one can observe in case of the door in Cologne that does not find its counterpart in Le Puy [Fig. 21]. And neither do the major position of Latin tituli or presence of the Kufic inscription that frame the flat- carved reliefs of Le Puy doors have their counterparts at Cologne. In short, the point of this brief comparison was to demonstrate that even though there are number of objects that would be convenient for making of hundreds of material, stylistic, or iconographic comparisons with Le Puy doors, it would always lead only to discussion of fragmentary questions, thus, not saying much about the real, puzzling, and essentially incomparable general appearance of Puy doors261.

III.2 Position of Doors in Space

To start with a physical position of wooden doors of the Le Puy Cathedral, it is necessary to take a leap back to the internal division of volumes inside the porch and remind two chapels it contains – chapels of Saint Martin and Saint Gilles262. These two are small groin-vaulted spaces embedded under the penultimate bay of the cathedral’s nave, with their main entrances oriented to the west, each standing on one side of the monumental staircase. It seems that the chapels did not play a significant role within the liturgical schedule of the church, and their dedication was throughout the centuries almost forgotten and rediscovered only in modern times. According to Walter Cahn, the northern chapel of Saint Martin has been almost lost until the end of the 19th century referred simply as to the “funerary chapel”. The southern one, the chapel of Saint Gilles, was said to be used as a place for baptismal rites and thus ascribed to Saint John263. Both chapels standing on a square plan have deep, apse-like niches on their eastern ends with a fresco decoration and small altars beneath. From what we can still see with the naked eye, the fresco of the chapel of Saint Gilles presents Christ in a mandorla between the large letters of Alpha and Omega, rendered on a soffit. On both sides of the central motif, there is a pair of standing figures, very probably four Evangelists. The Chapel of Saint Martin has a decoration preserved in a much better state, and one can easily recognize that in the center of the soffit of arch. There is Christ in Majesty encircled in a mandorla with six standing apostles on both of his sides. On the outer portion of the arch above Christ, there is a medallion with the Lamb of God carried by two angels. The most prominent position in the upper part of the vertical wall of the niche is reserved for the frontally rendered Mother of God holding the Child, encircled in a huge clipeo264. One can only wonder how specifically these tiny chapels have

261 For rich list of stylistic comparisons and suggestions cf. Cahn 1974, Part II The Puy Doors: Description and Style, pp. 11–33. 262 Cahn 1974, p. 5; Durliat 1976a, p. 22, Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 267–269. 263 Cahn 1974, p. 6; The dedication is mentioned among others in Ancien cérémonial-coutumier de l’église du Puy, in Payrard 1877–1878, p. 382: “Extra ecclesiam sunt aliae capellae ipsi ecclesiae annexae, scilicet ab introitu portae deauratae: 1. sunt capellae seu ecclesiae parochialis hospitalis: 2. superius ascendendo, a parte dextra, est capella sancti Martini et a parte sinistra est capella sancti Aegidii.” 264 Description of the interior decoration of chapels is based on author‘s own visits (Chapel of Saint Martin) and written accounts (Chapel of Saint Gilles – currently inaccessible). See Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 266–269; Cahn

been used during the centuries, how often they have been accessible to the lay community or visitors, and what might have been their initial function, since they seem to be left out completely from the list of the cathedral’s liturgical stationes265. The last thing to mention regarding these chapels is that when their main entrances – located on the western side and screened by the doors – are closed, there is, from the outside, essentially no clue indicating their existence. It would be precisely in this moment that the two doors could, however, have attracted the attention of people. The pair of exceptional wooden doors situated in a slightly recessed and elevated position on both sides of the staircase was probably one of the focal points catching the gaze of incoming people immediately after they stepped into the porch. The mechanisms at play will be closely analyzed in the following pages. Considering their characteristic placement and finery, the once lavishly polychrome doors stand exactly where would one expect to stand attractively adorned side entrances to the church266. That could apparently have been an actual intention for a brief period of time, since as it was already mentioned, the western porch was built as a later addition to the already standing church. The fact that the masonry of the last two western bays is in fact not integral with the rest of the church is well discernible with a naked eye until today267. The completion of the building in a point where the porch meets the rest of the body of the church and where these doors stand would thus implicitly change their position to even more prominent one, and they would as such have become part of the western façade. Anyhow, as appealing this idea of the façade of the church with two, eye-catching polychromed doors visible from afar might seem, there is no certainty in the chronology of the western end of Notre Dame du Puy. The doors as movable objects (!) bearing the inscription remarking their manufacturer as well as ecclesiastical sponsor are what actually have become the key aspect of the chronology of the whole western area268.

III.3 Strange Framework and Workmanship

This third part of the present chapter aims to represent an imaginary “first glance” experience, in other words, a regard on these doors before processes of addressing and reading

1974, pp. 4–8; decoration was dated between the years 1226–1270. Cf Olivier Beigbeder, Fresques et peintures murales en Auvergne et Velay, Clermont-Ferrand 1970, p. 69; François Enaud, „Peintures murales découvertes dans une dépendance de la cathédrale du Puy-en-Velay (Haute-Loire). Problèmes d’interprétation“ in Les monuments historiques de la France, 4 (1968), p. 34; Paul Deschamps, Marc Thibout, La peinture murale en France au début de l’époque gothique, Paris 1963, p. 114. 265 Cahn 1974, p. 8. 266 We are referring to the composition of the façade with three entrances, as for example in Saint-Gilles du Gard, Sainte-Marie-Madeleine di Vézelay, Saint-Trophime in Arles etc. 267 Barral i Altet 2003, p. 279; Cahn 1974, p. 6. Considering that building process of the cathedral was practically unceasing during two hundred years, it might have been a rather short period of decision-making, or, only a transition phase of the construction, with the idea of the porch already envisioned. 268 Inscription on the vertical central pole of the Infancy door reads “Gauzfredus me f(e)cit, Petrus edi(ficavit)”. The figure of Petrus is identified with Peter III, the bishop of Le Puy. This information situates the construction of doors and probably of the whole western area between the years 1143 and 1156. Barral i Altet 2000, p. 256; idem 2003, p. 279. Doors as “movable” objects in a sense that they are not an inherent part of the building, therefore, they are potentially detachable, transferable, etc. However, they don’t carry any visible signs of replacement or any other manipulation.

of their iconographic and literal context started. Their position within the space along the main trajectory that corresponds with a usual placement of side entrances to church was already noticed, now, going closer, it is the overall looks, colors, ornaments and narrower context around the doors what starts to occupy the spectator’s eye and mind. The uniqueness of doors of Le Puy which was already recalled several times also within this text, is thus rooted in their number (i.e. pair of doors), and position (on the place of lateral entrances) but also in their framework (foldability), workmanship (low relief and dominance of painting), and epigraphic material (quantity and size of Latin inscriptions, presence of Kufic inscription). Each door consists of two wings or valves and each valve is then vertically divided into two halves itself, which in vertical sense basically creates a “quadruple-striped” composition of each door269. This constructive solution of divided valves probably allowed them to be opened not only traditionally in the middle, but also to be folded “twice” in almost accordion-like fashion, making use of the valves’ division. Externally, while being closed, the strange construction solution does not play a significant role. But as we shall see later, this peculiar division and flexibility might have influenced the internal image compositions chosen for particular scenes [Fig. 22]. Underlining their enough strange construction, there is also a ribbon-like inscription swirling all around the Infancy door. Formed of clearly discernible, legible Kufic script cut in the same low relief as the rest of decorative composition, it is an infinite repetition of the short phrase al-mulk lillah, which Katherine Watson translates as “the kingdom (or power) is Allah”270 [Fig. 23]. Considering the simple fact that the most of the typical audience gathered in front of these doors was not literate at all, not to mention ability to read the Kufic inscription, they were operating generally with the simple presence, looks and current connotations an Arabic script could have carried271. For instance, it might have reminded them of distant and almost abstract lands of biblical stories, which might have offered another layer of thought possibly used later on, when the reading and animating of narratives depicted in front of them started272. Following the thought of Jeffrey Hamburger who convincingly argues that the written word should be understood in a broader sense, the author claims that person does not have to be able to read a script in order to respond to it, and that the written word can act like a representation on its own, what the author calls “iconicity of script” 273. This iconicity thus seems to work beyond the literal signification of words, only with presence and persuasiveness of lettering as such. This type of effect of an inscription that is not based on its semantic interpretation could correspond with the first, instant phase of one’s possible perception of these

