Discuss the relationship of scholastic thinking in Gothic architecture and use as an example – The Abbey of St Denis. Illustrate your essay with specific examples.

Abbot Suger’s completed projects to replace the east and west ends of the Abbey church of Saint-Denis situated some ten kilometres north of central Paris are often taken as the starting points for any discussion of the beginnings of the development and spread of the Gothic style of architecture. While accepting that not every Gothic feature of Suger’s campaign at St-Denis is novel, it is not the place of this essay to fully interrogate this position, nor to recount and assess the various precursors that have been posited as architectural influences, but rather to investigate the relationship between the development of the new Gothic style and contemporary scholastic thinking. This will be achieved in part through an analysis of the way that the art historian Erwin Panofsky related the two in the 1950s, and then, in the light of this analysis, by examining how this might specifically concern the initial phase of rebuilding undertaken by Suger between c.1135 and 1144. Important to this discussion will be an examination of the abbot’s use of sources including the writings of the person known as the Pseudo-Areopagite.
Born in 1081, Suger was abbot at St-Denis from 1122 until his death in 1151, and had long wanted to improve the dilapidated state of the abbey. He had already reformed the administration of the monastery and greatly improved its finances (for example through royal donation), which this enabled him to undertake the building of new halls, barns and churches on the abbey’s estates. Saint-Denis had been given monastic standing by King Dagobert I and his son Clovis II, was one of the resting places of French monarchs in the Île-de-France, and according to tradition the original dedication of the church in 775 (attended by Charlemagne) had also been blessed by Christ, so the building had both royal and divine associations by the twelfth century. A place of pilgrimage, it housed the tomb of Saint Denis, the patron saint and apostle of France, as well as those of his companion saints, but by Suger’s day it had fallen into some disrepair, while the single entrance caused access problems for the crowds of worshipers who would sometimes gather outside. There were strong attachments to the existing structure, but increasing revenues provided him with the means to make needed alterations to the abbey church, while still conforming to both the forms and dimensions of the existing Carolingian church.
Whatever their origins, it is the total sum of the new features of the western façade and eastern chevet of St-Denis that make a case for the remarkable position it holds in the history of Gothic architecture. The façade with its triple portals, integrated columnar sculpture, twin towers and large round (or rose) window high up gives the impression of a substantial, weighty building very different to the interior of the choir. There, the chevet’s double ambulatory with its seven radiating chapels, thin outer wall, lightness of structure, light-giving stained glass windows, upright vertical forms, reduction of supports to thin compact columnar forms and consciously classical acanthus capitals gives a spacious, luminous feeling. Although dating problems with many of its successors makes an exact understanding of its influence on architecture tenebrous at best, that it did have an impact and provided a suitable pattern for the building of other great churches is generally accepted.
The building at St-Denis in the years either side of 1140, and the subsequent spread of Gothic architecture in the remainder of the twelfth century, was concurrent with a way of thinking that was to remain dominant until it was replaced by humanism around 1600. Assisted by the development and growth of the universities as well as various mendicant orders, scholasticism brought logic and rigorous argumentation to both text and philosophical problem, while accepting and building upon ancient truths from both the Fathers of the Church and the Greek Philosophers (especially Aristotle). In so doing, it attempted to reconcile faith and reason by applying its methods to theology, which resulted in much religious deliberation that was a synthesis or syncretism of past thinking in an attempt to overcome inconsistencies arising from different Christian thinkers.
It was the art historian Erwin Panofsky who connected the contemporaneous phenomena of scholasticism and Gothic architecture in a lecture that was later published as a short book. He saw the two not as parallel aspects of culture but rather as linked, with scholasticism influencing the ways of thinking (or mentalités) within which the development of a new technique of architecture took place – the opus Francigenum or Gothic style. According to his argument, scholasticism impacted on architecture in two ways: firstly, through its widespread use in education at a time when rural monastic schools were giving way to urban cathedral schools and universities; and secondly, through the exposure of masons to the scholastic thinking of others via schools, sermons, patrons and intellectual advisers.
For Panofsky, the contribution of scholasticism to Gothic architecture seems to have been threefold. Firstly, it came from the way that reason, although it could not by itself prove the existence of tenets of faith such as the Trinity, could elucidate and clarify by allusion and analogy. Here, Panofsky used the example that divine creation could be better understood when aspects of it were compared with human artistic creation such as architecture. He also identified the explicit orderliness and clarity seen in the structuring of scholastic thinking – the breaking down of arguments into parts and sub-sections following on from one another in logical progression. He suggested that this was manifested architecturally, for example, in the simplification of the variety of Romanesque capitals into standard types, or the division and subdivision of naves or choirs into identical sections united by a rib-vaulted roof but always with each area of the basilica hierarchically identified through function – nave, transept, and chevet. A final contribution came from the scholastic tendency to reconcile a number of sources into a new totality of thinking, which can be seen in the way that the new architecture combined structure, sculpture and decoration (e.g. stained glass windows) into a diverse and multi-layered manifestation of theological thought.
