An examination of the first capital of "Music" reveals the unexpected need to move the Paradise capital - currently in sixth position - to seventh place. We would therefore be swapping these two capitals. The first four tones would thus be placed before, not after, Paradise, while the next four tones would remain in their place, at the end.
This is why, after the bell-bearer who closes the series of the first four musicians, "We must certainly start examining Paradise itself [...] so as not to give the impression of drifting to the right or to the left [1]". However, in order to fully understand the need to modify the order adopted in the current presentation in the farinier de Cluny, and why we should separate the pair formed by the two music capitals by placing the Paradise capital between them, it is essential to first analyse the most unusual capital of all, the plant capital (see articles 1 and 2 on the first capitals).
VEGETABLE CAP
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- 1. First capital
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
"The large capital which is, in the Musée du Farinier, the first one on the Gospel side, is the beautiful Corinthian capital [2]". This is how Kenneth John Conant presents the starting point of the hemicycle he tried to reconstruct. He points out that "its column was made of limestone and was well placed at the beginning of the series [3]". According to him, and according to the way it is still presented today, this capital opens the cycle (ill. 1).
The anomaly constituted by the very existence of this aniconic capital, in a series in which all the others are historiated, has left researchers perplexed, and this perplexity can be clearly seen, right from the start of the research, in the interpretation that the American archaeologist is trying to put forward: "The Corinthian capital, he writes, left, perhaps for symbolic reasons, seven capitals on columns placed seven feet apart on the curve of the apse. [4]" We know that the notion of a module plays an important role in his analysis, but this hypothesis, which simply subtracts a capital from the complete cycle to obtain a result that conforms to an initial theory - that of a module - is clearly unconvincing. Several of the explanatory systems proposed since then, however, follow this example and sidestep the problem, by simply ignoring the irritating presence of this capital [5]. It has come to be regarded almost as a special case among all the capitals with vegetal decoration found in the ruins [6], which is tantamount to refusing to take account of the unusual nature of its presence in a series whose logic we are, however, seeking to discover [7].
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- 2. Plant capital
The decoration starts at the astragalus and develops
on three successive levels ending in volutes.
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
The first difficulty undoubtedly arises precisely from the fact that the contemporary scholar, instead of "reading" this capital like each of those that follow it, begins by setting it apart a priori, under the label "Corinthian capital". This is exactly what Conant does in his description of it [8]. His analysis, which focuses on the evolution of the motifs, does not even consider a possible meaning for what is only considered to be a decoration [9]. The capital, defined from the outset as Corinthian, ceases to be an original sculpture and, instead of being considered in relation to the figures or motifs that appear on the other capitals in the cycle, is considered only in relation to the type to which it has been attached.
If, on the other hand, we start from the principle that this capital, like those that follow it, has a meaning, we must ask ourselves what it represents in the whole of a cycle that should, in principle, tell a story. If we forget the Corinthian model, from which the sculptor obviously drew his inspiration, but whose theological or spiritual content is hardly perceptible, we can describe it as an outpouring of vegetation which, unlike the trees of paradise for example [10], does not differentiate between species or even plants. The decoration of foliage starts at the astragal and develops on three successive levels, ending in scrolls towards the abacus (ill. 2).
In the 11th century, as Georges Duby notes, art was "an exploration of the invisible [11]". The mission of art, he wrote, "is to represent the true realities, those which are hidden behind the curtain of sensible appearances, but which the liturgical rites have the function of unmasking, before the resurrection of the dead does so on the last day [12]". And he concludes that, as far as this period of the Middle Ages is concerned, the work of art shows neither man nor even God, but "the secret forces that obscurely govern the universe". Obscurely or not, because from the earliest Christian centuries there have been a number of texts analysing and studying these forces, and proposing that Christianity use them in a conscious and controlled way to return to God.
"ALL FLESH IS LIKE GRASS"
In a programme that is a priori theological - and it is reasonable, in a religious building of great ambition, to start from the simple assumption that it is [13] - the primary source of inspiration for this vegetal decoration must be sought in Sacred Scripture [14].
This text from Isaiah is answered by Psalm 90:
The capital in the church of saint Hugues doesn’t really show grass. It is more foliage but, as Georges Duby again notes, eleventh-century art "does not care to show what the eyes see [17]". This approach, which would later become that of Gothic art, was the opposite of Romanesque thought, and the vegetal outpouring of the Cluny capital, in its conventional style, can legitimately be seen as a possible illustration of these sacred texts. The monks of Cluny, who recited the psalter every day and were nourished by Holy Scripture, knew them by heart [18]. In this monastery where prayer for the dead had a privileged place, they were necessarily part of the automatic references with which their thinking was woven, and none of them could be unaware that Saint Peter, to whom the church being built was rightly dedicated, had used the text of Isaiah in his first epistle: "Love one another [...], begotten again from a seed that is not corruptible but incorruptible: the Word of God [...]. For all flesh is like grass [...]. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord abides forever [19]".
Moreover, this equivalence between flesh and grass, and the use of grass as an image of human frailty, is a cliché of medieval thought, which must be seen in the context of its contemporary society, for whom all power and wealth were linked to the possession of land. Ambrose uses it several times as a matter of course [20] and John Scotus naturally quotes Isaiah to support his evocation of "the carnal faithful abandoned in the grass of temporal realities" [21]". For him, this grass is "the first step which must be climbed by those who wish to ascend by the senses to the knowledge of truth [22]", in other words, the first of man’s ascent to God, "for the spectacle of visible things leads the reasoning mind to the knowledge of invisible things [23]". This is precisely what Raoul Glaber writes, who, having very probably drawn this theory from the Erigenian texts, attributes its authorship to the Greek Fathers [24].
The texts we have just quoted seem, at first sight, relatively simple, and it is easy to understand that they refer to the vanity of worldly realities, to which every baptised person, and a fortiori every consecrated person, has a duty to prefer spiritual realities. The capital of Original Sin left the little apple tree of the sensible creation within reach of sinful Adam and Eve, and it is indeed the sensible creation that the first plant capital deals with. Fallen man, reduced to a corruptible and mortal condition by an effect of his sin at the animal level - the tunics of skin mentioned in Genesis [25]-, committed to space and time, has no other prospect than his own disappearance; he is like the grass that grows: "in the evening it withers and dries up.". In the same way that the capital of Original Sin, reduced to a purely illustrative function, may have seemed devoid of mystery, the explanation of this first capital seems to be entirely contained in the preceding texts, and this warning against material goods and the deceptions of the flesh is perfectly suited to a monastery church.