269 For the thorough material and technical description of doors’ construction see Cahn 1974, sp. pp. 270 Katherine J. Watson, “The Kufic Inscription in the Romanesque Cloister of Moissac in Quercy: Links with Le Puy, Toledo and Catalan Woodworkers” in Arte Medievale, III/1 (1989), p. 7. 271 Kurt Erdmann, Arabische Schriftzeichen als Ornamente in der abendländischen Kunst des Mittelalters, Mainz 1953, pp. 467–513. 272 It is not by any means an intention to create any kind of „rigid sequence“ of possible perception of these doors (in a sense that Kufic script was necessarily spotted before the reading of narratives begun). We are aware of the fact that this process was sovereign and individual, however, we believe that the strange element of unknown script might have caught one’s attention easily. For the reference to „oriental lands“ see Foster 2016, p. 14; Anthony Cutler, “The Pathos of Distance: Byzantium in the Gaze of Renaissance Europe and Modern Scholarship,” in Claire Farago ed., Reframing the Renaissance: Visual Culture in Europe and Latin America 1450–1650, New Haven 1995, pp. 23–45, sp. pp. 37–45. 273 Cf. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Script as Image, Leuven 2014, pp. 1–2.

doors as single objects. In this case, even though the inscription is not only a pseudo-Kufic ornament but actual writing, to the majority of people who were not able to read it, it has probably brought the same, mostly aesthetic feeling or even sense of inscription's apotropaic value, as discussed for unreadable ornaments based on the Arabic script274. The presence of foreign script seems to be the reason of creation of a certain sense of “orientalism” within modern studies, which was undoubtedly the main reason that several have referred to them as to “portes arabes”, or why Prosper Merimée noted they reminded him of “Persian or Indian bas-reliefs”275. Excluding few modern studies276, the Le Puy doors were mentioned for the first time only in 1790 by Antoine-Alexis Duranson, but ever since, there were always recalled due to their “oriental” or “exotic” looks277. For instance, Viollet-le-Duc, who suggested that doors were to be transferred to the museum, in his report about the Mallay’s restorations described them neutrally as “two large doors, of larch wood or cedar, probably from the 11th century”278. Mallay himself reports them more vividly saying that “I must also mention ... curious wooden doors placed at the entrance of chapels of the great staircase. That on the right is in very bad condition, the one on the left is well preserved and one would easily find some of the colors that covered the sculptures/reliefs: we see that the backgrounds were red and the grounds yellow […]”279. Following up on the mention of the former color scheme and to start with reflection on the specific carving technique in combination with vivid coloring, on a first sight, these doors might have acted more like huge paintings on wood, tapestries, or even stained-glass windows. Unfortunately, what is still possible to see with a naked eye today is only the flat-carved decoration. The reliefs thus look like shadows of their former bright selves, since the colorful decoration that formed a substantial part of their final semblance and once rendered all the details is almost completely lost. According to Barral i Altet, the polychromy was an indispensable part of all decorative wooden doors280. Same as the stone was almost never intended to be left “naked”, woodwork was traditionally colored too, sometimes using

274 Silvia Pedone, Valeria Cantone, “The Pseudo-Kufic Ornament and the Problem of Cross-Cultural Relationships Between Byzantium and Islam” in Ivan Foletti, Zuzana Frantová eds., Byzantium, Russia and Europe: Meeting and Construction of Worlds, a Special Issue of Opuscula Historia Artium, (2013), pp. 120–37, sp. p. 122. For more on the aesthetic value of the pseudo-Kufic script cf. Meyer Schapiro, “On the Aesthetic Attitude in Romanesque Art” in Krishna Bharatha Iyer ed., Art and Thought. Issued in Honour of Dr. Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, London 1947, pp. 130–150. 275 . Prosper Mérimée described them as “bas-reliefs indiens ou persans”. Merimée 1838, p. 558. For the question of oriental looks cf. Ahmad Fikry, L’art roman au Puy et les influences islamiques, Paris 1934 or the review of the latter in Louis Bréhier, “Les influences musulmanes dans l’art roman du Puy” in Journal des Savants (1936), pp. 5–19. The question is dealt in a broader frame also in Xavier Barral i Altet, “Sur les suppposées influences islamiques dans l’art roman : l’exemple de la cathédrale Notre-Dame du Puy-en-Velay” in Les Cahiers de Saint- Michel de Cuxa, XXXV (2004) pp. 115–118. Cf. also Cahn 1974, p. 11 276 Fikry 1934; Cahn 1974; idem 2000; Barral i Altet 2000; idem 2003; idem 2011; Kravčíková 2018; Foletti/Kravčíková 2019 [in press]. 277 Barral i Altet 2003, p. 281; Merimée 1838, p. 558. 278 “Deux grandes portes en mélèze ou cèdre, datant du XIe siècle probablement“. See Thiollier 1900, Appendix XI, 186ff; translation to English is mine. 279 “Je dois signaler aussi…des curieuses portes en bois placées à l’entrée des chapelles du grand escalier. Celle de droit est en très mauvais état, celle de gauche est bien conservée et l’on retrouverait facilement une partie des couleurs qui couvraient les sculptures : on voit que les fondes étaient rouges et les terrains jaunes. Les ornements byzantines sont assez bien ajustés et la forme des lettres est caractéristique…“ See in Cahn 1974, p. 30, n4; translation to English is mine. 280 Barral I Altet 2003, p. 278; idem 2011, p. 373.

polychromy to cover or to even suppress the constructional limitations of the object as such 281. However, due to natural causes, which are presumably to blame for quite limited number of preserved examples of wooden doors in general, the polychromy on their surfaces would have been the very first thing to vanish. The still extant remains of the color scheme of Le Puy doors mentioned already by Mallay were properly analyzed and conserved after the restoration carried out by René Hémery in Paris in 1960282. This restoration was apparently carried out in an attempt to sharpen the edges of the worn-out carvings and remove from doors “a thick layer of grime”. The restoration’s results were briefly described by Enaud, who, regarding the discovery of the original polychromy noted that “"the very bright colors used by twelfth-century artist are white, minimum of plain red, reddish, dark green and blue. [...] This brilliant polychromy, which had remained ignored until now, deserves to be remarked as an example of the truly colorful part of certain Romanesque ornaments [...]283”. The color scheme based predominantly on the contrasting red and white pigments might not be a coincidental choice – modern neuroscientific analyses have proven a natural quality of contrasting colors, shapes or movements for having the highest degree of effectiveness in attracting human attention, with red at the top of this “efficacy ladder”284. Therefore, considering the architectural context of these doors, even such a basic condition as the contrasting deep-gray color of the stonework surrounding the doors or the dramaturgy of the illumination of the porch put them in the natural, literal spotlight. It is also possible to talk about certain similarities with some still extant medieval polychromed ceilings from wood. Walter Cahn mentions one of Cordoba mosque, San Millán in Segovia or the famous ceiling of from Saint Martin in Zellis285 [Fig. 24]. Maria G. Aurigemma reminds that the process of creation of such sophisticated wooden pieces as ceilings must have required well-organized collaboration of the patron(s), builders, carpenters, painters, etc.286. Naturally, placement and creation of a decorated wooden ceiling was probably more complicated task to accomplish than creation of smaller and easier to install wooden doors. But, looking into Livre des Métiers from Étienne Boileau written c.1268, there is chapter LXII dedicated to painters and woodcarvers specifically, which introduces this type of work as

