Interpretative reading of the Cluny capitals: 2. The first four musical tones

: 1. Les trois derniers chapiteaux.
Le chapiteau du Paradis et les deux chapiteaux de la musique
Fin XIe - début XIIe siècle
Cluny, farinier des moines.
Photo BSG; See the image in its page

In today’s presentation at the Farinier de Cluny, the corolla of capitals that once supported the apse conch in the choir of the great church built by Hugues de Semur ends with two capitals whose meaning is illuminated by inscriptions. They represent the eight tones of music, identified in numerical order and divided into two sequences of four regularly spaced musicians. The numbering rotates twice from left to right. The first four tones are set in deep mandorlas, on the edges of which are engraved the inscriptions tituli that refer to each one. On the second capital, the musicians appear within a circular band which, like the mandorlas of the first four tones, has been engraved with the tituli relating to each figure (ill. 1). While it may seem illogical to begin the study of the capitals with those placed at the end of the cycle, it makes sense to base the reading of the whole on those figures that are identified with certainty by the accompanying texts.

Indeed, the established expression musical tones or plainchant tones, gives us a priori the restful illusion of mastering the meaning of this part of the iconographic program and, if not of exhausting its nuances, at least of grasping the essential. It is commonplace to read that the liturgy occupied the greater part of the life of the Black Monk, that psalmody had a predominant place in this liturgy, and that it is therefore natural to find in the choir of Cluny III a pictorial representation of what was one of its principal supports and privileged mode of expression, music.

Such comments, however, come up against a major anomaly: in all eight figures - as far as we can interpret the heavily mutilated figures on the second capital - not a single figure shows a monk or a singer. If the true meaning of this decoration had been to illustrate the Cluniac liturgy, it would have been more expected and justified to depict a procession of monks ─ a theme particularly well-suited to a capital, and found illustrated at San Pere de Roda, in Catalonia, or in the cloister of Saint-Martin du Canigou [1]─ or a choir service uniting the community in a single psalmody.

: 2. Chapiteau des quatre premiers tons
Les musiciens sont des laïcs
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

In contrast to this clerical hypothesis, all the sufficiently well-preserved figures ─ particularly on the first capital ─ are laymen (ill. 2), and all the still legible details of the mutilated figures on the second refer to a lay identification [2]. On the other hand, all these laymen ─ with inevitable reservations for mutilated figures ─ are instrumentalist musicians, not singers. Careful analysis of the figures has identified stringed, percussion and wind instruments, a fairly diverse range of known instrumental practices, but no open mouths for singing [3]. It is therefore difficult to maintain the explanation of the theme by the Cluniac liturgy and, if the echo of this liturgy is obvious at this place of the church, at the monastery and even in the entire order [4], it is probable that the musicians we have before us have a more complex, and undoubtedly broader, meaning than the purely illustrative function usually attributed to them [5].

There is a certain difficulty for us with this notion of tone, which notated music has done away with [6]. The Gregorian repertoire was built up in Carolingian times according to the Octoechos system (the eight echoes), which divided music into eight tones, and whose study [7] goes beyond the limits of iconographic work. We can only point out that the idea of illustrating each tone with a musician is neither unique nor new [8] and consider a possible relationship between the eight Cluniac tones, divided into two capitals, and a text by Reginon de Prüm in which he states that perfect music should be composed of twice four whole tones, which would imply an identical interval between successive sounds [9]. This is precisely the case for the sculptures on the capitals. Abbé de Prüm contrasts this system with that of terrestrial and human music, imperfectly composed of seven tones plus two semitones. This text, which is of interest primarily to musicologists and musicians, is also important here, because it guides our understanding of the musicians of Cluny: the music they produce must be seen, beyond human and religious music ─ in the restricted sense we generally give to this word ─, as the fulfillment of a harmony which, not existing on earth, undoubtedly belongs to the register of divine perfection.

: 3 - Mars-sur Allier, prieuré clunisien
Porte latérale de l’église Saint-Julien
La création conçue comme un organisme qui se déploie pour revenir en lui-même.
Le retour du créé dans la louange de l’octave.
Photo BSG.; See the image in its page

For those who read the Periphyseon, sounds, tones and music offer a privileged manifestation of the unity of Creation, as it came out of God’s hands and as it is to become again at the end of time. John Scotus envisages Creation as an outpouring of the divine One in the multiple, to be followed by a final recapitulation that will bring the multiplicity of the created back to the original Unity (ill. 3). As early as Book I, he explains that divine Unity consists "in an admirable and fruitful multiplicity [10]" and the entire Periphyseon is animated by that double, inverse and reciprocal mechanism of effusion and contraction that its author perceives to be at the center of the world [11]. For him, Creation is a single living organism, which unfolds in order to return to itself, like the circle in the center of which are recapitulated all the rays that spring from it [12]. This image of the circle [13], recurs from one book to the next as a fundamental pattern, and naturally finds its illustration in the arrangement of the apse supports, in a corolla around the altar (ill. 4 and 5). The other favoured example is that of the infinite sequence of numbers that flow from the monad and recapitulate within it [14]. And Eriugena finds this dual drive at work in the most diverse aspects of Creation, whether in dialectics, through which the mind moves from the general to the particular and back from the particular to the essence itself, in geometry, where all figures proceed from the point, or in "astrology", whose principle is the atom. But before "astrology", he places music, whose principle is the tone which, he writes, recapitulates in itself all melodies [15]. Just as the eighth degree of Eriugenian contemplation, where the blessed find themselves blessed, announces – in quite an obscure way, certainly, for people today - the saints of Cluny, blessed in the eighth tone (see article), John Scotus’ phrase again finds an echo, too precise not to be noted, in the titulus that surrounds the first musician: "Hic tonus orditus modulamina musica primus". Presented as initial (primus), identified as that which "begins musical harmonies", recognized by musicologists as the "genitor" tone, it’s hard not to recognize in it also that which Eriugena designates as the "principle", from which music arises and from which it develops into simple or composed melodies.

: 4. «Le cercle dans le centre duquel se récapitulent tous les rayons qui en jaillissent»
Photo : DR; See the image in its page

: 5. L’exigüité du farinier allonge l’arc de cercle en ellipse, faussant la vision de l’ensemble.
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

But beyond musical theory, it is the entire universe that John Scotus’ thought embraces, and music is for him only one example, privileged among others, of a much vaster harmony [16]. In the Periphyseon, he recalls how, according to Pythagoras, "the whole machine of the world is animated by a circular motion which functions according to musical chords and which can be measured thanks to musical chords [17]". The universe is One, and as we have just seen from the examples chosen by John Scotus himself, the mechanisms that govern it have identical repercussions in its different manifestations. "Because everything is number, "the proportional relationships that govern musical intervals", far from being limited to the art of music alone, "apply equally to the distances between celestial bodies [18]". Thus, the distance between the earth and the moon corresponds to one tone, and this distance is equal to the earth’s diameter, which is therefore also one tone; similarly, "the distance separating the earth from the sun corresponds to an octave and [...] the distance separating the sun from the edge of the world corresponds to a double octave [19]". All the planets are thus linked together by a proportional system that is that of music, and this correspondence between distances governed by numbers and musical intervals opens up an unlimited field for contemplation. For the music produced by man in psalmody is not fundamentally different from that produced by instruments, and it is also the same as that which regulates the harmony of the planets and is commonly referred to as the "music of the spheres [20]". John Scotus is not afraid to assert that "the planets [are] harmonized according to an analogy with sounds [21]". In such a conception of the order of the world, the beauty of the liturgy is in blissful conformity with the harmony of Creation, of which it is but the reflection, and polyphonic music naturally offers a privileged expression of the inexhaustible beauty of the universe [22] : "For, just as an instrumental melody consists of sounds [...] which, when heard in isolation and separately are distinguishable from one another [...], but which, when harmonized together into distinct notes [... ] produce a musical piece endowed with a natural harmony, in an analogous manner, the harmony of the universe has been orchestrated [...] from the various subdivisions of its unique nature, whereas these subdivisions contrast with each other when observed separately. [23]"