"YOU SHALL EAT THE GRASS OF THE FIELD "
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- 3. Capital of Original Sin,
The sensitive creation left to sinners under the
the appearance of an apple tree covered with apples.
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo BSG. - See the image in its page
But these texts are not the only ones and, in the Bible, it is written that God took from the earth to create the first man. The name Adam "the earthy" recalls this origin. It forms the background to the history of mankind, seen as the loss of a land (Paradise), followed by the search for and conquest of a land promised to God’s people and to each individual man.
Thus, when Adam is expelled from Paradise, God accompanies this punishment with a curse that resembles a kind of negative of the image of the Garden of Eden, planted "with trees attractive to the eye and good for food [26]".
If we take this phrase of Scripture literally, unpalatable grass, sterile in appearance, remains the only food available to fallen man. This is the sensible part of creation, perceptible by the five senses, strangely gathered together in Eve’s heel [28], according to the exegesis of Maximus the Confessor which John Scotus takes up again [29]. But the small apple tree covered in fruit that closes the capital of Original Sin also announces that this food can become fertile (ill. 3).
"YES, THE PEOPLE ARE THE GRASS"
For the great Christ, seated in majesty at the conch of the apse which bore this capital, reminded the sinner that there was a supernatural way out for him, that of being begotten by "a non corruptible but incorruptible seed [30]", the process of which Scripture explains, and the door to which the Resurrection opened on Easter morning. When Isaiah unexpectedly introduces into his meditation the statement that "the people is the grass", with this parenthesis he brings up an unexpected and different perspective, because he sees this grass not only as an image of the mortal condition of the sensible world, but much more broadly as a symbol of humanity itself, in all its components and at all its levels of existence. This interpretation, pondered by the Fathers of the Church, was familiar to their readers and it is thus that, commenting on the Word according to which "That which is born of the flesh is flesh [31]", John Scotus is not afraid to affirm: "Here, it is to the whole man, born in original sin, that the word flesh applies [32]". He also specifies in Book IV, with regard to the Johannine verse according to which "the Word became flesh [33]", that "in the Gospel, the word flesh designates man in his totality". He even takes care to define this totality more precisely as that of a man "composed of flesh, soul and intellect [34]". In short, this is what Isaiah implies when he says, without any apparent logic, between two verses: "Yes, the people are the grass". Beyond the image of the fragility and vanity of the things of this world - and before Pascal’s "roseau pensant" [35] - the grass thus becomes the marker of generic man and of all humanity created in him and "born in original sin".
If it is indeed in these texts - which, let us recall once again, were in their library [36]. - that the monks found justification for the decoration and for the place they chose for this capital, it can therefore be read first of all as an image of "the constituent part of the world which is situated at the lowest level, because nothing exists below it, in which the human race remains, still mortal and corruptible, subject to generation and corruption [37]". However, far from being the only possible reading, this interpretation is enriched by a cascade of echoes or "intersecting reflections" [38], which broaden its scope, according to a mechanism that comes from John Scotus’ thought, and that the monks seem to have used systematically. The grass thus represents the flesh in its perishable, ephemeral, transitory nature, but the word flesh also designates the human creature, created entirely in Adam, so that, in its maximum extension, it can also represent creation in its entirety, since it is in man that the created is recapitulated. The structure of the stone block, by obeying the rules of the Corinthian order, happens to illustrate perfectly the Erigenian conception of creation, and this is undoubtedly one of the reasons why the monks chose this architectural heritage.
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- 4. Le chapiteau végétal,
image de l’humanité engagée dans la matière,
dans la multiplicité et dans la temporalité.
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG - See the image in its page
Remember that, for John Scotus, the creature is twofold. It is at once "ousia" in Adam - and this is what in it "can neither corrupt nor increase in any sensible or intelligible creature [39]" - but it is also "physis" in Eve, a word which, he writes, derives from φύομαι, "i.e. ’I am born’, ’I am planted’, ’I am begotten [40]". The fragile grass, sculpted in the immutable stone, offers a natural expression of this duality, while the cubic, quadrangular structure of the block reflects the multiple quaternities that govern the world here below and in which the Middle Ages grouped - as we said in connection with the fourth tone of music [41] - the seasons, the points of the compass, the elements, the humours of the body and the virtues of the soul, the temperaments, the Gospels and the Evangelists [42]. The list is not exhaustive. Raoul Glaber, who provides an echo of Cluniac thought, specifies that the quaternities are the structure through which "we are given to understand the lower world where we are at present and that above which is to come [43]". The Corinthian capital shows the first level of the lower world [44] or, more exactly, the first movement of this lower world towards the world above. And it can be interpreted, in its extreme simplicity, as an image of the whole universe. In the image of the capital, the universe "limited by the number of its forms and parts does not extend to infinity because it is bounded by its limits upwards and downwards [45]. The triple plant tiering would then illustrate the Trinitarian organisation of the creature [46]. The functional tripartition of the human soul is an image of the divine Trinity, which is expressed in several ways and on several levels, whether it be the Neoplatonic triad, which distinguishes between being, life and thought, or that of "the inner trinity of our nature", which brings together the inner sense, reason and intellect, or - parallel though inferior - that of "the outer man", which brings together the body, the vital movement and the outer senses [47]. This construction is that of John Scotus and has variants, such as the one highlighted by Ambrose, who perceives "three distinct subsistences of human nature, namely the body, the soul and the intellect, comparable to three fields of wheat [48]". And, in the same way that the acanthus wreaths are superimposed one on top of the other, the three wheat fields are hierarchical, and it is only by working together that human nature can achieve "an absolute simplicity and an inseparable unity [49]". It is in the same terms that John Scotus examines the ontological trio formed by essence, power and operation, which also constitute an "indissociable" unity, despite the differences which distinguish them, for "the fact of being for a tree is one thing, the power to grow is another, and the act of growing another yet [50]". What applies to trees applies to the grass and leaves that make up the capital, just as it applies to man " being is one thing, the power to understand is another, and the act of understanding another yet [51]". Finally, the vegetal outpouring on the capital offers a simple image of this "infinite multiplicity of all sensible and intelligible existents [52]", created "in a mode that is both synchronic and synthetic in the Word of God [53]", or of the "multiform division" with which the process of creation ends. This vegetation thus offers an image of humanity involved in matter, multiplicity and temporality, while at its highest level of meaning it represents the first manifestation of God "who exceeds all knowledge", but who agrees to make Himself known through His creation in sensible or intellectual experiences, granted to some, that John Scotus calls theophanies (ill. 4).