281 Idem 2011, p. 369–370; idem, 2003, p. 278. 282 About this restauration see commentary in Cahn 1974, p. 12. 283 “Les couleurs très vives employées par l’artiste du XIIe siècle sont le blanc, le rouge de minimum, le rouge de fer, le vert foncé et le bleu. […] Cette brilliante polychromie, qui était restée jusqu’a présent ignorée, mérite d’être indiquée ici comme un exemple du parti extrêmement coloré de certaines ornementations romanes […]”. The documentation from the restoration of 1960 has been unfortunately lost. See Cahn 1974, p. 12. 284 Ernest G. Schachtel, “On Color and Affect” in Psychiatry VI/4 (1943), pp. 393–409, esp. pp. 395–396; Cf. Stephen E. Palmer, Eleanor Rosch, Paul Chase, “Canonical Perspective and the Perception of Objects”, in Attention and Performance, IX (1981), pp. 135–151; I. Biederman, A. L. Glass, E. W. Stacy, “Searching for Objects in Real World Scenes”, in Journal of Experimental Psychology, 97 (1973), pp. 22–27; Stephen E. Palmer, “The effects of contextual scenes on the identification of objects” in Memory & Cognition (1975), pp. 519–526; S. K. Shevell, F. A. A. Kingdom, “Color in Complex Scenes” in Annual Review of Psychology (2008), pp. 143–166, 59; Ladislav Kesner, “Umění, mysl, neuroscientismus a humanitní vědy” in Kontexty, 3 (2011), pp. 42–55, esp. p. 44. 285 Cahn 1974, p. 27; Cf. Marc Antoni Nay, Die Bilderdecke von Zillis: Grundlagen und Versich einer Rekonstruktion, [Dissertation, Universität Zürich, 2008], Verlag 2015; Jürgen Thies, Die romanische Bilderdecke der Kirche St. Martin in Zillis/Graubünden im Fokus, 2007. 286 Maria Giulia Aurigemma, “Soffitti lignei dipinti » in Studi Medievali e Moderni, 15/1-2, (2011), pp. 337–361.

having truly collaborative nature287. It is possible to assume that such important commission as doors to the Cathedral of Le Puy was fashioned in a comparable, highly organized way. Barral i Altet reminds of another medieval praxis which could attest of this assumption – in order to accomplish the result as harmonious as possible, the decorative stonework of eleventh and twelfth centuries facades was often prefabricated, possible elsewhere, and only finalized on the façade. Delicate carvings and polychromy applied on the place thus secured a smooth, unified finish of multitude pieces which were prepared according to certain, beforehand known plans288. In this sense, it is possible to think about truly collaborative, premeditated process of creation of doors of Le Puy too, in order to secure the same harmonious result of the whole porch area. Needless to say, there is a major distinction between the wooden ceiling and wooden doors – the possibility to come closer that definitely increases capacity of the latter to communicate much more complicated ideas. The virtual “first glance” could thus have brought a first awareness of the doors’ prominent position (their importance), appealing color scheme and unusual type of carving (visual attractiveness and luxury), one could also spot and reconsidered amount and presence of inscriptions (sense of importance of the message), or considering the Arabic script also sense of the unknown and mysterious. In this phase, the doors might have worked “all at once” (comparably to the said wooden ceiling), as attractive points in else unknown space that help shape a sense of importance and guide the gaze and the steps of pilgrims. They could have created perfect moments in the space to come closer to in order to slow down or stop, and in that moment, launch on a spiritual journey instead.

III.4 Iconography and Latin Inscriptions

Each of the two doors presents a narrative cycle explaining two defining points of Christ’s incarnated life. Seemingly identical from afar, it is from a closer distance that these two objects start to unveil their different stories: Christ’s Infancy on the left (north door), and Christ’s Passion on the right side (south door). Each door originally had four horizontal registers intersected in the middle by decorative poles. The large-lettered inscription carved on the vertical central pole of the badly deteriorated Infancy doors mentions the name of an “artist” together with a probable sponsor and reads: “Gauzfredus me f(e)cit, Petrus edi(ficavit)” [Fig. 25]. While the figure of Gauzfredus seems to be enigmatic and probably lost in history, the figure of Petrus is identified with Peter III, the bishop of Le Puy between 1143 and 1156289. The order of the scenes of each door was then conceived to start in the lower left-hand corner and to be read to the right side across both valves. This creates four “lines” of narration one above another, with the final scene in the uppermost right corner of each door290. Recalling

287 Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris : XIIIe siècle. Le livre des métiers d'Étienne Boileau, published by René de Lespinasse et François Bonnardot, Paris 1879, p. XLIV/129. 288 Barral I Altet 2011, p. 370. 289 For Gauzfredus and Peter III. See Barral i Altet 2000, p. 256; Cahn 1974, chapter “Gauzfredus and His Workshop”, pp. 144–154. 290 I would like to express my sincere gratitude to professor Sible de Blaauw, who kindly provided me with following English translations of all the inscriptions and with guidance in the question of their meaning. The Latin transcription of tituli is a work of Thiollier 1900, as quoted in Cahn 1974, pp. 35–54. For an exhaustive study of medieval inscriptions (those placed on church doors or frames in particular) see e.g. Favreau 1991, pp.

other examples of narrative doors, this order of scenes that requires reading from the bottom- up could be regarded as exceptional. The incomplete cycle on the Infancy doors starts today with an episode of the Annunciation to the Shepherds and follows with the Adoration of Magi, The Magi Journeying to Herod’s Court, The Magi before Herod, the Massacre of the Innocents, and ends with the Presentation in the Temple. The Infancy door has unfortunately completely lost the lowermost horizontal row, that is, two panels of the beginning of the cycle291. Now missing from the sequence is the scene of Nativity which was probably preceded by the Annunciation and Visitation. Within the narrative of the Passion cycle, the extant scenes are the Resurrection of Lazarus, Entry into Jerusalem, Last Supper, Arrest of Christ and Christ before the High Priest, Carrying of the Cross, Crucifixion, Three Marys at a Tomb, Ascension, and finally Descent of the Holy Spirit292. Large portions of the Passion door’s surface are too, as in case of Infancy cycle, badly deteriorated and almost completely smoothed out. Both cycles originally consisted of eight separately framed panels, two per row. Unfortunately, neither of the cycles is preserved intact293. Considering the doors’ and pictures’ internal composition, it is possible to remark an unusually prominent position given to the scene of Magi Journeying to Herod’s Court and the Magi before Herod, both placed in non-chronological order after the scene of the Adoration, in the middle of the door [Fig. 26]. The two scenes with Herod were essentially conflated into one uninterrupted sequence, which runs across both valves. The scene thus occupies two full panels out of the eight on the Infancy door. The panel on the left valve shows two crowned riding figures with their hands raised, pointing to the star. They are encircled by abstract floral motifs, which take on the role of the otherwise undetermined landscape. The third figure, depicted on the inner half of the right valve points to the star as well, which is then rendered in flower-like shape just above his head. The last quarter of the sequence is reserved for Herod, sitting on a