As it happens, the diversity of sounds - or tones, for although they are different in nature, the discourse is the same for both - is exactly the subject of the sculptures that adorn the two Cluny capitals. Musical harmony, the fusion of the dissimilar into the One, offers the privileged image of the return of Creation, shattered and dispersed by sin, to the lost Unity, while the liturgy, to which the monks of Cluny devoted most of their time, offers in its beauty a perfect mirror of the harmony of Creation [24]. It’s from this perspective that we need to understand Cluny’s resistance to St. Bernard’s criticism that Black Monks didn’t work: the monk who participates fully in the liturgy accomplishes the exact work that creates the connection between the world, humanity and God.

LE PREMIER CHAPITEAU DE LA MUSIQUE [25]

Four musicians, depicted full-length and in high relief, are arranged in four regular, deep mandorlas that occupy the sides of the capital (ill. 6). The edges of the mandorlas form a shelf on which an inscription in very fine characters identifies each of the figures as a tone. The sequence of four inscriptions forms a whole that obeys the laws of Latin versification [26]:

Hic tonus orditus modulamina musica primus.
Subsequitur ptongus numero vel lege secundus.
Tertius impingit Christumque resurgere fingit.
Succedit quartus simulans in carmine planctus.

This tone, the first, gives rise to musical harmonies.
The sound that follows is the second according to order and law.
The third emerges violently, revealing the resurrected Christ.
The fourth follows, imitating a lament in its song.

Examined as a whole [27], this first stanza, composed as a charade, has the enigmatic character of a charade, in the spirit of the one posed by the sphinx to Oedipus on the road to Thebes. The charade speaks of numbers, tones, order, music, harmony, death and resurrection. Or, more strangely and surprisingly, of resurrection and death, for it is after Christ’s resurrection that the fourth tone introduces a kind of death knell.

: 6. Premier et deuxième ton.
Authente et plagal du premier mode
(Protus, mode du ré)
Un musicien assis et l’autre debout,
tournés l’un vers l’autre.
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

We have shown how each of these themes is developed in the Periphyseon, and how, in John Scotus’ text, they are combined together, integrally, in a tight weave that aims to account for the profound coherence of the various mechanisms that govern the universe: Numbers flow from the monad and recapitulate themselves within it, in a double movement that is that of divine Creation; musical harmony brings together in a single beauty the disparity of different sounds, but the tones themselves, like the numbers to which they correspond, manifest only the secret order of the entire cosmos. Man recapitulates Creation within himself, and this order, revealed by numbers and manifested by tones, is the one to which he aspires and to which he must attain or return; Christ’s Resurrection accomplishes this supernatural finality of humanity, which must first die to attain beatitude, final harmony in the divine transcendence expressed by the octave. Such a schema is undoubtedly sketchy, and thus insufficient to affirm that the iconography of the capitals was drawn from the Periphyseon, but it at least shows that the thinking behind the choice of figures and texts is close to that of John Scotus, and in line with Christian Neoplatonism. In any case, it arouses the desire to verify whether the match between sculptures and text also works in the details.

Musicologists who have studied Cluny musicians [28] pointed out that, on one capital as on the other, the figures were grouped in pairs, like the tones themselves in the musical system : The eight tones form four modes, each composed of a major (authente) [29] and a minor (plagal) [30]. In the first capital, the authente sits and the plagal stands, facing each other (ill. 6); in the second, the order is reversed and the relationship between the figures is different. The first musician to inaugurate the series is therefore the authente of the first mode (Protus, mode of D). He faces his plagal, represented by a woman on the next panel. The third tone, similarly, is the authente of the second mode (Deuterus, mode of E) and the musician’s figure is turned towards the next mandorla, on which his plagal stands out [31]

HIC TONVS ORDITVR MODVLAMINA MVSICA PRIMUS [32].
This tone, the first, gives rise to musical harmonies.

: 7. Le premier ton de la musique
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo: BSG; See the image in its page

The image around which the first inscription unfurls is that of a beardless young man, dressed in a short tunic and wearing shoes. He is seated on a stool, both feet flat on the ground, in a frontal position. He turns his face to the right, i.e. towards the next tone, and holds in his right hand an instrument identified as a kind of vièle [33]. The youthfulness and regularity of his features, the gracefulness of his supple, carefully cropped hair, are all contemporary canons of beauty. Vigor, simplicity and elegance emanate from this youthful figure, brought to life by the ease of his posture and the harmonious inflection of his arms (ill. 7).

In this first capital of the musical tones, the two seated figures (1st and 3rd tones) are seated on very similar seats, whose architectural base, adorned with arcatures, is extended at ground level by an overhanging step that acts as a footrest. This clearly visible detail bites into the edge of the mandorla, giving the seat and its occupant a certain majesty. The third tone is associated with Christ [34]. However, the former is a priori only a musician - sometimes described by art historians as a "jongleur" - and the elegance of the seat on which he is working is unexpected [35]. According to musicological analysis, which recognizes in these two tones the authentes of the first and second modes, this unusual majesty could nevertheless be justified, and we read in Guy d’Arezzo’s treatise that "authente and plagal constitute a couple of which the authente is the absolute master". Lionel Dieu, who applies this comment to the musicians of Cluny, adds that "domination is characterized by a seated man, an attitude representative of power [36]", and doesn’t hesitate to establish a relationship between this first figure and the royal representations on the seals of Henri 1er, Philippe 1er and Louis VI le Gros (ill. 8). The image of the first tone would therefore be an image of power.

: 8. Sceau de Henri 1er, 1046
Dessin du XVIIIe siècle
mis en ligne par François Besse.
Photo: F. Besse; See the image in its page

An exegesis that goes back to Basil of Caesarea [37] and to Gregory of Nyssa [38], explains how the order given to the first man to command creation [39], is to be understood as the completion of this creation imposed by God on the creature. By commanding creation, i.e. by mastering it within himself, by showing himself capable of taming his own passions [40], man created in God’s image could acquire his likeness to his Creator. This exegesis is based on the double mention in Scripture that God created man "in his image and likeness". For Basil and his successors, if the image is given, the likeness must be acquired. What does this consist of? It’s simply a matter of man freely adhering to the Thought and Will to which he owes his being and his life. This self-mastery was originally ─ and remains ─ the kingship he has been given the mission to exercise: "Man, you are a living being, made to command [...] You have been elected Prince of Creation [41]", and Basil sums up his thought with a striking formula: "where the power to command is found, there resides the image of God [42]". This exegesis, which brings an unexpected echo to Lionel Dieu’s connection between the first musician and the seals with royal effigies, was familiar to the monks of Cluny. It is set out very firmly in Gregory of Nyssa’s De Imagine, whose Latin translation by John Scotus was in their library [43], as in the works of John Scotus himself, where we read that "the sensible world was created for man so that man might reign over it as a king reigns over his kingdom and as a householder reigns over his household [44]. It is indeed the image of a householder seated on his cathedra that the first tone proposes. The whole of Book IV of the Periphyseon is a contemplation of the mystery of man in "the ineffable nobility of his nature [45]", a nobility he derives from his resemblance to his Creator. For "God willed to create man in his image and likeness so that, just as the principal Prototype [Christ] exceeded all creatures by the eminence of his Essence, in an analogous manner, God willed that his image [man] exceed all creatures by the nobility of his nature and by the concurrence of divine grace [46]."

