Romanesque Vezelay: The art of monastic contemplation.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the formal and thematic interrelations among the capitals in Vezelay's nave as they relate to the notion of program. Instead of describing the church's program as the mapping of a preconceived idea or Procrustean plan, it is argued that much of its coherence was dependent on an active process of viewing, largely cenobitic in character, and that those who selected the themes anticipated that a specifically monastic audience would bring corporate associations to bear upon the interpretation of capitals. The question considered here is not how the rationales for the program's design might be reconstructed, but how the sculpture relates to monks' cultural praxes---what might be called the monastery's ecology of viewing. The first two chapters examine the hagiographic narratives represented at Vezelay. Curiously, Mary Magdalene, whose cult was the object of lay devotion at the site, appears nowhere in the nave sculpture. The saints that are represented seem not to have any particular importance for lay viewers, but, it is suggested, they resonate with Vezelay's history and culture and manifest the political and religious ambitions of the cenobitic community. The third chapter examines the abbey church's sculpture in light of a sign language used by monks during observed periods of silence. It is argued that the intersections between Vezelay's carved gestures and those performed by its monks, what might be termed its visual puns, yield insight into a semiotics, specifically monastic in character. The final chapter addresses the alternative ordering practices observable in the disposition of capitals featuring gestures of decapitation and hair-pulling. Rather than develop themes in a linear fashion, the repetition of these motifs at irregular intervals throughout the nave encourages the viewer to compare and contrast very different subjects, thereby fostering rumination. Similar strategies of organization may be identified in other forms of cenobitic cultural production, including music theory and poetry. What emerges from this analysis is that Vezelay's program stands apart from the systematic sculptured schemas of Gothic churches, constructed during the age of the Scholastic <italic> Summa</italic>, and offers an exemplum of the artistic and intellectual achievements of early twelfth-century monasticism.