267–279; idem, 1989, pp. 203–232. Cf. Michael Camille, “Seeing and reading: some visual implications of medieval literacy and illiteracy” in John Oninas ed., Art History, 8/1, 1985, pp. 27–49. 291 Inscriptions on Infancy doors: Annunciation to the Shepherds: PASTORES VOBIS ANNUN/CIO GAUDIA GENTIS [Shepherds I announce to you the joy of the peoples]; Adoration of the Magi: MISTICA JAM NATO DANT/PERSE MUNERA CHRISTO (XPO) [The Persians bring to Christ, just born, mystical gifts]; The Magi Journeying to Heord’s Court: PANDE SYON PUERUM CUJUS/JAM VIDIMUS ASTRUM [Let us know, Sion, the child whose star we already have seen]; The Magi before Herod: ECCE VIDENS ARABES SE/VUS TURBATUR ERODES [See how the cruel Herodes is troubled / becomes confused when seeing the Arabs (= the Arab kings)]; Massacre of the Innocents: MACTAT AB UBERIBUS/RAPTOS SINE LEGE TIRAN(US) [The tyrant slaughters without law those who are violently torn away from (their mothers') womb]; Presentation in the Temple ECCE SENEX GESTAT PUE/RUM QUEM PRONUS ADORAT [See, the old man carries the child whom he adores while bending (his head)]. 292 Inscriptions on Passion doors: Ressurection of Lazarus + ??: (LA)ZAR(US) EN JUSSU DO/ (MINI DE MOR) TE RESURGIT [Lazarus resurrects from death by order of the Lord]; Entry into Jerusalem + ??: TURBA IACIT ..../VESTES CUM FLO/(RIBUS) ... [The crowd throws clothes with flowers]; Last Supper: IMMITIS MITEM SUMIT MALE/PRODITOR (...) [The cruel traitor badly obtains the mild (??)]; Arrest of Christ + Christ before the High Priest: DECIDIT HIC MALCUS A FER/RO VINDICE PETRI [Here Malchus falls by the revenging sword of Peter]; Carrying of the Cross + Crucifixion: VITA CRUCIS LIGNO PATI/TUR DISCRIMINA MORTIS [(Christ)...Suffering on the wood of the cross.. (passes) the line/frontier of death (??)]; The Three Maries at a Tomb: ANGELUS ALLOQUITUR VENI/ENTES UNGERE IESUM [The angel addresses those who come to embalm Jesus]; Ascension: CETUS APOSTOLICUS CHRISTUM/MIRATUR EUNTEM [The apostolic throng looks in wonder to Christ who goes (away)]; Descent of the Holy Spirit: IGNIS AB IGNE DEI VENI/ENS PERLUSTRAT ALUMNOS [A fire emanating from the fire of God views all over the apostles]. 293 For the thorough iconographical analysis see Cahn 1974, pp. 35–58.

high throne with an additional figure behind his back. The emperor sits under a three-lobed arch or baldachin, turning with a gesture of the hand towards the arriving king and star he had followed. Besides the idea that, apparently, the non-chronological insertion of the sequence in its “extended version” was chosen over the chronological insertion of its constrained form, to make the prominence given to the Magi on their journey even clearer, we can make a comparison with the scenes of the Crucifixion or Ascension, undeniably crucial for the narrative of the Passion doors, which were both recorded only on a half of a panel [Fig. 27].

What one could think of is the audience of these images, which undoubtedly consisted of a large number of pilgrims preparing to depart on their journey; or those who had arrived in Le Puy as their destination. The presence of the scene with the Magi, who have been considered to be “proto-pilgrims” on their peregrination, is quite common for the portals of churches along pilgrimage roads. It is possible to think about the intention to address this sizeable part of the audience with the image, to which they can closely, almost physically relate to. This actually could have been one of the possible reasons behind the emphasis given to this dynamic pilgrimage sequence of the Infancy narrative. Finally, in his study of 1974, Walter Cahn indicated that the tituli which accompany the scenes with the Magi closely resemble texts used in contemporary liturgical plays and in the exegetical tradition. Therefore, for a literate viewer who was aware of this verbal tradition, the reading of the tituli could have served as another bridge to closer identification with the image and its message294. Or, it is possible to consider also verbalization, relying on literacy of someone else, i.e reading of these inscriptions out loud, one person to another. According to Camille, this type of combined perception with a “group” aspect might be an underestimated option in case of many medieval art pieces combining image and text295. The author also recalls a fascinating fifth-century account of Paulinus of Nola on the effect of a new wall painting adorning his church. The description presents how peasants, entering the church and observing the images are touched “by colored sketches which are explained by inscriptions over them, so that the script may make clearer what the hand has exhibited. Maybe that when they all in turn show and reread to each other what has been painted, their thoughts turn more slowly to eating”296. Being closed, it is possible to say that doors of Le Puy with the surface divided almost in 1:2 ratio between the script and images, at that moment might have really worked as “talking screens with decoration”. It is once again the closed door which plays the game of attraction and repulsion – one is lured to come closer, maybe in the hope of entering, but eventually has to stop, lacking that possibility297. But standing in front of the closed door, one is invited to enter with the eye and to begin reading,

294 He mentions that the words mystica munera, used to describe the gifts of the Magi, probably alluded to the exegetical tradition reflected in the Officium Stellae, while the inscription of the scene of The Magi Journeying to Herod’s Court sees a reflection of the dialogue in the liturgical play, like the Ordo ad representandum Herodem, where the Magi address a similar question with use of personified Sion, to a chorus of inhabitants of Jerusalem: “Dicite vobis, O Ierosolmitani vives, ubi est expectacio genitum; ubi est qui natus est rex Iudeorum, quam signis celestibus agnitum venimus adorare”. See Cahn 1974, pp. 38–41. 295 Cf. Camille 1985, p. 32. According to the author it is possible to talk about three main groups of spectators – firstly the fully literate; secondly, individuals who must relied on literacy of another person for access to written transmission; and the last group would be the one of illiterate without means or needs of such reliance. 296 Idem 1985, p. 32–33. 297 See Foletti/Gianandrea 2015, p. 34.

thus mentally and internally animating the stories. Now it is clearer that such a process could have been also a dialogue with other people.

The last notion might lead us to reconsideration of functional properties of these doors, we can start with a simple comment – we know for a fact that pilgrims were almost certainly not allowed to enter the sacred space of pilgrimage church anytime and that their entrance was controlled: as such, the doors of churches must have been closed at certain times298. It is conceivable that the communitarian aspect that was delineated earlier might have worked especially in moments like this – number of people gathered together in the porch, resting or just waiting. To take a closer look at the doors and their state of preservation, it is evident that both are worn in the same areas – mainly around their decorative central poles and up to the average person’s height. It is possible to think about this kind of abrasion as being not so difficult to explain – contact with thousands of hands for hundreds of years must have left its trace. But the question is, was this direct, physical contact primarily an attempt to open the door? Maybe, but we would like to argue: not necessarily, and not exclusively. Practically speaking, although there are no preserved direct sources or descriptions recording the “schedule” of potential entrances to a certain church, we can assume that especially monastic or pilgrimage ones must have regularly been closed to the public299. For Le Puy where main entranceway into the church leads to and terminates almost directly in front of the main altar, the motion and entry of pilgrims or visitors must have been reasonably regulated, even more so due to the fact that the cathedral doesn’t have an ambulatory. If we also consider the placement, appearance, size, and lack of doorknobs of the said large wooden doors, it seems more likely that their usual state was the closed one. The small chapels they enclose both have more practical side entrances, much easier to use. We thus believe that said abrasion could have been more a result of the contact with hands of people who have been waiting outside, observing these doors actively, touching them not only with eyes but also with hands, animating narratives in their minds and words, maybe verbalizing the words of inscriptions together too, and discussing these stories with fellow bystanders.

298 D’Ovidio 2018, pp. 137–157, sp. p. 154; Voyer 2018a, pp. 159–170; Yves Esquieu, “La cathédrale romane, ses fonctions, sa place dans la cité » in Les Cahiers de Saint-Michel de Cuxa, XLIV (2013) pp. 115–118. 299 Cf. Ivan Foletti, “The Space of Miracles: Bernardus from Angers and the Abbey Church of Conques” in From Words to Space –Textual Sources for Reconstructing and Understanding Medieval Sacred Spaces, Sible de Blaauw, Elisabetta Scirocco eds., Rome 2020 [in press]. The comments indirectly thematizing this “regulated access” to the sacred space are to be found e.g. in the Liber Miracolorum of Bernardus of Angers. In this book, from the first quarter of eleventh century, the author presents a story about monks who expressed their wish to close the church’s door to pilgrims, further developed with a recount of Saint Foy performing a miracle and opening the door. This sequence of Liber Miraculorum is possible to consider as perfectly convenient for the scope of this text, since it mentions not only the disruptive lay people, but also the desire of the Conques’ monastic community to have at least some prayers without the regular audience. In other words, to moderate access of the lay public into the church. Cf. The Book of Sainte Foy, translated with an introduction and notes by Pamela Sheingorn, Philadelphia 1996 [1995], 2, 12; pp. 137–139. For a critical interpretation of this text see Kathleen Ashley, Pamela Sheingorn, Writing Faith. Text, Sign and History in the Miracles of Sainte Foy, Chicago/London 1999; cf. also Foletti, “Liminality. Space and Imagination” in MAH 2018, pp. 109–117, 115; Foletti/Kravčíková 2019 [in press].