: 9. Premier et troisième tons
semblablement assis
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

Such a phrase gives precise meaning to the two similar seats on which the two musicians are seated (ill. 9), one of which represents Christ Himself, and the other who, in the splendor of its youth, offers a good illustration of this humanity created "in the image of God" to command creation [47]. And John Scotus quotes the psalm that undoubtedly provided the direct inspiration for the extended step on which the feet of the first musician rest: "You have established [man] above the works of your hands. Thou hast subdued all things under his feet [48]. "
And as in the Original Sin capital (see the first article on the Original Sin capital) , which introduces the first human couple devoid of any decoration instead of surrounding them with the lushness of the Garden of Eden as suggested by the inspiring text, this young musician is alone in his mandorla, with no accessory other than his fiddle, as an image of human nature in whom the whole of creation is recapitulated.

: 10. Drachme antique d’Antiochos VII
Comme l’image du Basileus
sur la drachme perdue,
celle de Dieu reste imprimée, quoiqu’invisible depuis le péché
Photo : D.R.; See the image in its page

However, Scripture also says that, through sin, "man has dishonored the natural nobility of his nature [49]" and this downfall is illustrated on another capital. He has failed in the mission entrusted to him, and therefore no longer deserves the throne on which the monks of Cluny have nevertheless voluntarily seated him. It’s not hard to find the explanation for this anomaly in the texts of Gregory of Nyssa, which John Scotus takes up and quotes. For both, sin did not make original man disappear, but only made him invisible in each individual, hidden in the flesh like the lost drachma of the parable [50] on which the image of the sovereign remains imprinted (ill. 10). He must reappear when the lower parts of human nature have been resorbed in the higher parts, i.e. in the intellect, because it is still possible for him, with the help of grace, to accept to conform to his creaturely state, to purify himself of his defects and to tend towards the knowledge of God. If he makes this choice, sooner or later, "the spiritual man", who remains hidden, will be "returned to his original status of divine image [51] ". The evangelical model is the Prodigal Son [52] on whom John Scotus meditates in Book V, and the image of the musician conforms to the description offered by the Periphyseon : the lost son returning to his father recovers "his robe of yesteryear [53]", i.e. his first condition, and "the shoes put on his feet, i.e. eternal life [54]". A detail that could provide the certainty that it is indeed he that we should see, in transparency, in the figure of this first musician, is the ring given to him by his father, and in which Jean Scot recognizes "the condition of virtue". Unfortunately, one of the two hands has disappeared and the other is too badly damaged, depriving us of this interpretation. Nevertheless, it is perfectly reasonable to recognize in the figure of the first musician an image of the spiritual man present in everyone, master of himself, having overcome his passions, capable of assuming the order of command, invisible beneath the carnal man [55], from which he can and must triumph. Recall that this program of interior life is precisely that of the monastic life and the "transformation of flesh into spirit" proposed by John Scotus to the baptized.

: 11. Chapiteau à mandores des quatre premiers tons Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

One might think that the parallelism between this musician and the text of the Periphyseon ends there, but on the contrary, John Scotus’ reading continues to nourish the image in depth, according to that fruitful multiplicity of complementary and similar meanings that characterizes his thought. For this fiddle-player, who represents primordial man in his rediscovered original integrity, or spiritual man once more conformed to his nature by the mastery of his passions, can also be seen as an image of the superior part of human nature, the intellect, just as, on the capital of the Original Sin, the figure of Adam merged with the image of the νο̃υς (intellect), while Eve was entrusted with the role of representing the aιςθήσις (sensibility). For, as John Scotus explains, the master of the passions and of the sensible part of creation is the intellect that "presides over the totality of the human creature [56]". It is in the intellect that, at the end of time, the other faculties of the body, sensibility, reason and intelligence must be recapitulated [57].
And like the original man created in the image of God, this intellect remains in each person "invisible and incomprehensible in itself [58]", and we can imagine that this is the meaning to be given to the presence of mandorlas on some of the capitals (ill. 11, 12, 13). For the mandorla is not a glory, as it has too often been interpreted, it is an almond ─ as its name indicates ─ a kernel whose contents are invisible to the eyes of the flesh. At Cluny, the presence of mandorlas in the second part of the capital cycle corresponds to the passage from the outer man "aιςθήσις", to the inner man "νο̃υς" ─ the outer man being, with great logic, figured freely on a background of vegetation.

: 12. Chapiteau à mandorles hexagonales Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

: 13. Chapiteau « du Printemps » à mandorles régulières
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

But, invisible as it is, the intellect, according to John Scotus, has the power to manifest and almost materialize itself "in sounds or in letters, or in other indices still, as in some kinds of bodies [59]". We can even read in the Periphyseon that "our intellect incarnates itself in sounds and letters [60]"; for this, "it makes for itself some sorts of vehicles drawn from the material of the air", through which it "becomes knowable [61]". The Irish theologian emphasizes that, for the human intellect, it is a matter of fabrication "from a matter which pre-exists it", a precision whose aim is to separate very clearly the work of fabrication which is the creature’s own [62], from the work of creation reserved for the Divinity. The general idea underlying this paragraph is the parallelism between creative activity, the outpouring of divine Unity in the multiple, and human activity in its noblest manifestation, in a kind of mimetism that is nothing other than the expression, perceptible and simple, of the unity of Creation in God, and of the rediscovered coincidence between the human will and the divine Will [63].

: 14. Un facteur d’instrument
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

The greatest discovery concerning this musician was to establish that he is not playing, and that he cannot be playing, for his instrument is not finished. He is therefore not yet a musician, but an instrument maker (ill. 14), and the instrument he is holding in his right hand has no strings, no bridge and no tension pegs [64]. According to Lionel Dieu, his left hand, which had always been thought of as scraping the strings of his fiddle, is holding something that could be a luthier’s tool [65]. This fundamental observation suddenly establishes a close link with chapter IV of Gregory of Nyssa’s De Imagine, which begins as follows: "Artists here below give their instruments a form in keeping with the use they will make of them. Thus the best of artists [God] fabricates our nature as a creation adapted to the exercise of kingship".