Panofsky had previously been concerned with the early development of Gothic architecture through his translation of, and commentary on, a number of writings by Abbot Suger, and it seems likely that this earlier study was influential in his later connection of the style with scholasticism. Suger wrote three treatises concerning his rebuilding and refurnishing of the abbey church: his Ordinato A.D. mcxlvcl mcxli Confirmata (Paris, Archiv. N., MS.K23 np. 5) of 1140-41 was written after the completion of the west front; his Libellus Alter De Consecratione Ecclesiae Sancti Dionysii (Rome, Vatican, Bib. Apostolica. Ms Reg. 571) of 1144 describes the consecration of the choir in June 1144; and his Liber De Rebus In Administratione Sua Gestis (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Ms. Lat. 13835) of 1145 was written as a sequel to the De Consecratione. Panofsky infers from these works the influence of the writings of the philosopher known as the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and in particular those parts of his texts that deal with the metaphysical subject of light. From this he interprets the introduction of bright light to the interior of the basilica as one of the main driving forces behind the abbot’s plans. Subsequent scholars, like Bruzelius, have taken this to mean that Suger’s use of the Pseudo-Dionysius directly inspired the transformation of architecture into the Gothic style, although Kidson, for one, believes that the case for any connection has been greatly overstated. Nevertheless, it would appear that pragmatic reasons existed for making some changes (such as easing the entry, exit, circulation and viewing of pilgrims to the tomb of Saint Denis and the abbey’s other relics), though Suger certainly wrote in the De Administratione that once ‘the new rear part is joined to the part in front, the church shines with its middle part brightened’. As we shall see, the abbot seems to have used the Pseudo-Dionysius as a source in determining the iconography of the new west front, though there is much debate over the extent to which Suger’s use of this source can be said to influence the Gothic elements of the new choir, in which scholars such as Grant have detected only weak associations. However, the ways in which he may have made use of the Pseudo-Dionysius, might help to shed light on the extent to which the introduction of the Gothic style to St-Denis could be said to display evidence of a scholastic mentalité.
By the twelfth century, the patron of the abbey – Saint Denis – was a composite figure derived from a first-century Greek philosopher mentioned in Acts 17:22-34 (Dionysius the Areopagite), a third-century martyr sent to convert the people of Gaul (Saint Denis), and a Syrian theologian from c. 500 AD who left a number of writings (the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite). Much speculation has arisen with regard to the extent of Suger’s engagement with the writings of this Pseudo-Dionysius. While Panofsky thought this might have come from a direct understanding based on a ninth century translation, Zinn is probably correct in saying that his predecessor paid too little attention to the general context of twelfth-century thought. Hugh of Saint-Victor, which like St-Denis was a royal abbey in the Île-de-France, wrote a commentary on the Pseudo-Dionysius’s Celestial Hierarchy in the 1120s. As Zinn suggests, it is possible that it was Hugh’s interpretation that allowed for the Dionysian tradition to be incorporated into the theological traditions of Western Europe, and more specifically to be used at St-Denis.
Suger left us no treatises that demonstrate his abilities as a theologian, but Gerson has shown how the poem he wrote for inclusion on the bronze doors commissioned for the west façade, is essentially a paraphrase of the first chapter of the Pseudo-Dionysius’s Ecclesiastical Hierarchy. In his various writings, the Pseudo-Dionysius specifically related light, darkness, knowledge, vision, visibility and God. For example, in his first letter, he described how darkness vanishes in the presence of light, just as ignorance vanishes with the acquisition of knowledge, and therefore the transcendent darkness of God ‘is hidden by all light and eclipses all knowledge’. Similarly, according to his fifth letter, God is ‘above sight and knowledge’ belonging to the domain of the celestial and immaterial rather than the attainable and mundane. These elements, taken from Pseudo-Dionysius by Suger, allowed him to use themes of light, vision and materiality in the abbey’s new architecture and sculpture to add layers of meaning to the physical experience of entering and moving through St-Denis.
In the west façade, the use of medallions on Suger’s bronze doors (destroyed during the French Revolution) to relate the story of Christ from the Passion to the Ascension suggests how the portals can be understood as the beginning of a journey from the mundane to the celestial. The inclusion of a scene representing Christ and two of his disciples at Emmaus after the Resurrection develops ideas about the difference between seeing the physical while ignoring the spiritual, which Hugh of Saint-Victor had discussed in his preface. Entering St-Denis was part of a spiritual journey for twelfth-century pilgrims, something reinforced scripturally as Christ becomes the literal doorway through which they must pass in order to achieve a greater understanding of God. At a time when the antique was a strong part of contemporary culture, the way the massive form of the triple portal – while numerically referring to the Trinity – is reminiscent of Roman triumphal arches such as the Arch of Constantine (which Suger would have seen in Rome), alludes architecturally to the triumph of Christ and the Church. Though the more theological iconography of the east end was probably designed more for a monastic audience, an effort to strive for visual clarity can be seen in the way that the feretory of the choir was raised above the level of the nave to make the shrine of St Denis clearly visible to pilgrims approaching it from the west end. In its totality of artistic forms, therefore, the Gothic style in church building could provide a heightened symbolic form, which could amplify and clarify a theological agenda.