III.5 Harmony in Dichotomy

To conclude the part dedicated to the meaning of wooden doors of Le Puy Cathedral, we shall take a step back and briefly reflect on their position within the wider concept and idea of already described porch. The two separate narrations of Infancy and Passion doors delineate two quintessential points defining Christ’s incarnated life: his human birth and salvific, sacrificial death. The main iconological outcome of two doors only could be thus understood as a presentation of two antithetical notions and their harmonic fusion: the beginning and the end, the human and the divine. Within this dialogue, the spectator is confronted and invited to think about two pillars of salvation – Jesus Christ as divine Redeemer and Virgin Mary, human Mother of God, with her indispensable role as co-redeemer, giving the Word of God opportunity to gain human flesh through her consent300. It is necessary to remind again that the inner space of the porch in front of the main gate offers two lunettes with Theophanic visions, which complement outcomes of Christological narrative perfectly and prepare spectators for the face-to-face encounter with the divine301. The pair of lunettes render two heavenly visions: on the south wall is the scene of Transfiguration of Christ, who stands in mandorla with prophets Moses and Elijah on his sides and apostles John, James and Peter under his feet; on the north, there is a frontal depiction of Mother of God sitting on the throne with the Child on her knees (traditionally referred to as sedes sapientiae), with two angels behind her holding a curtain, and kneeling prophets Ezekiel and Jeremiah on both sides of the throne302 [Figs. 15, 16] These visions of the Virgin with Child Enthroned and Transfiguration front of Porte Dorée repeat and acknowledge in a simple, concise way the essence and outcomes of the narration of Christ’s Infancy and Passion on the wooden doors. That is, the dichotomy of the natures of Christ, whose incarnation makes him equally the Son of God as well as the Son of Man and the indispensable role of the Virgin in this process, who is herself considered to be a Gate or Threshold of Salvation303. Virgin Mother is presented as direct intercessory link between people and Jesus Christ, Door to Heaven, what completes the preparational and explanatory process brought into being inside the porch. In other words, the spacious porch which offers different zones and various visual allurements might be understood as a natural solution of the question of how to temporarily accommodate, reorganize, but above all occupy waiting crowds gathered inside304. The pair of

300 For the brief account on the 12th century theological debates about perpetual virginity of Virgin Mary cf. Audry Bettant, “La Vierge Marie au cœur des débats du XIIe siècle : la prédication d’Arnoul de Lisieux” in Adroher/Breher/Catafau eds., La Vierge dans les arts et les littératures, Actes du colloque de Perpignan (Octobre 2013), Paris 2017, pp. 141–158; Paul Bretel, “Les images de la Vierge dans les miracles narratifs de Notre Dame” in idem, pp. 297–319. Considering the connection of entrance spaces and iconographies connected to Virgin cf. Margaret E. Frazer, “Church Doors and the Gates of Paradise Reopened” in Salvatorino Salomi ed., Le porte di bronzo dall'antichita al seccolo XIII, 1990, Atti del Convegno Internazionale (Trieste, 13–18 aprile 1987), pp. 271–277. 301 The object most sought to be reached inside the Cathedral of Le Puy was the famous statue of Notre Dame du Puy presented in front of the main altar, thus, facing the entering visitors. For a concise overview on the sculpture, see Foster 2016, pp. 1–30. The presence of the statue is attested at least for the end of the tenth or beginning of the eleventh century. Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 154, 182; Reinburg, 1989, p. 299. 302 See Barral i Altet 2000, pp. 266–269. 303 Christ declares himself being the life: “I am the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). Since the Virgin Mary made the incarnation of the Life and Resurrection possible, she is seen as a Gate of Salvation. Cf. Favreau 1991. 304 For a brief account on possible movements of pilgrims inside the church see Reinburg 1989, p. 299.

painted wooden doors that have been described on previous pages, definitely have a capacity – but possibly purpose too – to attract attention of wandering people. Then, we can also understand why within one unique space, we have the story of life of Christ divided and depicted on two independent doors positioned on both sides of the main trajectory. Lured by their looks and in order to read the whole story, viewers were tempted to move from one door to the other. Then, maybe in the hope of entering but lacking that possibility, they would spend some time standing in front of doors captivated by the visual dialogue they exert on spectators. As it will be targeted further on in the final part of this text, within the porch of Le Puy cathedral, images, inscriptions, their position, and their complexity, together seem to force the viewer to physically move or stop the movement in order to reach and to activate them. We believe that after the experience of the mysterious and in a sense conducted or premeditated entrance to the church, while having in mind thoughts evoked by the iconographies one encountered on doors and frescoes inside the porch, to enter the cathedral and view the Madonna of Le Puy for the first time, must have been an exceptionally vivid final experience. Since it is certainly not only the content or looks of the certain object or artpiece that are important and what shape the perception or a final picture, but also the manner of its presentation305.

305 Jeffrey F. Hamburger ed., The Mind’s Eye: Art and Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, Princeton 2006, p. 8.

IV. CONCLUSION: PORCH AS PLACE OF PREPARATION AND EXPLANATION: WAITING AND THINKING WITH IMAGES

The last chapter of this text will try to jointly describe the process and means of physical ascent towards the porch and through the porch of Le Puy Cathedral, in order to sketch its possible meanings306. It will build on premises defined by previous chapters that have attempted to describe and contextualize the unique architectural concept of the porch and the decoration present within. In the following lines, the experience of an earthly level and a mundane journey would thus become united with the experience acquired while passing through and wandering around the massive threshold in front of the sacred space, the unearthly sphere, that awaits at the end of the staircase of the Le Puy Cathedral. The porch will be regarded as a place envisioned for a heterogeneous audience and purposes, using certain visual and spatial strategies to communicate with its visitors and to navigate their physical and spiritual experience. It will be described as a space filled with images that seem to force the viewer to move or to stand-still in order to see them well and understand fully the message they try to convey. The complexity, attractivity or quantity of images that might have caused temporary interruption of one’s movement or deceleration of one’s gaze will be presented as visual strategies that seem to be ideal to occupy a waiting person or a tired and eager pilgrim307. Finally, there is also a decisive role and intentional position of two types of images used that shall be touched upon – the narrative cycles with inscriptions in the first, outer plan of the porch, and the iconic visions located further on in the inner perimeter of the porch308. Thus, to introduce this conclusive, overall point of view, it is necessary for the last time to step back and to start again virtually walking towards the façade. All of that being done in order to describe – at last – how a possible gradual entrance to the cathedral that serves as a great vessel for the materialized “iconic presence” of Mother of God, might have been conducted309.

Approaching the Cathedral from the west, the very construction of the porch seems to be leading the viewer to notice firstly and to meet eventually the wooden doors with their captivating narratives of Infancy and Passion of Christ, visibly commented with large-lettered Latin inscriptions. We know that originally, the substantial part of their final appearance depended on already described vivid polychromy, and that low-carved reliefs we can discern today with the naked eye served merely as a background for the paint. Thus, as they were

306 Parts of this chapter concerned with the wooden doors are based on several ideas formulated for the article co-written by the author and Ivan Foletti. Cf. Foletti/Kravčíková 2019. [in press] 307 About images that “force” the viewer to slow down his gaze and visual techniques used to “occupy” waiting persons see e.g. Nicolas Bock, “Vedere, raccontare, immaginare: la percezione della battaglia e le tappezzerie della Guerra di Troia nella collezione di Ferdinando d’Aragona” in La battaglia nel Rinascimento meridionale, moduli narrativi tra parole e immagini, Giancarlo Abbamonte ed., Rome 2011, pp. 305–317. About the spatial and visual strategies used within the porch of Le Puy Cathedral see Foletti/Kravčíková 2019. [in press]; Kravčíková 2018b. 308 Cf. Herbert L. Kessler, “The Icon in the Narrative” in Spiritual seeing: picturing God’s invisibility in medieval art, Philadelphia 2000, pp. 1–28, sp. pp. 12, 18. 309 Hans Belting, "Iconic Presence. Images in Religious Traditions" in Material Religion, (2016), pp. 235–237.

already described, illuminated from their sides and formerly covered in vivid colors, these two doors certainly have had a potential to attract one’s eyes310. A viewer who might have been naturally attracted by the vivid polychromy of doors would probably attempt to come closer – or even as close as possible – to one of them, in order to see better. Since a door is in its essence a materialization of an invitation to come closer (in hope to come in through it), being that colorful attractive object a door, the lure to come closer is even more anticipated and insistent. Having approached the doors, and having seen the images of the cycle, spectator would eventually step back, using a vertical movement of his gaze to follow the already discovered direction of narratives and words that run from the bottom to the top311. Subsequently, the simple fact that it is a pair of doors what the porch of Le Puy Cathedral houses, could have induced a horizontal movement within the physical space too. So, going from one door to the other, this direction has been based on one’s will to uncover both ends of the bisected story of Incarnation of Christ. The movement of the visitor within the outer part of the porch could thus be imagined as designedly premeditated by the patrons who conceived the precise staging of the space and division of its decoration.