THE FIRST THEOPHANY
For God remains unknowable and exceeds all that exists, but God who is unknowable manifests himself to men who are worthy by a phenomenon of illumination that reaches the creature by passing through creation: that is what is designated under the name of theophany, a word which John Scotus found when translating Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus. It was his translations and writings that revealed its dynamics to the monks of Cluny. Through theophany, the unknowable God becomes knowable here below, "so that every sensible or intelligible creature can be called a theophany, i.e. a divine apparition [54]", the grass of the fields in the same way as the music with which the monks chose to end their programme of sculpture. In the same way, but not to the same degree, "for the blessed who have been deemed worthy of divine illumination contemplate [...] God through sacred visions commensurate with their status [55]". The word "vision", like the word "apparition", is unfortunate, because it is not a question of a paranormal phenomenon, but of an interior illumination, which divine grace grants to man, and which reveals to him, behind a reality perceptible by his senses or by his intelligence, a transcendent truth, something which is similar to Archimedes’ "Eureka !" in the universe of rational thought. God communicates himself to his creature through his creation [56], and allows him, in "intimate theophanies beyond all nature [57]", to participate, at least fleetingly, in his Divinity.
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- 5. Capital of Original Sin
"The form of man rises vertically".
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
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- 6. Capital of original sin
But "man bent down".
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
But we need to understand that, while theophany is a free gift of grace, it is also aroused by the desire for God that dwells within man, and this first condition of access to the divine is perfectly illustrated by the plant bouquet on the capital : as the monk enters the monastery by taking a vow of "conversio morum", the acanthus leaves turn upwards, towards the Christ in the apse, obeying their own nature, which the divine power "drives, attracts and polarises [58]". And, once again, the ancient structure of the Corinthian capital accepts without difficulty the meaning which the monks give it. Through sin, "man has not turned upwards to reach wisdom by observing the divine commandment, but has bent downwards [59]". On the capital of Original Sin, this concept is illustrated by the marked and deliberate difference between the two primitive couples (ill. 5 and 6). In contrast to the sinner couple, in this first capital of the choir, the almost vertical leaves begin the return "upwards" "For we say that the form of man rises vertically whereas the form of the other animals is curved towards the ground [60]". A detailed study of the various motifs [61]. A study by the University of Poitiers (doctoral dissertation) has shown that, on one of the faces, the acanthus leaflets were "particularly developed in height [62]", a unique arrangement among the church’s Corinthian capitals. Sébastien Biay has pointed out that it would seem that the sculptor deliberately sought to "give the composition momentum" [63]. Momentum, certainly, but this momentum, this unusual "voluntary" stretching, may not just be the result of plastic research and the presence of several artists. It could, without certainty, have been given a precise meaning on a part of the capital [64] placed on the choir side, towards the Christ painted on the conch of the apse, seeking "in God, the limit of his supreme ascent towards unity [65]".
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- 7. Plant capital :
Harmony emerges from the ordered
of diverse forms.
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
It should also be added that the harmony of this plant decoration, however banal it may seem, is in itself pregnant with meaning, and the insistent repetition of the number eight in the organisation of the capital affirms that it does indeed belong to the history of salvation, of which it constitutes the first stage. For "matter is a participation in beauty, form and order" explains John Scotus [66] behind Denys [67]. For both, creation obeys a determined order, for "God created everything according to measure, number and weight [68]". Here below, as in the divine universe, beauty is born of the unity into which all that is different merges, and this is clearly illustrated by the tones of plain chant. Melody exists only in the agreement between dissimilar sounds, just as harmony arises here from the ordered ensemble of diverse forms (ill. 7). "Everything that Providence has arranged in order communicates beauty to the universe [69]", and humanity must both rediscover this order and submit to it by reintegrating it. This is the first step on the way back. Eight leaves on the first level, eight on the second, eight caulicoles, eight crosses, eight volutes, the whole structure of the capital - which is, admittedly, no more than that taken from the classical Corinthian capital - becomes the bearer of a hope that awakens echoes in each of the other capitals, and supernaturally, but according to a rigorous logic, opens the way to "the eightfold ascent" to which John Scotus invites his reader.
One last detail deserves explanation. On two adjoining sides of the coping, the sculptors took care to include a frieze of quatrefoils, eight per side, divided into groups of four on each side of the finial (ill. 8 and 9). It would be logical to assume that this double motif is not simply ornamental. Four is the number of the world below and eight that of the new Jerusalem. If the programme developed around the choir is indeed that of an ascent leading humanity from sin to a new creation in the number eight, it is perhaps this second genesis that the doubling of the motif indicates by announcing it. Unfortunately, there is no precise text to add a new, complementary and different note to this interpretation.
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- 8. Plant capital (detail)
Third level of the capital :
Scrolls, crosses, finial, and frieze of quatrefoils on the abacus.
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
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- 9. Plant capital (detail)
Frieze of quatrefoils
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo BSG. - See the image in its page
The first Cluny capital, a priori devoid of meaning, therefore in reality represents creation that has reached the end of its fragmentation, and as left by Adam’s sin. This reading links it closely to the work introduced by Kenneth John Conant, which he sees as the vanguard of the entire cycle. According to this presentation, which prevailed for a long time [70], the capital of the Original Sin, isolated, envisaged as initial and implicitly proposed by the American archaeologist as one of the keys to the iconological ensemble of the choir, preceded it or accompanied it laterally. The logic of the connection between the episode of the fall and what seems to be its final point becomes more precise. According to John Scotus, this lowest level of the Fall is also the first of the ascent of the human creature towards his Creator. This is what the leaves affirm in their verticality stretched upwards.
LE PARADIS
The sterile, vegetal capital placed at the head of the succession of capitals in the choir of Cluny III is opposed, in seventh place, by the luxuriance of Paradise, in a deliberate and close correlation, and it is from their closeness that their respective decorations derive their meaning.