This initial tone is thus paradoxically mute, incomplete, and yet the generator of melodies in their infinite diversity. It is incomplete like the first man himself, for "human nature had not yet acquired perfection [...] which it was to acquire as a reward for its obedience to God [66]". He is silent because man’s work on himself, however attentive and obstinate, can do nothing without grace. But the work that goes into making his instrument of praise bears witness to the rediscovered coincidence of his will with that of God [67], while the beauty that the sculptor lends him can, for its part, be interpreted as the image of that "perfection proper to its form" that human nature can acquire or regain. In this process of transformation in which human nature is engaged, the first tone corresponds to the stage when, "restored in the original integrity of its nature, [the creature] will finally understand the nobility and beauty of the divine image created in it [68]". In the funeral oration of the great abbot Odilon, we read that he had been "more beautiful than the glowing star [69] »

: 15. Chapiteau du Printemps.
Association of regular mandorles and texts.
Photo: BSG; See the image in its page

In a memoir [70], Virgil Gheorgiu compares the mechanism by which the Word of God becomes flesh with that by which, in writing, thought is engendered in a sign: "you engender from yourself your own word as God engendered the Son, the verb you write takes shape in calligraphic letters as Christ takes human form. Then the verb, the logos, the word begotten by you dies, as Christ died [...] Later, you or another will read your written word. And this word begotten from nothing by you [...] will rise again in the mind of another man". In Book III, John Scotus explains how the making of means of communication ─ which he calls "vehicles", sounds, letters, words, writing, melody ─ by the human intellect, enables it to penetrate "into the depths" of other intellects, communicating itself to them. Through this movement, he writes, the intellect "fuses with the other intellects and becomes one with those intellects with which it unites [71] "Through this communication, then, it is a matter of rediscovering the lost unity of Creation in Christ. Across the centuries, the Irish theologian, the monks of St. Hugh and the Romanian bishop pursue the same contemplation, that of the Word made flesh and the common thought of separate thinkers. From this perspective, it is possible to imagine that at Cluny, the appearance of the texts on the Spring capital, their association with the regular mandorlas (ill. 15) and their systematic presence on the last capitals, is not the result of chance or the effect of fantasy, but that they can be seen as the progressive incarnation of the intellect that rises towards God ─ Christ enthroned at the apse’s conch ─ by the double effect of his own tension and the Grace poured upon him by the Divinity (ill. 16).

: 16. Berzé-la-Ville, chapelle des moines,
Christ dans une mandorle à la conque de l’abside
Photo : Académie de Mâcon.; See the image in its page

It may be added that this power to command, manifested by the nobility of this first musician’s seat, is not only for man the possibility of adhering to his creaturely condition by conforming to the Creator’s Will; this dominion has also been given to him "so that man may use the sensible world for the glory of his Creator [72]". It is here that the echo of the great Cluniac liturgy is heard through this secular image of a musician presented as the one in whom all melodies are summed up. For this fiddle-player in his prime is also, as the first tone of music, the initiator of a journey that leads humanity to the eighth tone of divine praise where, according to the titulus that accompanies this final figure, "blessed are all the saints", or, according to John Scotus, in the eighth of primordial causes, which amounts to the same thing. "The unifying recapitulation [...] starts from man and [...] rises up through man to God Himself, who is the initial principle of all division and the final term of all unification [73]."

Thus, from one capital to the next, the figures respond to each other: just as Adam and Eve are alone with the apple on the first side of the capital of Original Sin, the young man of the first tone is alone with his fiddle. The first couple’s simultaneous gesture of appropriation is contrasted with the musician’s effort to complete the making of an instrument - a vehicle - that links him to the world and to God [74]. Conversely, the act of turning inward corresponds to an activity oriented towards others and towards one’s Creator. Disobedience is met with praise. “Irrational impulse" is replaced by the profound coherence of unity rediscovered within the mastery of oneself.

[S]UBSEQU[I]TVR PTONGVS NUMERO VEL LEGE SECVNDUS [75]
The sound that follows it is the second according to order and law.

: 17. Second tone: a dancer playing cymbals
Cluny, Ochier Museum
Photo: BSG; See the image in its page

The first male figure, seated in majesty, is followed by a veiled female figure, undulating and standing, carrying cymbals (ill. 17). The left arm has disappeared with its cymbal, but the right hand still carries the other, and the strap that once connected the two parts of the instrument is still in its place, and runs up towards the vanished hand.
This is ─ unless otherwise stated, the hypothesis envisaged by Kenneth Conant for the fifth tone [76] ─ of the only woman in the series of musicians. Musically, it should be seen as the plagal of the first mode; she turns to her authente with whom she forms a couple. Lionel Dieu observes that the idea of illustrating the authente-plagal duality with a man and a woman is nothing new, and already exists in Aribon de Freising [77].

The passage from the One to the many, the descent into number, was completed with the division of humanity into two different sexes. Two is par excellence the number for women. Woman comes second, chronologically ─ "Adam fell asleep and Eve appeared [78]" ─, as hierarchically. This hierarchy, established by the Church Fathers [79], is already illustrated on the capital of Original Sin by the respective disposition of the characters (ill. 18). The Cluny musician comes after (subsequitur [80]), and we must understand that this place of hers is doubly secondary, by the natural order of numbers which regulates the order of the world (numero), as by the law of hierarchy (lege). Yet the duality of which she is the bearer, both by her nature and by the instrument attributed to her, can be equated with evil itself, for "the true Good is a simple Good [...] foreign to all duality [81]".

: 18. Chapiteau du Péché originel Ève vient « après »
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo BSG; See the image in its page

: 19. Chapiteau du péché originel
Premier pommier : simple et droit
Deuxième pommier : double et courbe
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

The capital of the Original Sin illustrates this theory with the representation of the two dissimilar apple trees: the apple tree of sin, like the woman’s cymbals, is double; that of divine creation, simple and straight (ill. 19). For John Scotus, as for the theologians from whom he takes his inspiration [82], this evil duality marks woman from her very origin, "for she owes the origin of her creation, not to the divine image which was created within paradise, but woman owes her origin to the original sin she was going to commit [83]". He comes to see in woman herself the image of evil [84].

Moreover, the sinuosity of the musician with the cymbals is, in itself, expressive of a pejorative judgment, and the vivid contrast between her undulating silhouette and the sharpness of the first musician, with his precise contours and frank, stable stance (ill. 20), can be directly related to that which, on the capital of Original Sin, inversely separates the first human couple in their candid stiffness, and the serpent with its tortuous convolutions. Evil, explains John Scotus, is "an irrational impulse [85]" that eludes the intellect, and imposes itself even on purified men, as witnessed by St. Paul’s words, "I feel another law in my limbs that struggles against the law of my mind and that chains me to the law of sin [86]."

: 20. Le premier et le deuxième ton :
Rectitude et sinuosité
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

The multiple inflections, by which the sculptor tried to translate the domination exercised over the woman’s body by music, can be understood as the clear translation of that "other law" which takes hold of the limbs against the will of the head, "because the bodily senses did not wish to obey the commands prescribed by the intellect [87] "and this law "prescribed by the carnal sense which dominates the members of men who live carnally, [...] the apostle Paul calls the law of sin [88]". To fully appreciate the close link between text and image, we need to remember that this carnal sense, for John Scotus [89] is the woman, in whom he recognizes "the external sense which takes pleasure in sensible images and proves itself misled by these images, while the man symbolizes the spirit or intellect which corrupts itself by illicitly giving its consent to the corporeal sense [90] ".

Nevertheless, beyond these implicit judgments that the image almost innocently echoes, the character’s slightly awkward attitude and somewhat heavy silhouette do not absolutely correspond to the unambiguous analysis of the Periphyseon, and it is clearly not a Salome that the monks asked the sculptor to chisel out of the center of this second mandorla. In the opening pages of his De Musica, Saint Augustine, after defining music as "the art of modulating well [91]", firmly separates music, which is a science ─ or an art ─ and the musical instinct that can be observed in certain animals. He cites the nightingale, which sings naturally, and compares this nightingale to people who sing, but have no notion concerning "the numbers and intervals of high and low sounds". And he adds: "we see elephants, bears and several species of animal stirring to the sound of music [...] ; can we not compare these people to beasts? [92] ». The leaping of the Cluny musician is more reminiscent of the bears exhibited by jugglers, than of the voluptuous arabesques with which the sculptor could have expressed seductive sensuality, had the monks asked him to. So it’s the outward, carnal, instinctive, animal sense that this cymbal dancer is charged with representing, but no detail expressly designates her as a sinner.