To think about possible audiences gathered inside the porch and putting aside the undeniable pilgrimage favor of the Le Puy Cathedral that have been resulting in number of pilgrims, there are at our disposal several contracts, ordinances or other legal documents recounting the merchant activities within the boundaries of the Le Puy cathedral's precinct and administration. These public activities were since 1210 apparently monopolized by the Hotel- Dieu and taking place almost exclusively within the porch of the cathedral. Documents attest that the porch was apparently a vibrant, sovereign microcosm crowded with people, merchants and stands that have been standing in close distance to the wooden doors312. If we wanted to add one more possible profile of a visitor of Le Puy Cathedral, in his article of 1953 Denomy recalls that during the twelfth century, there were apparently also “Saracen” visitors to Le Puy. They sought to lay their offerings for Notre Dame du Puy since they believed she might protect them “from thunderbolts and storms”313. It is possible to imagine that this particular type of visitors would be especially attracted by the Kufic inscription swirling around the Infancy doors – probably even quite surprised by its presence. The latter was described as a part of experience of people who were not able to read and interpret the Arabic script. The impressions they could have gathered were thus based only on the aesthetic value and on the sense of an unfamiliarity of the script, while the perception of the second group could have worked on the opposite principle. However, as a result, both groups were probably at first struck and later intellectually engaged by the presence of such type of inscription, what could have been considered as an intention behind its very creation.

310 According to Barral i Altet, the medieval wooden doors decorated with reliefs were almost without exception brightly colored, sometimes using polychromy to cover or to suppress the constructional limitations of the object as such. See Barral i Altet 2003, p. 278; idem 2011 p. 373. 311 Cf. pp. 48–49, 54 in this thesis. 312 For more about public and merchant activities see Fabrice Denise, “Le marché des Grazes” in Barral i Altet 2000, p. 135. 313 Alexander J. Denomy, “Concerning the Accessibility of Arabic Influences to the Earliest Provençal Troubadours” in Mediaeval Studies, 15, (1953), pp. 147–158, p. 150. The author mentions records made by Vincent of Beauvois (1184-1264).

Reminding of the strange framework of these doors, their lack of doorknobs and a peculiar state of preservation (i.e. they seem to be worn out mostly in areas up to the average human height and homogeneously across their width, not around their central poles only), the most plausible explanation seems to be that these two doors were almost always shut and not used like entrances. This proposition could be supported also by the fact that both chapels they screen have smaller lateral entrances further up along the staircase314. Signs of material deterioration observable on these doors could be then explained with people touching them regularly while they were waiting inside or wandering around the porch. Counting in the probably great number of unsuccessful attempts to open the door that just could not be opened, it is possible to go further and imagine that in the moments the porch was less crowded, these two doors may have acted as huge narrative “icons”315. The damage on their surface could be explained by active, physical contact (as was already speculated, people could have gathered in front of them in a collective attempt to read or re-read the stories and inscriptions in front of them)316, or even by the tactile veneration of people attracted by images317. The colorful polychromy on the flat-carved reliefs could be used as a partial explanation too [Fig. 28]. What might have recalled a great wall painting or a hanging textile from a certain distance, within a closer distance suddenly offers hints of a mild third dimension. This plasticity would then be naturally best validated and explored by a simple touch of a hand. According to Palazzo, images were indeed considered as loci of rituals, mnemonic devices that helped to navigate the way of thinking, to express the sense of sacredness and to build the multidimensional aspect of the ritual practices318. Standing in front of these doors, we believe that all of that was happening. At first, walking towards them, one could have perceived them as a whole from a certain distance. But subsequently, observing them closely, following the narrative with eyes, reading inscriptions aloud or maybe even touching the carvings, it is possible to imagine that all of this might have helped to animate the stories in one’s mind. This might recall the words of Gregory the Great who claimed that “the senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch are like as many conduits through which the soul reaches out to exterior objects […] they are like windows through which it looks at the material world outside, and by looking at them it desires them319”. After all, it is possible to remind that even the main impetus behind the journey of medieval pilgrim to Le Puy has been bounded to the expectation of a

314 Foletti/Kravčíková 2019. [in press] 315 For the well-known examples of the twelfth and thirteenth century from the Mediterranean area see e.g. Kurt Weitzmann, Manoli Chatzidakis, Svetozar Radojčić, Die Ikonen in Sinai, Griechenland und Jugoslawien, Zagreb 1980, pp. 70, 81, 125. For Italy it is possible to mention e.g. Madonna di San Martino (1250–1260) cf. Luciano Bellosi, Cimabue, Milan 2004. For the very notion of icon and the use of this term see Ivan Foletti, L’icona, una costruzione storiografica? Dalla Russia all’Occidente, la creazione di un mito” in Annali di critica d’arte, 12 (2016), pp. 175–194, 593. 316 Cf. Chapter III. of this thesis, sp. p. 56; Camille 1985, p. 32. 317 Cf. Éric Palazzo, “Art Liturgy, and the Five Senses in the Early Middle Ages” in Viator. Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 41/1, (2010), pp. 25–56; Michael Camille, “Before the Gaze. The Internal Senses and Late Medieval Practices of Seeing” in Robert S. Nelson ed., Visuality Before and Beyond the Renaissance: Seeing as Others Saw, Cambridge/New York 2000., pp. 197–223. About possible outcomes of the combination of tactile and visual perception cf. Lawrence E. Marks, Miriam Ittyerah, “Memory for curvature off objects: Haptic touch vs. vision” in British Journal of Psychology (2010), pp. 589–610. 318 Palazzo 2010, p. 28–29. 319 "Visus quippe, auditus, gustus, odoratus, et tactus, quasi quaedam viae mentis sunt, quibus foras veniat [...] Per nos etenim corporis sensus quasi per fenestras quasdam exteriora quaeque anima respicit, respiciens concupiscit." Gregorius Magnus, Moralia in Iob, liber XXI, cap. II, PL 76.189.

veneration that uses more senses. One definitely sought to look in the eye of Notre Dame and to touch pierre des apparitions320 [Figs. 7, 8].