Although Suger intended a replacement nave, this proposal was much criticised and never completed in his lifetime (the nave was finally rebuilt in the mid-thirteenth century). Crosby believes that this part of the construction would have symbolised the successful joining of the terrestrial to the celestial realms by the Papacy, but this must be purely speculative. What can be said more generally, however, is that the shift from the more solid portals and towers of the façade to the slender supports and insubstantial glass-filled walls in the chevet, could be symbolic of the concept of travelling through light to the true light of God, and from the material world outside to the immateriality of the Divine (both concepts from the Pseudo-Dionysius). While the colour of the expansive stained glass windows served to create a decorative setting for the shrine, the light that poured in through them also increased illumination. Furthermore, in the new choir, an environment was created where coloured light, reflective surfaces and seemingly insubstantial vertically-oriented architecture, could give material existence to ‘the celestial hierarchy, the realm of light, and the verities of Sacred literature’.
At St-Denis form reflects content, just as the overall structure and design of the letters of the Pseudo-Dionysius parallel the Christian hierarchy that they themselves set out. As Wilson notes, there is a logical correlation between the main divisions of the west face and the structure of the church behind it even though its rectangular forms cannot directly correspond to the line of the nave’s vaulting. The regular divisions of the choir also reflect the concern of Gothic architects to produce designs that were clear, repetitive and systematic. In his De Consecratione, Suger talks of the geometrical and arithmetical proportioning of the nave and side-aisles resultant from the new architectural style. The regularity and order of the organisation of space in the chevet of St-Denis may have been the product of the application of the new art of geometry on architectural technique, but it also accords with the scholastic concern with structure noted by Panofsky.
Although, at a time of expansion in members of religious orders contemporaneous with increasing pilgrimage, there was a greater desire among the clergy to separate their liturgical activities from the laity, the way the choir coped with competing needs also seems to have been tackled with scholastic rigour. St-Denis’s new east end’s radiating chapels, double ambulatory, raised floor and separation of feretory (the area containing the bodies of the church’s patron saints and its reliquaries) from the area around the high altar, allowed for greater division of function through a single unified form.
Suger’s St-Denis represents the reconciliation of a number of sources, which are combined to meet the patron’s need for an enlarged space worthy of the relics that it housed. While the introduction of light through increasing the area of the wall devoted to windows is a strong feature of Gothic architecture, and also consistent with a programme derived from the Pseudo-Dionysius, it must be acknowledged as a tradition in Early Christian and Romanesque apses. Together with the employment of other classical forms the abbot might have encountered elsewhere, such as in Rome, his church maintained its links with the past (including its own Carolingian origins) even as it pointed to the future.
This synthetic approach to building may have been what made it appealing as a style to be followed. Wilson suggests that the early development of Gothic architecture was part of a move to replace obsolete churches in the Île-de-France driven by the ‘increasingly effective exercise of royal power’. However, while St-Denis was certainly a pre-eminent royal abbey, the fact that many high-ranking Church official attended the consecration of Suger’s new choir in June 1144, as listed in his De Consecratione, may also have played an important role in their choice of style, when they returned home to consider rebuilding their own churches. Whatever the reason, no church was built in the Île-de-France in the century after St-Denis in anything but Gothic, meaning that any scholastic influences on its development there could have been continued elsewhere.
Although the extent to which at least one mason may (or may not) have worked on both the façade and the choir is still debated, what is not in doubt is the presence of Suger as patron and driving force behind the changes at both the west and east ends of the abbey church. The new Gothic style required a conceptual breakthrough in structural engineering, yet it must come about as the result of a mason trying to meet the challenging demands of his patron. There seems no reason therefore to suppose that St-Denis’s Gothic architecture does not derive, at least in part, from the thinking of abbot Suger, even though its technical reconsiderations were almost certainly beyond his own capabilities. Gerson has suggested that by analysing Suger’s iconographical arrangement for the central portal of the west front of St-Denis, and by treating it as a work of art in its own right, that it is possible to gain some insight into how he organised and structured his ideas and images. This she has attempted, making a compelling argument for Suger as a complex thinker whose programmes display some evidence of what we might understand as being derived through scholastic processes. By Panofsky’s criteria, Suger certainly presided over programmes that sought clarity through classical, scriptural and philosophical allusion, achieving it partly by relating different forms to function while maintaining a regular and unified style. Furthermore, the way that the abbot synthesised his programmes from a number of sources, including the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius, and arranged them with such logic and clarity, would suggest that his own thought processes were influenced on some level by scholastic thinking. Given St-Denis’s influential role on the spread of Early Gothic architecture, therefore, it seems not unreasonable to suggest that there is a direct, though diffuse, link between scholastic thinking and Early Gothic.