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- 10. Presentation of the capitals in the monks’ flour mill :
Continuation of the last three capitals:
Paradise and the Tones of Music.
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
At the farinier de Cluny, the capitals devoted to the tones of music have appeared, since their installation, as a logical, welded pair, and it is accepted by all the researchers who have taken an interest in them that they were thus placed side by side, at the end of the series of apse supports (ill.10). This order seems to be a natural one: eight musical tones bring a conclusion to a set of eight capitals [71]. This logic stems from the series of figures that adorn them, united by the same theme that continues from one capital to the next. Above all, and more precisely, it derives from reading the tituli that accompany these figures, tituli that, in effect, number them without interruption [72] from 1 to 8.
This essentially cerebral logic ─ the two capitals were naturally neighbours because the figures they bear are numbered in a continuous sequence ─ is nevertheless contradicted by another association, of an optical nature, whose coherence is no less strong. The composition of the capital of the first four tones is an almost perfect replica of the capital known as the "Spring" capital. On both capitals, four mandorlas, widely open on the sides of the stone block, house full-length figures that occupy the entire cavity (ill. 11 and 12). In contrast, the two music capitals have two unrelated structures. This contradiction has been pointed out several times, but has never received enough attention to be considered expressive in itself.
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- 11. Spring marquee
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
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- 12. Capital of the first four tones
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
To fully understand the meaning of this Cluniac Paradise and the need to place it, in such a seemingly disconcerting way, between the two capitals of the tones of music, we must return to the texts whose figures we can legitimately assume to have been inspired by them and, more particularly, to the De Paradiso [73] by Saint Ambrose, which is largely integrated into the Periphyseon by John Scotus, and of which the monastery library possessed no less than four copies [74]. The contemplative monk, in the vanguard of humanity, could read in it that the human creature has been engaged since Adam’s sin in a process of returning to God. The placement of the two sinful figures of the first couple on the capital of the Original Sin clearly indicates that this process of return began with the expulsion from Paradise [75](ill. 13). It must continue until the end of time, and will be completed when the whole of Creation, through man and in man, has returned to Paradise. For, just as man was the driving force behind the fall, he is the driving force behind the return because, of all creatures, he is the only one endowed with reason.
"PARADISE IS NOTHING ELSE THAN MAN HIMSELF [76]"
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- 13. Capital of Original Sin
Adam and Eve, sinners, looking towards Christ.
From the moment of sin, man embarked on a process
a process of returning to God.
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
In an apparent paradox, the capital of the first four tones of music, which celebrates the return of humanity to its original status as an image of God capable of singing his praise (first tone), ends with an evocation of death (fourth tone). Adam the earthy, though saved by Christ’s Resurrection (third tone), returns to the earth from which he was moulded, in accordance with the divine Word addressed to him after the sin: "you shall eat your bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken; for you are earth and to the earth you shall return [77]". But Christ, the new Adam of the third tone, who came to save human nature "held captive [78]" (the yoke which the fourth tone seems to bear), descends into hell after his death, and returns to Paradise [79]: for "we are led to understand that the Paradise into which Christ entered at his resurrection was nothing other than the integrity of human nature which he restored in Himself [80]". This theory is that of Ambrose, which John Scotus adopts. It already governs the iconography of the capital of Original Sin [81].
The name Adam means earth because it was from earth that God created man. This is why Paradise is a garden, a plantation. It is also why God’s Promise to Israel is a land. Earthly paradise, the land promised to the creature moulded from the earth, these correspondences, familiar to exegetes, flow into each other in the same mystery: "Paradise is a fertile land, that is to say, the fertile soul planted in Eden [82], or again: "Paradise is a cultivated land in which the pleasure of the soul germinates [83]", two assertions taken from Ambrose which, as we have already mentioned on several occasions, form the basis of Peter the Venerable’s sermon in honour of the Holy Sepulchre, in which he reviews the gardens of the Gospel, concluding that it is always the same garden, and that it awaits the return of man [84]. For "the grace to which we aspire consists in a return to our original way of life, which brings back to Paradise the man who had been expelled from it [85]". If we follow the thought of John Scotus, as it seems that the monks of Cluny did, it is therefore in this divine plantation that the whole human race - good and evil merged in a single mercy - is called to return at the end of time: "All of us who are men, writes the Erigenes in Book V, with no exception of any, we shall rise again [...] and we shall return to the origin of our first condition [86]. This first condition is none other than Paradise. For, "human nature, created in the image of God, is indicated according to the mode of figurative discourse [...] under the word Paradise [87]". Paradise is not a place, it is the ontological state of the creature.
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- 14. The choir capitals at the top of the
columns (reduced to fragments)
occupy a median position between heaven and earth
Monks’ farinier
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
From this generous perspective - John Scotus comes to envisage salvation for the devil himself [88] - The final Paradise into which mankind will return is therefore identical to the initial Paradise, and the capital representing it is announced by that of Original Sin, with which it obviously has, like the "Corinthian" plant capital, a very close relationship. It is the same Paradise that has never ceased to exist, present in sinful man, but invisible, "lost ", like the generic Adam created in the Image of his Creator, and it is the same man who returns to it. "The end of the present life thus marks the beginning of the future life, and the death of the flesh [fourth tone] marks the beginning of the restoration of nature and the return to primitive integrity. [89]" The capitals of the first four tones trace the final, supernatural stages of this return: after the disappearance of the sexual creature through the submission of the female part, the first musician deserves to see the link between God and his creature re-established, while the Christ of the third tone re-establishes, through his Resurrection, contact between heaven and earth [90]. In this double mechanism we find the necessary and fruitful duality of nature and grace, for "it is by the concurrence of both his free will and grace that man is a spiritual creature, a grace without which the natural power of the will proves quite insufficient to transport man in spirit [91]". Christ’s mediation is a divine gift and a matter of grace; man’s mediation is the work of nature on itself and of man on nature, as shown by the first tone busy making the instrument of his personal praise. The conjunction of the two culminates in "the transformation of flesh into spirit", realised in the number 8. God’s descent is matched by man’s tension, and the capitals placed twice at the top of the columns surrounding the altar, and at the base of the conch where the great Christ of the Parousia was enthroned, are, by this dual arrangement, naturally expressive of this double mediation (ill. 14). It goes without saying that the monks had a clear and strong awareness of occupying, like the capitals of their church, this intermediary position between heaven and earth, a position that raises humanity to the doors of the divine and catalyses, in order to spread and dispense it here below, the grace received from Above. The proof of this is the text by Raoul Glaber, that presents the whole of humanity in this position, taking refuge under the guarantee of an "author of unquestionable authority" [92]. In the order of creatures, we read in chapter IV of his Histories, "the human race occupies a middle place, above all the animals, below the heavenly spirits". And his text draws on that of the Erigenes: if he tends upwards, man "conforms himself to the image and appearance of the Creator, for humility [...] allows one to attain the likeness of the Creator [93]".