For the musician of the second tone offers a different teaching, one in keeping with that of the preceding authente, to which she is closely subordinate. The young man of the first tone represented humanity, mastering the whole of Creation within itself. Now, since sin, humanity is not only double, but split into two: flesh and spirit, sensible and intelligible, feminine and masculine. But just as the two parts of a cymbal meet to produce a single sound, it is from the fusion of the two halves of humanity that the original man, as created in the divine mind, must re-emerge at the end of time. For "the unification of human nature reduces the division of the two sexes to the simplicity of man as such [93] ". This idea, often repeated, is based on Paul’s words to the Galatians [94] announcing that in the new man, there is no longer male or female, and the expression of this certainty ─ one might write of this necessity ─ recurs tirelessly under the pen of John Scotus: "for man is superior to sex, since the names male and female are not the names of his nature, but they are the names of his partition consecutive to transgression, whereas man connotes the name specific to his nature. [95] "

: 21. «La femme doit avoir sur la tête un signe de sujétion».
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

This image of cymbals, a double instrument producing a single sound, was probably inspired by Gregory of Nyssa’s Commentary on the Psalms, where it is used to illustrate the return of human nature to the angelic state lost with sin. But in the Cappadocian Father’s text, it is "the hyper cosmic nature of angels" that is one cymbal, "the spiritual creation of men is another. Sin has separated one from the other. When grace has reunited them, they will then resound the hymn of praise [96]". The monks of Cluny did not adopt this meaning for the second tone, and although the image comes from Gregory, it is nevertheless the thought of John Scotus that is illustrated here. Man’s return to his original unity requires not only the disappearance of sexed man, but also union between the different levels of the creature, or between the different parts that still function separately within him: "for in human nature, the male corresponds to the intellect to which the Greeks award the name of νο̃υς, while the female corresponds to the external sense, which is of the feminine gender among the Greeks who award it the name of aιςθήσις"; and Eriugena adds: "the mystical marriage of the νο̃υς and the aιςθήσις prefigures the future nuptials between Christ and the Church. [97] ".

This is why, in this figure whose mobile body undulates at the whim of sensation, the head, tilted to the left, responds by its inclination to the attitude of the first musician turned towards it on the previous side. Léo Shrade perceived the dancer’s dependence on the musician [98] and Lionel Dieu points out that the word ptongus, used here for sonus, is a term found in Guy d’Arezzo’s Micrologus [99]; it expresses the sound that "enters into composition in melodies [100] » and is therefore not independent. By turning her head towards her authente, the musician, despite her weakness, duality, disordered mobility and oblique plagal character [101], obeys her own nature, which imposes her submission to the masculine authente of the first mode. In Book IV of the Periphyseon, John Scotus comments on God’s words to woman: "et ad virum tuum conversio tua [102]", which he interprets not as one of the punitive consequences of sin, on a par with death - which it is in the sacred text - but as a promise of the return of human nature to its original state, through the definitive submission of the feminine part. The long veil covering the cymbal-player’s head, which falls to the ground (ill. 21), bears witness to this submission, in compliance with Paul’s injunction: "the woman must have on her head a sign of subjection [103]."

But in this scheme of humanity’s recapitulation as it ascends to God, the monks of Cluny undoubtedly had to resolve a contradiction that John Scotus had already come up against, and it seems at first sight paradoxical to find here a female figure after the image of man as master of his passions and the whole of creation. For, if woman is the lowest step on the human ladder [104], it should open the series of musicians, since the unification of man ascends from the inferior to the superior. The logical upward progression should therefore be from woman to man and from man to Christ, as on the third side of the capital of Original Sin. John Scotus, in Book IV of the Periphyseon, bypasses the embarrassing precision of Scripture, which places woman directly in Paradise, and decides to ignore the difficulty by authoritatively cutting through, like Ambrose before him, by affirming female inferiority. Here, for the monks of Saint Hugues, the difficulty was doubled by a musical contradiction: in this first mode, it is surprising, to say the least, that a man was chosen to illustrate the high chant (authente) and a woman the low chant (plagal). According to Guy d’Arezzo, it is indeed the singing "high of each mode [that] would be called authente, i.e. originary or first, as for the lower one, it would be called plagal, i.e. lateral or minor [105]". As we can see, the Cluny builders, like Aribon [106] in other respects, and no doubt following his example, they retained only the lateral and minor characteristics and thus, like John Scotus for the Paradiso, resolved the contradiction. At Cluny, as elsewhere in medieval Christendom, the ecclesiastical hierarchy was dominated and, as it were, confiscated by a male clergy bound by the vow of chastity, engendering a normal, natural, implicit misogyny, despite the gentleness of Cluniac spirituality.

[T]ERTIVS IMPINGIT XTMQVE RESVRGERE FINGIT
The third tone pushes violently, revealing the resurrected Christ.

The third tone - authente of the second mode [107]- is again represented by a musician seated on an architectural chair (ill. 22 and 23). Older than the first, he wears a beard and moustache, and plays a six-stringed instrument. The accompanying inscription associates him with the Resurrection of Christ, and the musician’s physical type corresponds to the traditional image of the Son of God made man. However, unlike the Christ depicted on the capital of Original Sin, there is no explicit indication of his divine nature.

: 22. Passage du deuxième au troisième ton : les musiciens se tournent le dos
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo BSG.; See the image in its page

: 23. Le troisième ton
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

The mention of Christ in third position is not surprising; the number three is par excellence that of the Divinity, that of the Holy Trinity whose structure, if John Scotus is to be believed, the primordial man reproduces. The three Persons of the Trinity correspond to the tripartition of the spiritual creature, who combines intellect, reason and inner sense [108]. This tripartition reproduces the internal economy of the Trinity. The number three is thus doubly the number of Christ who, as Son of God, participates in the Trinity, while as Son of Man, through His Resurrection on the third day, He restores humanity to its original splendor. He is the "new Adam", "the Prototype of the restoration of human nature [109]", "the perfect man [...] in whom all men find their fulfillment [110] ». Thus "In the first Adam, all human nature was expelled from the bliss of Paradise, in the second Adam, all human nature was brought back and reintegrated into the bliss of Paradise [111]". And Eriugena justifies his discourse by referring to St. Paul: "As all men die in Adam, so all are reborn in Christ. [112]"

: 24. Le troisième ton (détail)
Le Fils de l’Homme
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

: 25. Chapiteau du Péché originel
Le Verbe Créateur
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

The first degree of the unification of humanity in Christ began, as we have seen, with the musician of the second tone, at the lowest level of the division of this humanity, for "in the first Adam, human nature was divided into male and female, whereas in the second Adam, human nature was reunited [113]". Christ, by His Resurrection, makes this division, consecutive to sin, disappear in Himself [114]. In Him, He accomplishes, definitively and for eternity, the unity towards which the first two musicians directed their efforts. Nevertheless, we might find it surprising that this very clearly bearded musician should thus be charged with representing the abolition of sex, if John Scotus had not, in advance, answered the objection by referring to Scripture: "For in Christ there is neither male nor female [115], although it was in this male sex [...] that Christ appeared to His disciples after the Resurrection. [116] "This last precision, which he repeats almost word for word in Book V [117], explains why this bearded musician who is Christ, the new Adam, must be understood as man "true and complete, i.e. composed of a body, a soul, an intellect, free from any sex or any definite form [118]". It is indeed the Son of Man that the monks of Cluny have placed here and this is why, unlike the Creator Word of Original Sin, the new Adam of the third tone is not distinguished by a nimbus (ill. 24 and 25).