Describing this initial phase of one’s entrance, meeting the doors with all their narratives, Latin inscriptions, or Kufic bordure, what is possible to talk about and highlight is their “time consuming” potential and the need of “activation”321. The process spent in visual and imaginative dialogue with images in combination with other stimuli (e.g. recollection, physical exhaustion, presence of other people or possibly tactile perception and discussions), thus seem to have also a practical purpose. To occupy the audience while waiting, resting, or wandering around the porch. However, the functionalist point of view would not suffice, and this synergic process between images and their active spectators has definitely had the capacity to create and enhance one’s true spiritual desire to access the sacred space. And by means of the same tools, communicate and illuminate the cornerstones of the Christian faith322. For a pilgrim arriving at the cathedral of Le Puy, it could have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience, thus, expectations of a spiritual transition and enlightenment must have been great. In this sense, the possibility or necessity to stay within the liminal zone could be understood as a pre-condition how to be spiritually prepared to access the sacred properly. Of course, in Le Puy same as elsewhere, it is possible to imagine that pilgrims could have arrived also in the lucky moment when the main entrance to the cathedral was open and they had the possibility to access it directly. However, we believe that the combination of a physical reaction after climbing the mountain (need to rest), a possible psychological effect of a “penultimate step” (one could have hesitated and reevaluated the journey before the very last step), and the attractive looks of the wooden doors must have had the power to stop them in their tracks and to tempt them to spend some time within a liminal space and eventually experience what can be called a “liminal state”323. During this process of waiting outside the church, one had the possibility to reflect on the mystery of incarnation, miracles and passion of Christ depicted on doors. These sequential, inscribed, and explanatory stories of the first plan of the porch are later on accompanied and virtually completed with Theophanic visions324. The already mentioned huge, colorful lunettes with striking, iconic, Theophanic scenes depicting Christ’s Transfiguration and the Virgin Enthroned would have definitely drawn attention of those entering (same as doors do), but they were strategically placed deeper along the staircase on lateral walls in front of the main gate. Therefore, they are practically invisible from the outside. It is thus possible to speculate that the order of images’ type has been based on the idea of two plans with two types of images. That is, the first plan will show instantly visible narrations of earthly scenes (doors in the outer perimeter of the porch), while the second

320 Cf. chapter I. in this thesis, sp. pp. 24–27. 321 For a fundamental reflection on the process of activation of images in the premodern world see Horst Bredekamp in Image Acts: A Systematic Approach to Visual Agency, Berlin/Boston 2018 [2010, 2015]. 322 For a crucial account on the relationship of images and texts, their complex interpretation and sensual attractivity, see Camille 1985, sp. pp. 32–33; Favreau 1991; Kessler 2000, sp. p. 191; idem 2004; Vincent A. Debiais, Les croisée des signes: l’écritue et les images médiévales (800-1200), Paris 2017, sp. pp. 86–97. 323 Cf. Kravčíková 2018, pp. 119–135. 324 Barral i Altet mentions the closed door of the church several times in connection – or rather virtually similar – to the monumental page of manuscript full of images, capable to enter instantly into a direct communication with a viewer and to use its pedagogical potential. See Barral i Altet 2011, pp. 375, 386; idem, 2003, pp. 278, 285.

plan will be reserved for less accessible, iconic, celestial visions (inner perimeter of the porch in front of the main gate) what could be understood as a visual metaphor of the physical situation. As was already mentioned in the first chapter of this text, the church interior was traditionally considered the image of heaven325. And the crowd waiting outside of it on a threshold hoped for a physical entrance, but consequently also for a spiritual crossing and the access to the vision326. Thus, narrative doors which through the images elucidate the terrestrial history of the human life of Jesus to their viewers, constitute the tangible points along the physical approach from the earthly to the sacred327. Being closed, these doors become as a whole object a proper image with an iconographic meaning, and they seem to be serving above all as a materialization of a mental concept of a possibility of passage. However, while these closed doors covered in images and words essentially invite the spectator to both types of passage, they grant only the spiritual one328. Therefore, doors within the context of the sacral architecture serve as both real and mental places of transit to higher or more sacred realities. In this sense, a decision that real doors are used primarily as an image (and carrier of images), could be seen as a decision that seems to act as a highly functional metaphor of the very goal of one’s psychosomatic “journey” towards the sacred. Recalling once again the words of Durandus, who noted that the porch of the church signifies Christ, through whom it opens the entrance to Heavenly Jerusalem, and that the space containing the church’s door is also called portico as derived from a door, we can assume that this kind of symbolic, Christological reading might have been quite common and that these doors indeed transcend their own practical function329.

The situation of the outer part of the porch of Le Puy Cathedral embellished by wooden doors thus allows to reconsider the possible function of doors with narrative decoration. It is a rather paradoxical situation: the closed doors are actual thresholds which through their material nature, presence and decoration invite to the crossing in both a spiritual and physical way. The closed doors as a physical barrier thus have the ability to call forth the idea of a potential transition, and in this sense become a metaphor, an apotropaic object or even the cultic image and a spiritual gate330. The iconographical program they present seems to be the perfect tool for preparatory purpose that has been already mentioned several times as one of the most common purposes of intermediary spaces. Explaining the history of salvation in order to prepare for the celestial vision waiting at the end of the staircase, these doors thus operate fully only when closed. And it is in that state their images and inscriptions are clearly visible and able to invite

325 Cf. chapter I. of this text, sp. pp. 20–22. 326 Cf. Éric Palazzo, “Relics, liturgical space, and the theology of the church” in Treasures of Heaven. Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, Martina Bagnoli et al. eds, Baltimore/London 2010, pp. 99–109. 327 Cf. parts “La liturgie et l’espace” and “La liturgie et les images” in Éric Palazzo, Liturgie et Société au Moyen Age, Aubier 2000. esp. pp. 144–147, 156–158. 328 Foletti/Kravčíková 2019. [in press] 329 “Atrium ecclesie significat Christum per quem in celestem Ierusalem patet ingressus, quod et porticus dicitur, sic dicta a porta a uel quod sit aperta. ” „Le porche de l’église signifie le Christ par qui s’ouvre pour nous l’entrée de la céleste Jérusalem, il est appelé aussi portique, de la porte, ou de ce qu’il est ouvert a tous.“ Guillame Durand, Rationale divinorum officiorum, I-IV, as translated in Chales Barthelemy, Guillame Durand, Rational ou Manuel des divins offices ou raisons mystiques et historiques et historiques de la liturgie catholiques, I, Paris 1854, p. 22. Translation to English is mine. Christ describes himself as a door in John 10:9. 330 Foletti/Kravčíková 2019. [in press]

the viewer to enter not with his body, but with his mind. For visitors of this place and for pilgrims especially, meeting closed doors created a unique occasion to intellectually grasp the whole process of “becoming ready” and the “crossing of the threshold” – the act that needs a proper preparation – before they actually passed it and reached the sacred place331.

The spatial augmentation of a traditionally two-dimensional concept of a threshold (i.e. marker of the limits of the sacred grounds of the church’s interior), is in Le Puy announced and reminded to the incoming also with the use of words. The threshold of the Le Puy Cathedral thus evolved into rather sovereign, three-dimensional space of the whole porch, within which one could wander around. There is the inscription engraved into two scales in the middle of the porch that denounces anybody of touching the threshold or entering the church, until his soul is clean of offense and blame 332. Marking neither the first scale in front of the façade, nor the very last step in front of the main gate, this announcement is thus somehow dispersed and applicable to the whole area of the porch, in a like manner as Durandus’ understanding of the entrance space333. According to Cahn, these letters were carved into the staircase during the restoration of bishop de Galard between 1778-1781, but they were to be imitating, at least in part, the older inscription no longer preserved at that time334. Thus, in the moment when one decided to proceed further up towards the main gate, his curiosity got another visual and textual material to take into consideration reminding him that he stands on the very limit of the sacred space. After some time spent within the Christological narratives that induced physical movement and possibly other actions, the already mentioned inner perimeter of the porch uses a slightly different technique. It gets narrower and the lunettes with Theophanic visions are rendered one opposite the other335. Therefore, they don’t force the viewer to walk in order to see them and a simple turn of the head suffices. Standing on the staircase in front of the main gate, one is in the middle of them: with a Christ in glory on his right and Mother of God on his left, archangel Michael above his head and final passage towards the Notre Dame du Puy in front of him. So, it should be emphasized that in the point where the conclusion of this text ends, another visual and spiritual journey only begins. The breathtaking effect of the former main entrance and passage that follows further up to the altar and Notre Dame du Puy could be at least briefly introduced with a written impression noted by Prosper Merimée, who sketches the mysterious entrance into the cathedral after his inspection as follows:

331 Cf. Arnold van Gennep and his theory of “rites de passage” where the liminal space is understood as being always in between and which must not be crossed without the proper ritual. To stay in front of this kind of closed doors and to let oneself enter the visual dialog they provoke thus implies active participation in a kind of ritual. And once the ritual is performed, the doors will open. It is not important in what form we grasp the notion of the ritual – whether in personal (picturing and animating the stories in one’s mind) or organized (guided reading of the narratives, processions), spiritual or real. Cf. van Gennep 1969 [1909]. For critics to Van Gennep’s theories see J. Wilson, D. Tunca, “Postcolonial thresholds: Gateways and borders” in Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 51/1 (2015), pp. 1–6. 332 NI CAVEAS CRIMEN CAVEAS CONTINGERE LIMEN/ NAM REGINA COELI VULT SINE SORDE COLI. See Cahn 1974, p. 136. Favreau address the first part of the inscription and translates it as “Si tu ne te gardes pas de la faute évite de toucher ce seuil“, Favreau 1991, p. 273. 333 Cf n24. supra. 334 Cahn 1974, p. 136. 335 The inner perimeter of the porch is located between two said chapels, it thus has a width equal to the staircase that runs in the middle.