FOUR RIVERS
"Can we believe that the dwelling-place where the souls of the saints and the whole of human nature restored to its original status will dwell, will be somewhere other than the centre between the rivers of spiritual virtue? [94]".
The four rivers of Paradise belong to the oldest iconographic repertoire of Christianity. They are associated with the Lamb on early Christian sarcophagi. In the Romanesque period, they appeared on sculptures - mainly capitals, as at Cluny - as well as on painted decorations (the chapel at Berzé-la-Ville), mosaics, psalters and furnishings such as the large Creation carpet in the Girona Cathedral. However, breaking with the presentation of the early Christian period, that limited their image to a simple trickle at the foot of the holy mountain, Romanesque iconography revives that of the river gods of Antiquity, male figures carrying a vessel from which a more or less abundant stream flows freely [95]. According to the Bible [96], these are the Tigris and the Euphrates, whose location is clear, completed by the Pishon and the Geon, more mysterious rivers, in which Saint Ambrose [97] thinks he can recognise the Ganges and the Nile [98]. The absence of their names on the capital is worth noting, partly because it is not unusual to see them referred to by name [99], but above all because this omission breaks with the systematic use of explanatory and denominative tituli that characterises the neighbouring capitals, and distinguishes them from the first capitals in the cycle. The decision not to mention their names suggests a purely spiritual interpretation of their image. At Cluny, Paradise is not a place, and its rivers are something other than streams (ill.15).
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- 15. Capital of Paradise
Rivers and trees
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
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- 15. Capital of Paradise
Rivers and trees
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
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- 15. Capital of Paradise
Rivers and trees
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
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- 15. Capital of Paradise
Rivers and trees
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
It is once again in Scripture that we can find the meaning of this fourfold motif: "A river came out of Eden to water the garden and from there it divided to form four branches [100]". This is what we read in Genesis, while at the other end of the Bible, John bears witness in the Apocalypse to his vision of the heavenly Jerusalem: "The angel showed me the river of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God [101]". The two texts are not identical, but they establish between them a phenomenon of echo which enriches one by the other [102].
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- 16. Capital of Paradise,
"Water flows [...] as it travels
through canals".
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
If we continue to spin the metaphor, the theme of water irrigates Scripture by establishing a very rich back-and-forth between God and man. Thus, in the Old Testament, Isaiah promises the righteous that he will be "like a watered garden, like a spring of unfailing waters [103]", which in itself seems contradictory, while the Gospel goes on to say: "Let the thirsty man come near and let the man of desire receive the living water freely [104]", so that in reverse this water becomes "in him a spring welling up into eternal life [105]". He who quenches his thirst at the divine source becomes himself a living source and, according to the exegetes, this source is successively a witness to the presence of Christ or that of the Holy Spirit in the sanctified man [106]. We thus learn that "This source, located in Paradise, which branches out into four cardinal rivers, if we interpret it symbolically, symbolises the Holy Spirit [107]", but, in another passage, John Scotus writes with the same firmness: "The source which flows in Paradise is identified with Christ, about whom the Prophet declares ʺFor in Thee is the source of lifeʺ [108]". Elsewhere still, it would represent the Father [109]. One can multiply the quotations and it is undoubtedly this trinity of meanings that the river with the triple flow recapitulates, image of "the sovereign Goodness at the same time triune and one [110]".
Source, rivers, presence of Christ or of the Holy Spirit, the water of Paradise represents the permanent exchange between God and man through the gift of grace that circulates, spreads, diffuses and waters the universe. The "four rivers irrigate the soil of human nature [111] ", and Ambrose explains that "it is in your soul that the source is to be found [112] ". It is interesting to note that the Cluniac sculptor illustrated in a very precise way the theory of John Scotus according to which "it is not at the point where the source appears that the water begins to flow [113]". The rivers carry neither jars nor skins. The water flows from what look like pipes, open channels that illustrate very well the terms used in the Periphyseon: water flows [...], through channels that remain hidden and indiscernible to the senses, even before they appear in the source [114]". Those are indeed pipes that appear between the hands of the Cluniac rivers (ill. 16), a surprising motif in an anthropomorphic representation, which would more naturally call for an everyday accessory, a bucket [115], a jar [116], a vase [117], a cup [118] or even a cornucopia [119](ill.17). Here it looks more like open channels, one of which snakes around its bearer "as in the hidden arteries of the intelligible earth [120]"
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- 17. Rivers of Paradise bearing horns of plenty.
Anzy le Duc, priory church
Photo: G. Pourchet - See the image in its page
Can we take the interpretation further? According to a number of exegetes, the water which flows from the divine source returns to that very source in an incessant circuit, for "all virtue and all action proceed from these rivers and return to these rivers [121]". This is just another aspect of the double universal movement of contraction and effusion that John Scotus has highlighted at the centre of Creation, and which explains this unusual, apparently contradictory attitude of the musician of the fourth tone and the animals in Ezekiel’s vision [122]: everything that proceeds from the One returns to it, in a coming and going that animates all manifestations of life. Perhaps this explains the presence of a large, enigmatic fish that swims upstream in one of the rivers (ill. 18). Its presence is all the more remarkable in that it has been placed in the only river whose flow emerges from a closed mouth, like the neck of an amphora, and not from an open pipe. In his Treaty on the Gospel of St. Luke, Ambrose quotes Psalm 114 where it is written that "the Jordan turns back [123]", and he interprets this phrase as significant of "the mysteries of the world to come of the saving bath, by which the baptized are like children, brought back from evil to their primordial nature [124]".
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- 18. Chapiteau du Paradis
The fish swimming upstream.