The first tone was a very young man; this one is significantly older. In this respect, it conforms perfectly to the text of the Periphyseon and shows "this perfect man, in the prime of life, in whom the fullness of Christ is realized [119]". And John Scotus specifies that "the perfect man is none other than Christ, in whom all men find their fulfillment, whose fullness of age corresponds to the fulfillment of the salvation of the whole Catholic Church, which is made up of both angels and men [120]". With this last sentence, Eriugena alludes to another unification brought about by the risen Christ, that of earth and heaven separated since Adam’s sin. It should be remembered that for him, Paradise is not conceived as a place, even a mythical one, but as an ontological state of the creature, and that this conception is already illustrated with great subtlety in the capital of Original Sin. And this union, which Christ achieves in Himself, exists here below for the contemplative: it is the third heaven of which Saint Paul speaks [121], that to which grace alone can raise the human creature, to which the apostle was raised and on which Eriugena meditates from one book to another [122]. The third tone, or third heaven, thus opens a new stage in the process of man’s sanctification and return to the Divinity; the mute musician of the first tone engaged in the effort of making his fiddle is succeeded by the plenitude of chords poured out by grace.

The question then arises as to why, given that Christ brings humanity back to its original perfection, the sculptor did not depict him in the glorious nakedness of the Resurrection, which was that of the first man. The question arises all the more since this nudity is treated with frankness in the Paradise episode, and could therefore have been used here as the distinctive mark of the return to lost simplicity. If the monks of Cluny asked themselves this question, it was again in the text of John Scotus that they undoubtedly found the answer: "For we groan, writes Eriugena, in this state [the mortal state of creatures here below], desperately desirous of putting on over our earthly body, the heavenly body, if however we should find ourselves clothed and not naked [...]. For we do not wish to undress, but to clothe ourselves with the heavenly body, so that what is mortal may be absorbed by life. [123]"

: 26. Troisième ton : les deux vêtements du Christ
Une tunique et un manteau.
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

It is moreover remarkable that, unlike the first musician dressed in a simple tunic, the one in the third tone also wears a cloak, a precise and deliberate illustration of the two garments of Christ (ill. 26) in which theologians have recognized the two forms of Revelation, that which conceals God and reveals Him at the same time, in other words Nature and Scripture [124]. For "the visible creature is indeed the garment of the Word, since it makes Him known to us by manifesting His beauty. Sacred Scripture has also become his garment, since it contains his mysteries [125]".

The risen Christ thus realizes in Himself the Perfect Man [126]. The first musician still had to finish his fiddle; the third-tone musician has a lyre [127] with six strings arranged in a fan-shape, as if springing from a single point, illustrating the multiplicity of the created arising from the One without breaking its unity (ill. 27). For, as we have seen, the unity of the Word is fruitful and opens up to multiplicity [128]. The number three refers both to the place of the tone in the octoechos and to the string touched by Christ’s index finger at the center of the instrument. But it is also, according to John Scotus, that of the procession of the created universe, which flows in three degrees, first from God into primordial causes, then from the latter into intelligible effects before manifesting itself in sensible effects. And this procession of the universe is itself recapitulated in the number six, the number chosen by God for Creation, "the Work of the Six Days", "the Hexameron", the week of the world of which man is the crowning glory. For man is "the final term of all creation recapitulated in him by a sixfold repetition of the Genesis narrative, so that the number six not only symbolizes the intrinsic perfection of human nature, but also symbolizes the creation in human nature of all other natures [129]". The text then adds a clarification that links it even more closely to the figure of the musician, stating that "all the creatures that have been created by God converge in human nature and compose a single harmony made up of different natures as well as different sounds [130] "The number of strings, which corresponds to the number of days of Creation, on this instrument placed in Christ’s hands, reminds us that the whole of Creation was made "in the Word", i.e. in Christ, or, as Saint John again writes, "in the Principle", and the step on which his feet rest refers to Scripture [131]: "He has put everything under his feet.". Saint Paul uses the very words of the Psalm 8 evoked in the first tone to describe the triumph of the risen Christ. The echo created by the sculptor between the two seats and between the two musicians is the same as that which arises from Scripture between different texts, according to this effect of multiplied resonance that weaves the profound unity of a complex, seemingly diversified discourse.

: 27. Une lyre à six cordes issues d’un unique point
L’accord indiqué entre la 3e et la 6e corde
est celui de l’unité retrouvée entre Dieu (3)
et sa Création (6)
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

We might add that this image of a musician bent over a stringed instrument recalls the image of King David, from whom Christ descends, and whom Christian tradition depicts playing the harp. As Isabelle Marchesin points out, David is the king of two kingdoms (Judah and Israel), the unifying king, and the founder of a new liturgy, characteristics that also enrich the Cluniac figure [132]. It also evokes that of Orpheus, a figure Christianized from the very beginnings of the Church. Orpheus is the one who returns from the realm of the dead [133], like Christ, whose Credo states that he "descended to hell" before his Resurrection. For the number three is also that of the Resurrection: "Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures [...] he was laid in the tomb, [...] he rose again on the third day. [134] "John Scotus explains that Christ came "to take on the flesh of our humanity [...] by acquitting our passions through his own Passion, and by putting death itself to death through his own death. [135] "These are the passions which the first man did not know how to tame, which he did not have the strength to command, over which Christ triumphs through his obedience. The two musicians oppose, complement and respond to each other. To the stringless, voiceless instrument, Christ brings the fullness of the six-stringed lyre and the perfect harmony that brings the multiplicity of sounds arising from this very unity back to unity. The fingering clearly indicated by the sculptor on the third and sixth strings gives, in this musical chord, an image of the unity rediscovered in Christ between God and His Creation, just as the cymbals producing a single sound already symbolized the return of sexed humanity (from secare, to cut) to the original man.

This multitude of overlapping, interlocking and superimposed meanings again defies analysis. Meanings arise from one another, from a detail, a position, an attitude, an orientation. Every element of every figure is the fruit of meditation and contains a teaching. For example, not only is the musician turned to the right, as in the first tone, but his head is tilted sharply towards his instrument. This attitude, which is not in itself unusual, cannot be explained only by a careful observation of the position of an instrumentalist. In this contemplative universe revealed by the study of the various figures, we can find a new teaching. Just as the bowed head of the woman refers to the divine Word of Genesis, that of the third musician, assimilated to Christ, can be seen as an illustration of the Gospel of John, where the apostle present at the foot of the Cross bears witness to what he has seen, and writes: "Inclining his head, He gave up the Spirit [136]". John Scotus’ exegesis of this sentence in Book IV is rather complex, but the recurrent influence of this text in the program of the capitals removes anything casual or forced from the connection [137]; for Eriugena, the head of which the Evangelist speaks is not only that of Christ, but is truly Christ Himself [138]. It can be considered that, on the capital, the marked inclination of the third musician’s head represents Christ who died in his flesh for the redemption of Creation, reinforcing by a novel image the Augustinian symbolism for which it is the instrument on which Christ is leaning, zither or psaltery, that would be an image of the crucifixion [139]. The fourth musician deals with the return to earth through the death of the flesh.

