Let us think for a minute, about the reasons for building Saint Denis. Were they spiritual, or were they worldly? Suger was convinced that he was fulfilling God's mission in building Saint Denis in the Gothic style. The proof being, such miracles as the location of suitable materials and their transport to the construction site. But there were also what we might consider to be material reasons for the reconstruction of the abbey. The old church was too small, and it was insecure. Suger worried about the crush of crowds on feast days, and about the potential theft of the valuable relics under such chaotic conditions. And there was plenty of reason to be concerned. You will remember from our earlier lecture that the wake of Charlemagne's death of 814 brought to Western Europe a scene of great unrest. Invasions by Scandinavians from the north, Magyars from the east, Arabs from the south until around the year 1000. History in the centuries of chaos was imagined to be end stop, heavily oriented toward the past with no future insight. With peace and order, however, came building and a renewal of cultural and intellectual life. Suger participated in the mid-12th century wave of building of churches, and he contributed as well to the renewal of intellectual life, in what is sometimes referred as the Renaissance of the Middle Ages. He upended the sole fixation upon the past through a formula that opens to the future in what may be the most important sentence of the 12th century. Recollection of the past is the promise of the future. In his cathedral, the forward-looking abbot start to harmonize the old church with the new and to combine the past with the future. The new abbey of Saint Denis is a genus-faced building. It looks back to earlier Romanesque churches, which themselves look to Rome in structures like the Arch of Constantine, for the all important entrance on the west facade of the Gothic cathedral. The three portal entrances to both Romanesque and Gothic churches were predicated upon the Arch of Constantine, the arch through which triumphant Roman emperors passed on their way to being received as a divine power. The triple portal entry is, further, one of those architectural designs that can be found elsewhere, like in this entrance to Yale's Hall of Graduate Studies, which is in some respects a cathedral of learning. Saint Denis looks to Rome, which is understandable since Abbot Suger made four trips to the Holy City. But it also looks more mysteriously to pagan symbols from the secular world. We find signs of the zodiac on the north portal jambs of the west facade. The framed friezes that flanked each side of the door. Here for example, on the upper part of the left jamb, we find the image of Taurus, the bull. And here, just below Taurus, Aries the ram. Still lower, the astrological sign of Pisces represented as two fish. On the upper part of the right jam lies Libra, with her scale. And below Libra, Scorpio, which along with Pisces is one of the three water signs. Finally, the below Scorpio, Sagittarius, half horse and half human, the centaur, which is also an archer. On the north portal jams, we find images that, like the signs of the zodiac, involved the natural cycle of the seasons. The laborers of the months, the figure of January, a man with two faces looking forward and backward. Janus, being the etymological root for both January and Janus, door, in Latin. September, with two men seated on a cask that they are filling. A little lower, November with a man butchering a pig over a barrel. And at the bottom of the left jamb, a couple sits indoors enjoying a holiday feast in front of the fire, the activity of the month of December. If the cathedral looks to Rome into the pagan past, it also looks even more deeply to biblical history. The central portal of the west facade of the first Catholic church, like many other such entrances, features the parable of the wise and foolish virgins from the New Testament, Matthew 25, which reads as follows. Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the Bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. For when the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them, but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. As the Bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight, there was a cry. Here is the Bridegroom, come out to meet him. Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out. But the wise answered saying, since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves. And while they were going to buy, the Bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut. Afterward, the other the other virgins came also saying, lord, lord, open to us. But he answered, truly, I say to you, I do not know you. Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. We see on the left hand of the doorjam, the wise virgins with their vases upturned, full of oil. And on the right, the foolish virgins with their empty vessels turned down. The sculptural representation of the wise and foolish virgins offers a good example of how the cathedral is used as a teaching tool. The Bible of the poor who could not read. Here, sculpted on either side of the doorway, we find a great parable about open and shut doors. The moral is, as you enter the house of God, that you never know when the hour of judgment will come. So be prepared. You do not want to be on Christ's left side like the foolish virgins, but on his right side like those virgins whose vases are ready and full. In our next time together, we shall consider what it means to enter the door of a cathedral along with the story of Saint Denis, as it is told over the doors on either side of the central portal of the west facade of France's first Gothic church. [SOUND]