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
So this large fish could be the image of this return, while another, no less visible, swims with the flow of the water, at the foot of the river immediately nearby [125]. The association of the two would then refer to the animals of the Tetramorph, as well as to the musician of the fourth tone. But the Periphyseon could also offer another explanation, which does not exclude the first, in the author’s very detailed examination of the nature of Paradise and its components. The disciple having raised the question of the innocence of creatures who had no part in the sin of primordial man, the master ends up concluding that because of this innocence, "the irrational animals continued to dwell in Paradise [126]". Is this innocence of the "irrational" part of Creation reflected in the presence of the two large fish on the capital? The Cluniac programme is too exclusively concerned with the salvation of mankind, and too convinced that mankind encapsulates the whole of creation, for this final, unexpected incursion of animal nature, previously absent from the world of capitals [127], not to remain enigmatic. We can only observe that it finds a coherent echo in the deliberate maintenance of sensible vegetation on all the capitals, and even on the eighth and last one, which nevertheless transports the chosen ones into the transcendence of divine intimacy. And John Scotus forcefully affirms his certainty that all creatures, "animals deprived of understanding, as well as trees, plants and all the components of this world from the noblest to the humblest [128]", will be saved and restored for eternity in the Word of God. In this land cultivated by Adam, in which every blade of grass, once barren on the first plant capital, has finally become a tree covered with fruit, the image of animal nature, previously excluded from Cluniac iconographic choices, could be bearing witness to the permanence of all levels of creation, both sensible and intelligible, in the ultimate felicity. The human creature is not included, because he is the main subject, and what we have before us is its inner image. But research can provide a more relevant interpretation.
The state in which the Cluniac rivers have come down to us varies greatly: only the two that frame the fig tree and separate it, the first from the apple tree and the second from the olive tree, remain intact. The other two are too mutilated for us to be able to read the articulation of their staging: only one leg remains for the one separating the apple tree from the vine (ill. 15-3), and only two, plus a hand, for the one following it, between the vine and the olive tree (ill.15-2). The best preserved is one of the most graceful figures of the whole: it is the river which winds its flow around itself, and in which a reading of Saint Ambrose’s De Paradiso would lead one to recognise the Geon [129]. We can only observe that after three capitals in which all the figures are clothed, the rivers of Paradise return to ancient nudity, which was that of personalised abstractions, or pagan divinities representing natural elements. But ancient nudity was often accompanied by a drapery or cloak, which is not the case here. Yet this light cloak can be seen on the shoulders of the Cluniac "Wind", in whom some have seen a beekeeper. It protects those of the rivers at Saint-Lazare in Autun, while at the chapel of Saint-Clément in Saint-Chef in the Dauphiné, the rivers are clothed in a tunic. It is tempting to interpret this Cluniac nudity [130] as a reminder of the original nakedness discovered by Adam and Eve, sinners, and which the Lord covered with the "tunic of skin" [131]? John Scotus teaches that "in the second Adam [Christ] human nature stripped itself of the tunics of skin by removing the weakness inherent in mortal bodies, and by recovering its nakedness, that is to say the simplicity inherent in its original nature [132]". The allusion is possible and even probable because it would conform to a logic, but it is not really admissible because, in the first case, Adam and Eve are called, personally and really, to return to the bliss of Paradise, whereas in the other, we are faced with symbolic figures who cannot claim to take their place among the chosen. We need only observe, then, that the anatomy of the rivers is here, like that of our first parents before sin, an asexual anatomy in frank nudity, and that it alludes - probably deliberately in this perfectly mastered programme - to the original asexual couple on the first side of Original Sin. Let us add that this nudity is crowned, an unusual detail which confers on it a glory greater than that of "the inherent simplicity of [the] original nature" (ill. 19). This crown celebrates the final victory of grace [133].
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- 19. Capital of Paradise
The rivers are naked and crowned.
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
Need we recall that these four rivers are also part of the great group of quaternities that governed the world [134]. In the same way that the animals of the Tetramorphus are also a figure of the evangelists, the rivers are an image of the Gospels, which spread the divine word throughout the universe, just as they are one of its virtues. From the invisible source, writes John Scotus, flow "the four rivers of the virtues, namely Prudence, Temperance, Fortitude and Justice, symbolised by the four principal rivers of the sensible world [135]. According to these texts, it was therefore in Paradise that the monks chose to depict the complete set of cardinal virtues, which art historians have searched so ardently for on the other capitals, because a titulus mentioned one of them [136]. But the image has not yet reached the end of its richness, as each virtue characterises more specifically one of the four ages of the world. This is explained by Raoul Glaber [137]. On this point, he is simply copying St Ambrose’s De Paradiso: prudence reigned until the Flood, temperance accompanied the Patriarchs, strength was the virtue of the Law of Moses and justice was introduced by the Gospel [138]. It is therefore the virtue of the present world. Thus the rivers of Paradise irrigate the created in a total mastery of space and time, because they flow beyond space and time, and abolish both [139]. They were, and still are today, present in the liturgy, and the blessing of the water during the Easter vigil is always accompanied by a fourfold sprinkling towards the four cardinal points, a symbolic gesture that reproduces their image.
FOUR TREES
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- 20. Capital of Paradise.
The vine and the apple tree
on either side of the triple-flowing river.
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
The Paradise of Cluny unfolds a double theme: while the rivers occupy the corners of the capital, the faces are adorned with a quadruple image of trees covered with fruit (ill. 20). The fig tree, the apple tree and the vine can be identified in succession. The fourth is more uncertain: some see an olive tree, others an almond tree [140].
In the Bible, trees and rivers are closely linked, so much so that some artists have chosen to place a tree in the hand of each of the rivers. This is the case in Girona. This association comes from the double text that inspires this dual theme: "The Lord planted a garden in Eden, and there He put the man He had fashioned. And out of the ground He made to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food [...] A river flowed out of Eden, and from thence it was divided into four branches [141]" we read in Genesis, while, in the Apocalypse, Saint John, after having discovered "the river of Life as clear as crystal", reports that "in the middle of the square, on either side of the river, there are trees of life which bear fruit twelve times, once a month [142]". This double image, placed in Scripture at the origin and the end of the history of the world, contains within it the affirmation of an identity between the beginning and the end, between the Alpha and the Omega, that of the final return of the created to its paradisiacal state, ordered, fruitful and alive. It should be remembered that the great Christ painted on the apse’s conch, whose image came from both Ezekiel’s vision and that of Saint John in the Apocalypse, also brought together, in the same way and according to the same process, the two ends of time. The discourse developed throughout the capitals was therefore absolutely coherent.