SVC[C]EDIT QUARTVS § SIMVLANS IN CAR§MINE PLANCTVS
The fourth follows, imitating in his song the lamentations

: 28. Troisième et quatrième tons,
authente et plagal du deuxième mode.
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

This fourth tone takes the form of a man with short hair and a mustache shaped into a handlebar, who walks away from the third, turning toward him (ill. 28). He wears bells in which historians have recognized a tintinnabulum [140] and its titulus presents it as a planctus [141], in other words, like a funeral lamentation [142].

This association of a chime with death is in keeping with the abbey’s funeral customs, and the connection has been made with the Farfa customary, in which it is written that it was "by a bell" that the monks were informed of the death of one of their brothers [143], after which everyone would begin to pray. But this, as with the other tones, is not about evoking a monastic custom, and this musician, like the three who preceded him, is clearly a layman.

The place of this tone in the Cluniac series is in itself an anomaly, and it is paradoxical, to say the least, to see these laments appear after the Resurrection of Christ. The return of man to his initial image, which was that of God Himself, the disappearance of sexuality, the recapitulation of the multiple in the Principle, i.e. in Christ, the return of Christ to his Father through his Resurrection, are these not sufficient for the fullness of a trajectory that brings the Work of the Six Days back to its paradisiacal origin and lets the contemplative ascend to the third heaven? What place can death still have in the perfection of such a trajectory? There is something of an incoherence here, just like in the second tone, which places a woman given over to her passions after man, master of himself as well as of Creation. The composition of the first two modes is therefore identical: the dominant, seated authente is succeeded by a standing plagal (ill. 29), whose submission should bring Creation back to its original perfection. Moreover, the two tituli accompanying these two figures express this dependence of one tone on the other: the second tone is said to succeed (succedit) the first, while the same idea is echoed in the "subsequitur " which introduces the fourth tone and subordinates it to the third. We can also observe that the complex, polyphonic instruments of the two authentes [144], are matched by primitive instruments, which can only serve as accompaniment, for each plagal.

The paradox of the funereal character of this fourth musician finds its explanation in Scripture, for if "Christ rose from the dead" his resurrection, writes St. Paul, constitutes the "premises of those who have fallen asleep". In other words, the Resurrection is indeed the door to salvation for mankind, but world history is not over, and eschatological discourse is part of preaching [145]. Just as "all die in Adam, all shall live again in Christ", so the apostle adds: "The last enemy destroyed is death. [146] "Christ’s Resurrection changed the history of the world without interrupting its course, and the living who built Cluny III, or for whom the church was built, in their certainty of having been saved, are not unaware that the carnal envelope, which has accompanied them since birth, is still doomed to disappear [147].

: 29. Le quatrième ton
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

The fourth tone deals with this envelope [148]. It "looks particularly at the body, because of the four elements of which it is composed and its four well-known qualities of hot, cold, dry and wet [149]". It embraces the cardinal points, the seasons, the elements, and forms the fundamental structure [150] of all that is subject to the law of growth and degeneration, and promised to death. In praising this divine quaternity that governs the universe, Raoul Glaber is simply taking up a theme from Maximus the Confessor [151] from whom John Scotus also borrowed it. Four is linked to that which must perish [152]: "all these bodies, writes Eriugena in Book III, are composed of the four simple elements, since it is in these same elements that all bodies must decompose [153]"; "After death and through death, the body decomposes to return to the four elements of which it is composed. [154] "For the world of matter, that of bodies, must be purified. It aspires, like all Creation, to return to its primordial causes, and this return will take place through the final elimination of all that is corporeal. Not by its disappearance, for the sensible world is also a divine work, but by its recapitulation in the higher level, that of intelligible realities: "I clearly understand, concludes the disciple, after the master’s exposition on this subject, that for the world to perish is nothing other than to return to its causes and be transformed for the better. [155]". Thus, "human nature [...] aided by the grace of its Redeemer, will be freed from its physical and corruptible bodies, at the moment of the General Resurrection [156]".

This theory provides an explanation for the number of bells carried by the musician, which, according to musicologists, are fewer here than in other illustrations of this type of chime [157]. As four is the number of the earthly world, five - if that is indeed the number of fourth-tone bells [158] - is that of the perception of sensible realities by the human creature endowed with five senses [159] "The organs in which the external sense resides are called aïsthesis, meaning [...] the guardians of sensation, for it is in them that sense is guarded and operates; and the senses are five in number: sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch. [160]" In the capital of Original Sin, Eve’s heel, projected in the direction of the apple tree of sensible creation, gathers within itself man’s capacity to understand the universe, through the information he receives from it via his sense organs. And Sacred Scripture announces that this heel of Eve is to be reached by the serpent. "She [the woman’s offspring] will crush your head and you will strike her in the heel. [161]" The five bells associated with the funeral knell announce that "the bodies, composed from elemental qualities, which have been superadded to them [to the original spiritual bodies] as a punishment deserved for their wickedness, comparable to an aged disguise, will perish along with the sensible world from which they were formed [162]". And as man recapitulates creation in himself [163], we’re not just talking about humanity here, but truly about the sentient component of the entire universe.

: 30. Le quatrième ton (détail)
Photo: BSG; See the image in its page

The character whose image has the function of evoking carnal death also presents a number of peculiarities whose meaning, once again, is made clear by a reading of the Periphyseon. A paragraph in Book II may have provided the model. We read that this body "corruptible and mortal" is "variable in space and time, divisible in the number of its parts, heterogeneous, subject to a process of growth and decay, subject to various qualities and quantities, prone to all unreasoning impulses [164]" Isn’t this musician in motion, precisely, the variable creature in space and time? Doesn’t this mustachioed man, who selected part of his facial hair, give an adequate image of man "divisible in the number of his parts", of the carnal body subject to accident, of the heterogeneous creature? And doesn’t this disarticulated, antinomic being, whose feet are oriented in one direction and whose head is thrown back in the opposite direction, present itself as "inclined to all irrational impulses", impulses whose close link with death John Scotus observes [165]. Another detail confirms this relationship between the image and the text: the belly, underlined by a circular fold, seems to fall slightly over the belt (ill. 30), illustrating the rest of the text which evokes these "swollen, mortal and corruptible bodies with which we are burdened here below [166]". For the author of the Periphyseon, it is clear that these bodies "do not owe their origin to nature, but to sin [167]" and he adds: "All the accidents added to human nature as a result of original sin will disappear [168] », a necessary and liberating disappearance, evoked by the attitude of the figure carrying his bells like a yoke [169]. This "yoke" responds to the one on which the strings of the lyre of the third tone are fixed, the "easy yoke" of Christ [170]. Once again, the images respond to each other. Moreover, if the legs of the bell-bearer, the seat of irrational impulses, i.e. the lower part of the human animal, move away from Christ in the third tone, the head, the seat of the noble part and the image of God, turns towards Him; the process is identical to that used for the female character, and the meaning we must attribute to it is the same. The exact same procedure is used in the tympanum at Conques, where the figure of Mary Magdalene, the repentant sinner, at the far left of the main register seems, like the fourth musician at Cluny, to be moving away from Christ with the lower part of her body, while her face, the seat of the upper part, adopts the opposite orientation [171].

