BEAUTY FOR THOSE WHO SERVE — SALVATION FOR THE JUST

CATHERINE PRIETO-HUGOT — SOEUR CONSTANCE — FRÈRE JEAN D’ÉPHÈSE — LA TENTURE DE CHŒUR DE LA CHAISE-DIEU — ÉDITIONS DU SIGNE — 2021

This book, La Tenture de Chœur de La Chaise-Dieu, was written and published on the occasion of the opening of the specially rebuilt small chapel in the cloister where the thirteen tapestries are on display at eye level, the twelve long rectangular tapestries plus the central one showing the crucifixion of Jesus and that was hung over the Rood Screen that separated the Monk’s choir from the public nave. These tapestries were ordered at the end of the 15th century and delivered in the next century. They are the perfect continuation of two books that were rather popular at the end of the Middle Ages, the Biblia Pauperum and Speculum Humanae Salvationis, two rather “popular” books of the 12th-13th centuries. These were essentially pictures constructed in a very particular way and reproduced as imprints of carved wooden plates, this technique explaining the rather large number of copies available in Europe. The text, when some text was included, was in Latin. The main source of the tapestries is the first book whose systematic construction in triptychs with one prefiguration from the Ancient Testament on the left of the central theme on Jesus’ life, and an amplification of this central theme with a second episode from the Old Testament on the right.

We should elaborate on our understanding of this ternary structure of the Biblia Pauperum that was systematically kept in the tapestries here concerned. It is too easy to say it is the pattern of the trinity in the Christian approach because it is not. It may correspond to it, but it comes from long before. The ternary structure or pattern, or even Gestalt, is universal in all cultures. It was considered pagan for a long time because of the ternary nature of the dominant divine beings of religions like ancient Egyptian gods (Osiris, Isis, Seth who became Osiris, Isis, Horus), or traditional Hindu gods and goddesses (Brahma the creator, Vishnu the preserver and Shiva the destroyer). But it is also to be connected with the triple goddess that pervades old religious traditions in the Middle East and Europe or even Central Asia, not to mention the triple goddess…