If the Periphyseon tells us that "God’s planting and Paradise are identified with human nature [143]and, if the water of Paradise represents grace, the trees are the Just: "When the Bible says that God planted Paradise, it speaks of the creation of man [144]." Once again, this certainty is based on Scripture:
.
This prayer of Jeremiah is answered in Psalm 92:
For it is not just a question of trees firmly planted and flourishing: the trees of Paradise are all fruit trees, conforming in this to the ideal of Scripture for whom every tree must bear fruit. The ephemeral grass of the first capital has been transformed, but it is the same grass, the one that Adam was ordered to cultivate, and this is so true that it is as if recalled at the foot of each of the trees by a leaf from which the trunk seems to spring (ill.21), a detail that does not appear on the trees of the original Paradise on the capital of Sin (ill.22). "You will know them by their fruit. Do we gather grapes from thorns or figs from thistles? Every good tree bears good fruit [147]". Adam, condemned to work the earth, finally succeeded in making it fruitful and overcoming the curse of the soil resulting from original sin:
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- 21. Chapiteau du Paradis
Roots of the fig tree
Trees covered in fruit sprout from barren leaves
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
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- 22. Capital of Original Sin
Apple and fig tree roots
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
This curse was the starting point, the raison d’être of the first capital adorned with acanthus. Adam’s land "had been well sown by the Word of God, but demanded to be worked, cultivated and cared for with solicitude by the labourer [149]". With these words, Saint Ambrose highlights the duality of this theme of Paradise, in which the rivers illustrate the irruption of grace in its inexhaustible profusion - Where sin abounded, grace abounded [150]-, while the trees bear witness to the necessity of man’s work. It is this work that is indicated on the capital of Original Sin by the precise image of the traces of repeated pruning on the apple tree left by God to sinful man (ill. 22). It is the same pruning that we find, indicated very precisely, on the trunk of the vine (ill.27). The double theme of trees and rivers shows once again the pairing of nature and grace at work here, as in each of the capitals. Like the musicians in the first four tones, the trees can be seen as organised in pairs: the apple tree is the tree of nature, the vine the tree of grace. In the same way, the olive tree that produces oil is a tree of grace, while the fig tree, forced to produce figs on pain of being uprooted by the master of the estate [151], is a tree of nature. In the salvation story that this capital brings to a close, nature demands human effort, grace is given, a certainty that is expressed unambiguously one last time in the titulus of the seventh tone of the music, which recapitulates this teaching on the next capital.
But each of the trees has also been chosen according to a precise connection with the general theme, and this is what their examination reveals.
- The fig tree
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- 23. Capital of Paradise :
the fig tree.
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG. - See the image in its page
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- 24 - Capital of Original Sin
The falling circumvolutions of the barren fig tree
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
This is the only real earthly tree [152] mentioned in Genesis, the one whose leaves are plucked by Adam and Eve to hide their nakedness [153], and it is without surprise that we find it represented, in a more precise and recognisable way (ill. 23) than on the capital of Original Sin [154] The image of the fig tree, barren or covered with figs, recurs several times in the Bible, where it is used as a test to reveal the worth of man or that of the Jewish people. "The righteous choose the fruit, the sinner chooses the leaves [155]." The one in which our first parents take shelter, delightfully depicted on the capital of Original Sin, is sterile [156]. The first text to mention the fruit of the fig tree is a vision by Jeremiah, who compares Israel to good figs and announces the covenant between God and his people, a covenant based on the forgiveness granted to sinners [157]. Ambrose makes it the fruit of the Resurrection, and his text, read and meditated on at Cluny, links the fig tree in Paradise even more closely to the first plant capital adorned with acanthus: "Among the thorns of this world, he writes, one cannot find the fig tree which, excellent for the abundance of its fruit, is well chosen to represent the Resurrection [158]." His presence at the end of the Cluniac ascent is therefore the guarantee of the transformation of Adam’s flesh - this earth which at first only produces "brambles and thistles" - into spirit - the figs of the Resurrection, which Ambrose equates with the fruits of the Spirit as defined by Saint Paul [159]. We can see that the branches of the paradisiacal fig tree have regained an upward progression that contrasts clearly with the falling circumvolutions of the barren fig tree (ill. 24). In the opposite direction, however, the branches of the neighbouring apple tree, like those of the vine, offer freely sinuous branches that we would have expected to be more rectilinear. This unexpected departure from a symbolism that had hitherto been very coherent and based on texts will perhaps one day receive a better explanation than that of the artist’s taking liberties, which is unacceptable in a work that, from start to finish, remains a theological lesson.
- The apple tree
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- 25. Apple tree roots
Trees covered in fruit sprout from barren leaves
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
As we have had occasion to point out [160], it does not appear by name in Genesis and its identification only dates back to the fifth century, through a mistranslation of the Latin word malum [161]. Identified from that time onwards as an apple tree, the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could not fail to feature in this image of Paradise, in which it is clearly recognisable (ill. 25). Like the rivers and trees associated with the beginning and end of Scripture, the apple tree of sin has the function of testifying, even more than its three neighbours, that at the end of the sinner’s journey back to Paradise, it is indeed the same Paradise, and it is the same man who returns there, washed clean of his faults by the Passion and Resurrection of Christ. And his presence must be seen in direct relation to the one that appears, unexpectedly, behind the sinning couple on the third side of the capital dedicated to Original Sin, the one towards which Eve’s heel rises [162]. For the three Cluniac apple trees are one and the same: the sinful one towards which Adam and Eve reach out together inside Paradise, the one left by divine mercy to the sinners expelled from the garden, and which the sculptor has mentioned very precisely behind them, and finally the one that never left Paradise and which redeemed humanity finds again, intact and covered in fruit. In principle, the apple tree represents the sensible creation, both good and bad, depending on whether it is viewed spiritually or through the bodily senses. It was by making good use of this creation that man succeeded in "cultivating his land", and this is what the clearly visible traces of pruning and pruning on the trunk of the apple tree left to Adam are announcing.
