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The Sainte-Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy

2017; Oxford University Press; Volume: 132; Issue: 554 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/ehr/cew393

1477-4534

David Rollason,

Reformation and Early Modern Christianity

This is a book as much about history as about art history, for it considers royal architecture ‘as forms of royal self-representation and institutional imagery’ (p. 197), and the Sainte-Chapelle in the Palais de la Cité at the heart of medieval Paris as a rich historical document for changes in the ideology of kingship achieved in the reign of Louis IX, king of France (1226–70). Meredith Cohen’s thesis is that the Sainte-Chapelle is rich evidence for the redefinition of monarchy by Louis IX. She considers first the architectural patronage of his predecessor, King Philip Augustus, presenting an illuminating discussion of the scale of his creation of castles, donjons and town-walls, which extended to Paris with the new walls as well as the Louvre and the Petit Châtelet. The architecture in question was distinctive—the castles were generally quadrilateral with round corner-towers like the Louvre itself—and it eschewed features characteristic of religious buildings. The message it sent out was one of the king as the protector of his people rather than as closely associated with God. Such architecture, Cohen argues, went together with Philip Augustus’s work in paving the streets of Paris and establishing markets, and it went equally with his relative lack of patronage of religious buildings of any sort. In her view, then, his successor’s creation of the Sainte-Chapelle in the years 1239 to 1248 marked a change of emphasis in royal patronage, for it was a tour de force of ecclesiastical architecture, decoration and stained glass. Cohen’s excellent discussion of its features underlines its nature as ‘an multi-sensory experience’ (p. 75). But her purpose in this is to argue against the thesis of Robert Branner, set out in his classic book, St Louis and the Court Style in Gothic Architecture (1965), that the Sainte-Chapelle constituted the creation by the king of a ‘court style’, the Rayonnant style, which was distinctively royal. Rather, Cohen shows, that style had developed and become normal in a range of buildings in thirteenth-century Paris, most of which only survive as fragments or are known from early drawings. So the Sainte-Chapelle was drawing on a style which was already established in Paris and beyond. Nevertheless, the splendour of its architecture and the richness of its decoration made it a new sort of instrument for promoting the idea of sacral kingship, especially as it contained the relics of the True Cross and the Crown of Thorns which Louis IX had obtained from Constantinople. In examining the ways in which that idea was promoted, Cohen considers the relationship of the Sainte-Chapelle to earlier palatine chapels outside France, especially the Sacra Capella (Chapel of the Lighthouse) in the Great Palace of Constantinople, and the palace-chapel (or, perhaps better, the palace-church) at Aachen. Since these two buildings are both centrally planned, she sees little specific architectural referencing of them in the rectangular Sainte-Chapelle. But, especially as the Sacra Capella was the building from which Louis IX had obtained the relics of the Passion, she suggests that at least the site of the Sainte-Chapelle was related to it, particularly its connection by galleries to the great hall and residential quarters of the Palais de la Cité, paralleling the arrangements recorded at the Great Palace. If it seems unlikely, however, that the Sainte-Chapelle drew on such foreign chapels as the sources for its architecture, Cohen extends the discussion to Capetian palatine chapels, and to French bishops’ and archbishops’ palaces—not least the grand chapel of the Bishop of Paris which was its close neighbour. In the end, however, she concludes that the Sainte-Chapelle was not derivative but innovative, although related to the chapel of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, also built by Louis IX and resembling the Sainte-Chapelle in some respects. The latter’s innovative character, she concludes, lay in its integration of ideas about sacral kingship, in its architecture, in its stained glass and in its liturgy. Cohen considers what audience the Sainte-Chapelle was intended to address. She makes a strong case that even the upper chapel was initially at least accessible to a wider public, and she shows that that public was deliberately attracted to the Sainte-Chapelle by the availability of a series of indulgences, making regular attendance at it ‘a spiritually lucrative affair’ (p. 153). There were also special arrangements for city congregations to visit the Sainte-Chapelle. Just as the public was drawn to the Sainte-Chapelle, so that building reached out into the city through processions and displays of relics, in some of which the king himself carried the True Cross and the Crown of Thorns. Moreover, as Cohen comments, ‘worship at the Sainte-Chapelle meant worship of the cult of kings’, for, in 1240, Louis IX and his mother had initiated a Feast of the Crown of Thorns, which had a strongly political slant in its liturgy, exalting Paris as the place to which the crown had been entrusted, and thus exalting the power of the king whose capital city it was. All this, Cohen argues, was deliberate policy to enhance the sacrality of kingship, to redefine its image in the context of a reign of a king plagued by opposition, whose throne was in need of the reinforcement which sacral kingship could give it. It is not possible in a short review to do justice to the richness of this remarkable book, but the reviewer hopes that enough has been said to make clear that it is much more than a technical piece of architectural history. It is a real contribution to history, lucidly written, intelligently illustrated and equipped with thought-provoking appendices, including texts and translations of the principal documents relating to the Sainte-Chapelle. It should be essential reading for students of France in the thirteenth century and of kingship more generally.