For physical death is not the end of the creature, not only because of the final resurrection, but because spiritual life continues beyond the disappearance of bodies. John Scotus, in fact, firmly states that "the rational soul continues to act after the decomposition of its body [172]", and this teaching of the Periphyseon must have caught the full attention of monks whose primary vocation was to pray for the salvation of the dead, and to whom we owe, under Odilon’s abbatiate, the introduction into the calendar of a day of prayer for the dead: "all the days of the life which the spirit leads, during which it works to purify the earth from its heart [...] also designate that temporal duration during which human souls, having relinquished control of their bodies, subsist in another life until the moment when they recover their bodies [173]. Purification thus continues beyond the body’s death, "i.e., after its decomposition and return to the four cosmic elemental qualities [174]", in another life [175]. The rational soul continues "to exercise natural control over the components of its body disseminated among the elements [176]". This is what John Scotus calls "eating the earth from one’s heart".
And the Eriugenian teaching continues as the meaning of this carved panel is enriched by this lesson. For death itself belongs to the world of sin and, as the apostle states, at the end of time, "the last enemy destroyed will be death [177]". In this respect, death is not sad [178] and this is the reason for the choice of the word "simulans" in the text of the titulus. John Scotus observes that "the hatred of death responds to an innate instinct in man [179]" but, insofar as death is the consequence of sin, he deduces that this hatred is only a particular form of hatred for sin [180]. What may appear sad to the world is not, therefore, sad, and the musician, as we have pointed out, wears his bells as a yoke [181]: "for it is indubitable that the swollen, mortal and corruptible bodies with which we are burdened here below, owe their origin not to nature but to sin. All the accidents added to human nature as a result of original sin will disappear, once our nature has been renewed in Christ and restored to its primitive state. [182] "In these first four tones of music, the entire history of creation is reviewed according to the symbolism of numbers. But the meditation does not stop with the first four, as one might expect and as strict logic would dictate, for to the four tones themselves have been added the five bells of the sensitive world, and the six strings of perfection found in Christ. In this way, the capital resembles a Hexameron, and its link with the Original Sin capital suddenly becomes close. Just as the latter considered the fall of the first human couple, not as a past event, but as a present state of the sinful creature separated from God, the capital of the first four tones tells the story of a re-creation, a return, a re-birth, not future and in the hereafter, but present and begun here below in the souls who desire it. Clearly, this discourse was addressed to monks, but it’s remarkable that it wasn’t limited to monks, and the choice of lay musicians opened up this perspective to all humanity.

: 31. Mars-sur-Allier (Nièvre),
Tympan de l’église Saint-Julien, début du XIIe siècle Christ au Tétramorphe,
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

It should be added that the contradictory or antinomic attitude of this fourth musician contains a final lesson: Yves Christe [183] has shown that the frequent depiction of Christ surrounded by the four Living Beings in Ezekiel’s vision, in which the figures move away from the Son of Man while turning towards Him, offers an adequate transcription of the double movement of procession and conversion, diffusion and recapitulation that John Scotus perceives at the center of creation. Yet it is precisely this vision of "Christ seated on the clouds, leaning on the Gospel and surrounded by the animals of the Apocalypse [184]" that, at Cluny, figured on the apse’s conch. It might be suggested that, in his apparent incoherence, the fourth-tone musician brought a deliberate, precise and, on the contrary, perfectly coherent echo to the animals of the Tetramorph, through a kind of submissive conformity expressing, beyond his assumed and overcome imperfections, his return to celestial harmony. An unforeseeable connection is thus established with the figure of man [185], of some of the Tetramorphs display the same attitude of inverted tension. The tympanum of the small church in the Cluniac priory at Mars-sur-Allier provides a striking illustration (ill. 31).

Thus the incoherence of this fourth figure, noted by all archaeologists, far from being that of a juggler or an acrobat, would only be the ultimate image of the antinomy introduced into humanity by Adam’s sin, an antinomy shared by all [186], which even Saint Paul recognizes in himself and from which he admits to be suffering, an antinomy transcended in the Christ of the third tone. It is this antinomy that already inhabits the cymbal player, whose fourth tone only amplifies the animal disorder. Her lateral oscillation, the undulating line of her silhouette, are here synthesized in the disjointed body of the bell player. But, as the sensible woman submits to the inner man, and the aιςθήσις to the νο̃υς, the fourth musician returns to Christ. It is by integrating sin that the new Creation in Christ transcends the first, and that the Mystery of salvation takes place.

: 32. Tympan de l’église Saint-Julien
Figure de saint Matthieu ou de l’homme
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

: 33. Le quatrième ton
Cluny, Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

It remains to be observed that this death of the physical universe, symbolized by the number four, should logically take place in the sixth capital, contrary to the current order of presentation, which has placed it in seventh place. For Creation is the Work of the Six Days, at the end of which man committed sin, separated himself from his Creator and fell into corporality. This corporality should dissolve at the sixth capital. "For when the sensible world, to which animal man belongs as one of its components, disappears, all that is animal in man will perish with the sensible world and in the sensible world [187]". In his Traité sur l’Évangile de S. Luc [188], so well-known and meditated upon at Cluny, Saint Ambrose contemplates the sixth miracle, which is precisely that of Levi’s vocation [id est Matthew], which he relates to the sixth day of Genesis. According to him, Matthew’s vocation gave him "a new form. Now it was on the sixth day that man was created, and it is through the sixth work of Christ that not the old creature but a new one is reformed [189]". Such a sentence gives full meaning to the connection between the fourth tone and Matthew’s figure on certain tetramorphs (ill. 32 and 33), and in his preaching, Peter the Venerable establishes a direct relationship between this text and the first tone busy making his fiddle: "Sexta die, homo conditus ad laborem nascitur [190]", again showing the monks’ familiarity with this thought. Man was created on the sixth day, and his history picks up where it left off, with the creature’s obedience to the divine command to "work" that takes him back to Paradise. The reading of the Periphyseon and the close links that unite the text and the sculptures at every turn, right down to the most seemingly insignificant details, make it imperative to separate the pair formed by the two capitals of the tones of the music, by introducing between them the capital of Paradise (ill. 34). This unexpected need to break up a coherent, monographic and continuous pair stems from the reading of the first four tones. It has the unforeseen consequence of returning this capital to the very place where it takes on its full meaning. That place is the sixth.

: 34. Chapiteau du Paradis
Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

: 35. Huitième et dernier chapiteau
Musée Ochier
Photo : BSG; See the image in its page

For if we follow the inspirational text, the primordial Adam, fashioned by God from the mud and whose name precisely means "the earthy one", the generic man in whom humanity is recapitulated, the sinful creature able to conform his own will with that of his Creator and reintroduced into the lost harmony, must return to the Garden of Eden, which is nothing other than his true nature [191]. For John Scotus, Paradise is not a place but a metaphysical state, that of "the fruitful soul planted in Eden [192] » and, since Christ’s Resurrection, all humanity is called to return to it. "The human nature, created in the image of God, is indicated in the mode of figurative discourse by Sacred Scripture under the word Paradise [193]". This interpretation was familiar to the monks of Cluny, as evidenced once again by a sermon by Pierre le Vénérable [194] in which he takes up a meditation by Saint Ambrose [195] on the different gardens of Scripture. The destiny of the fourth tone is therefore its return to Paradise, which must thus immediately follow the first capital of music.

And because the Incarnation has opened up a grander perspective, and the Resurrection has given to the Perfect the possibility of ascending even further, into the very intimacy of the Holy Trinity, Paradise itself is no longer the ultimate beatitude. Another supernatural destiny, which John Scotus calls a special return, is now reserved for the few. In it, the perfect exchange between Creator and creature is realized, granting the latter "theosis", i.e. divinization, penetration into the heavenly cloud. This is the subject of the second musical capital (ill. 35), which shows the musicians of the four last tones admitted, beyond Paradise, to this higher form of bliss, within the divine circle itself.