- The vine
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- 26. Capital of Paradise
the vine.
Cluny, Musée Ochier,
Photo: BSG. - See the image in its page
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- 27. Chapiteau du Paradis
The pruned vine
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG. - See the image in its page
"Figs are not gathered from thorns and grapes are not harvested from brambles [163]." The Bible does not mention either the vine or the apple tree inside Paradise, but it insists on the presence of "the Tree of Life in the middle of the garden [164]". The patristic tradition recognised Christ there [165] and the use of wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist confirms this interpretation of the image. Its presence here (ill. 26) echoes the Son of man of the third tone, through whose sacrifice salvation is brought about, for "no one can avoid the damnation of the flesh unless he is redeemed by Christ who, like the vine, was hung onto the wood [166]". The symbolism of the vine is one of the most commonly used in Christianity and is too rich to be developed here. It is also one of the best known. The sculptor has given the pruning of the vine a decoration that does not exist above the other trees: a frieze of half-leaves in the form of helices, whose four arms fold back in the manner of a swastika, in a composition of eight half-leaves, an image with multiple resonances, in which the symbolism of the eight and the image of the cross are associated, but of a dynamic cross that turns on itself and circumscribes the space. The motif is a direct echo of the quatrefoil friezes that adorn both the first "Corinthian" capital and the one with hexagonal mandorlas. In Paradise, the motif has been multiplied, and the earthly, immobile four of the first quatrefoil friezes on the plant capital has blossomed into a dynamic, supernatural eightfold motif. The perception of the sensible world in its material form, to which sinful man had until then been reduced, was a divided, incomplete, fragmentary knowledge, reflected in the succession of identical, repeated, harmonised but self-contained quatrefoils. This ordered succession is contrasted with the continuous unfolding, the concatenation of a living motif. Once again, this is not an ornament: as a Christ-like tree, the vine undoubtedly occupied a privileged position on the capital, and this unique accent, added to by the accompanying frieze, leads us to believe that it was facing the choir, as an echo of the Christ of the Parousia painted on the apse conch, and also, no doubt, of the Son of Man in the third tone. Another detail distinguishes and isolates it from the other trees in the capital: the very visible marks of repeated pruning, reminiscent of the iconography of the apple trees in Original Sin, but which we look for in vain on the neighbouring trees. We can see here an illustration of Jesus’ words "I am the vine and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch that does not bear fruit, my Father takes away" (John, XV, 1-5).
- The olive or almond tree
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- 28. Capital of Paradise,
The olive tree, largely lost.
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG. - See the image in its page
Olive tree ? Almond tree? It is difficult in this tree with its simple leaves and small oval fruits to choose between one identification and the other (ill. 27) . It is also the most damaged side of the capital. In principle, the image of the almond (mandorla), ovoid and slightly pointed, is too present in medieval imagery and in the Cluniac programme as a whole for the sculptors not to have accentuated its tapering profile on a representation of the fruit itself. This is why it is not surprising that the olive tree is mentioned most frequently. It is the tree of God’s peace brought back to Noah in the form of a branch by the dove [167], and this meaning is well suited to an image of the return of sinful humanity to its original bliss. It is all the more so as it is from Noah’s navigation during the Flood that the symbolism of the number eight [168], which serves as the fundamental structure of the programme, derives. Ambrose was the exegete of this olive branch, a pardon sent by God to the eight passengers on the Ark and an image of the new life that emerged from the Flood [169]. The departure of the Ark, because it is the restitution of the earth to mankind (to the sons of Adam "the earthy"), has the value of a new creation, as shown by the fact that, at the end of the forty days of ordeal, there is a wait of seven more days before the return of the dove. This is precisely the meaning of the Cluniac Paradise. We might add that Noah’s first act after the Flood was to plant the vine, another symbol of renewal, which appears on the neighbouring face. The olive tree is also the tree that produces the oil of the sacraments, and it is perhaps worth remembering that the title Christ expresses the anointing received by the one designated by such a title. It is also the tree of Jesus’ last hours and prayers, the one that opens the way to the saving Passion evoked by the neighbouring vine, and the Gospel episode of the Garden of Olives once again revives the metaphor of the garden. In this respect, among others, it is more plausible than the almond tree [170], whose blossoming prefigures the Resurrection. Without denying the importance of a definite identification, we can recall the abundance of meanings put into each detail by the monks who created these images, and consider the oscillation between these two hypotheses as an enrichment of their meditation rather than as a contradictory enigma.
THE UNITY OF PARADISE
The composition of the capital deserves further explanation, as the dual theme has given rise to a double mise-en-scène that refers both to the first capitals, whose figures stand out on the corners - like the rivers themselves - and to those that follow them and which place them on the sides, in mandorlas. The mandorlas that characterised the three previous capitals have disappeared thanks to an almost photographic magnification effect, because the image of Paradise shows precisely the interior, where original man was hidden in his multiple unity [171]. The envelope that is the mandorla is no longer necessary, since we have penetrated within it. The confrontation between the inner man, enclosed in the core of the mandorla, and the outer man, moving freely in the foliage [172], which gives rhythm to the progression of the previous capitals, is resolved here in a unity that closely combines angles and sides, through a triangular division (ill. 29 and 30): the rivers, placed at the corners, pour out their streams, which join at the foot of the trees, on either side of the large leaf from which the trunk emerges, at the centre of each of the capital’s sides, while these same trees blossom upwards, until they unite their foliage above the heads of the river gods that separate them. For "the unification of natures takes place without confusion, without mixture or composition [173]" and "all the particular degrees of these ramifications possess both their unalterable properties and their unification [174]". Thus we find, at the ultimate point of the spiritual journey, the combined exercise of man’s tension and the descent from grace.
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- 29. Paradise capital
Composition in triangles
which absorbs the break between faces and angles.
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
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- 30. Capital of Paradise
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG - See the image in its page
We should still observe that, if this capital recapitulates within itself the entirety of time and the entirety of the world, through the coincidence of a theme present both at the beginning and end of the Bible, it nonetheless marks a particular and essential moment. In the "week of the world" which reproduces the Week of Creation, according to this movement which is both identical and reversed and which can be found at every stage of John Scotus’ thought, it is the seventh day, "the sabbath of our souls [175]". This is why it can hardly be found anywhere but in the seventh place.