The sight of the huge staircase of Notre-Dame, of which the last steps vanish into darkness, has something imposing and mysterious, which admirably prepares to the entry of a Christian temple […] The arches and walls of this staircase, at least the upper part, were covered by frescoes […] These are the heads of saints or angels, surrounded by nimbuses carved into the stone, fluted and abundantly gilded.336

And after all, filled with our post-modern visual experience, perfectly aware of all the restorations of the object, the alterations that have changed its face, or the almost completely vanished fresco decoration of the final passage, if we recalled the overall idea that we have gotten as twenty-first-century art historians, we have to agree with the words of Merimée. The adjectives “imposing” and “mysterious” are indeed perfectly fitting to describe the impactful architectural dramaturgy of access into the cathedral that uses the conflation of physical and spiritual ascent towards the divine sphere. This ambiguous, two-faced entrance thus still works impeccably, without any significant loss of its ability to amaze and literally stop someone in their tracks right in front of the face of Mother of God [Fig. 30].

336 Pèlerinage à Notre-Dame du Puy 1842, p. 51: “La vue de l’immense escalier de Notre-Dame, dont les dernières marches se perdent dans l'obscurité, a quelque chose d'imposant et de mystérieux, qui prépare admirablement l'entrée d'un Temple chrétien […] Les voûtes et les parois de cet escalier, du moins la partie supérieure, étaient couvertes de fresques […]. Ce sont des têtes de Saints ou d’anges, entourées de nimbes creusés dans la pierre cannelés et fortement dorés.” Prosper Merimée spent some time in Le Puy-en-Velay in July 1837. Cf. Mérimée 1838.

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List of Illustrations

Fig. 1 The hypsometric scheme of the Le Puy valley (from Gaussin 1951, p. 245) Fig. 2 Panorama of the valley with the Le Puy Cathedral and the chapel of Saint Michael, Le Puy-en-Velay (©Wikimedia commons) Fig. 3 Mount Aiguilhe and chapel of Saint Michael, Le Puy-en-Velay (©MAH 2017) Figs. 4a, b View of Rock Corneille and the Le Puy Cathedral from the south-west and view of the city and cathedral from the north-west, Le Puy-en-Velay (©MAH 2017) Fig. 5 Plan of the antique sanctuary standing on the Rock Corneille, Le Puy-en-Velay (from Nectoux, Wittmann 2015, p. 733) Fig. 6 Re-used decorative friezes with animals and geometric ornaments, outer walls of the eastern perimeter of the Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay (from Nectoux, Wittmann 2015, p. 737) Figs. 7a, b Modern statue of the Virgin Mary of Le Puy as presented today and depiction of the original Virgin Mary statue of Le Puy by Veyrenc, etching, 1777 (a: ©MAH 2017; b: Barthélemy Faujas de St-Fond, Recherches sur les volcans éteints du Vivarais et du Velay, Paris 1778, Plate 20, p. 428.) Fig. 8 Pierre des fièvres or Pierre des apparitions, north-eastern perimeter of the Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay (©MAH 2017) Fig. 9 Ground plan of the Le Puy Cathedral (©Wikimedia commons) Figs 10a, b External view of the Cathedral with dome over the crossing and view of the Cathedral’s interior with a chain of domes on squinches, Le Puy-en-Velay (a: ©Wikimedia commons; b: ©MAH 2017) Fig. 11 Cross-section of the Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay (from Barral 2000, p. 314– 315) Fig. 12a, b View of La Route des Tables leading to the front of the Le Puy Cathedral and the facade of the Cathedral with a staircase, Le Puy-en-Velay (a: © Filip Fuchs 2018; b: ©MAH 2017) Fig. 13 View of the facade and the main archway leading to the porch, Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay (©MAH 2017) Fig. 14 Metal grill installed on the place of lost valves of Porte Dorée, inner perimeter of the porch, Le Puy Cathedral (©MAH 2017) Fig. 15 Transfiguration of Christ, fresco, southern lunette along the staircase in front of Porte Dorée, inner perimeter of the porch, Le Puy Cathedral, beginning of the thirteenth century (©MAH 2017) Fig. 16 Virgin Enthroned, fresco, northern lunette along the staircase in front of Porte Dorée, inner perimeter of the porch, Le Puy Cathedral, beginning of the thirteenth century (©MAH 2017) Fig. 17 Archangel Michael, fresco, soffit of the arch above the staircase, inner perimeter of the porch, Le Puy Cathedral, beginning of the thirteenth century (©MAH 2017) Fig. 18 View of the city of Le Puy taken from the middle part of the porch of Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay (©Filip Fuchs 2018) Fig. 19 Wooden door of St. Maria im Kapitol, wooden doors with relief decoration and polychromy, Cologne, eleventh century (©Wikimedia commons) Fig. 20 Victor Louis Petitgrand, Study of the Infancy Doors of the Le Puy Cathedral, watercolor on paper, Paris, Médiathèque de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, 1886 (Grandjean Gilles, Malgouyres Philippe eds., Regards sur Marie [catalogue], Le Puy-en-Velay 2011, p. 42) Fig. 21a, b Comparison of details of relief carving. A: protruding relief of wooden doors of St. Maria im Kapitol in Cologne; B: low-carved relief used on the Infancy doors from Le Puy Cathedral (a: ©Wikimedia commons; b: ©MAH 2017)

Figs. 22a, b Infancy of Christ, Infancy Doors, wooden doors with relief decoration and polychromy, chapel of Saint Gilles within the porch Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay, twelfth century and Passion of Christ, Passion Doors, wooden doors with relief decoration and polychromy, chapel of Saint Martin within the porch of Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en- Velay, twelfth century (a, b: ©MAH 2017) Figs. 23a, b Drawn scheme of the Kufic inscription copied from Infancy Doors and detail on the Kufic inscription carving on the doors, chapel of Saint Gilles within the porch Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay, twelfth century (a: Watson 1989, p. 9; b: ©MAH 2017) Figs 24a, b Detail of painted wooden ceiling in Saint Martin church in Zillis, detail and general view, Zillis, twelfth century (a, b: ©Wikimedia commons) Fig. 25 Inscription “Gauzfredus me f(e)cit, Petrus edi(ficavit)” – detail of the central pole, Infancy Doors, woodcarving, chapel of Saint Gilles within the porch Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay, twelfth century (©MAH 2017) Fig. 26 Magi Journeying to Herod’s Court and Magi Before Herod – detail (bottom register), Infancy Doors, woodcarving, chapel of Saint Gilles within the porch of Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay, 12th century (©MAH 2017) Fig. 27 Scenes of Crucifixion and Ascension – black and white detail, Passion Doors, wooden doors with relief decoration and polychromy, chapel of Saint Martin within the porch of Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay, twelfth century (a, b: ©MAH 2017) Fig. 28 Detail of colors still visible with naked eye (scene of Presentation in the Temple), Infancy Doors, woodcarving with polychromy, chapel of Saint Gilles within the porch of Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay, twelfth century (©MAH 2017) Fig. 29 View of the space in front of Porte Dorée with porphyry columns and lunettes hidden in a shadow, inner porch of Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay (©Filip Fuchs 2018) Fig. 30 View of the altar and Virgin Mary statue?of Le Puy from the final passage with stairs, Le Puy Cathedral, Le Puy-en-Velay (©Wikimedia commons)