Images of Medieval Art and Architecture

France: Benedictine Abbey Church of Saint-Denis

Twelfth-Century Windows: "Anagogical" Window

Images

Iconographical Key

The panels marked in yellow are ninteenth-century restorations. The panels marked in red contain twelfth-century glass. Click on the twelfth-century panels for more information.

C-6 Quadriga of Aminadab C-5 Moses Unveiled C-4 Mystic Mill C-3 The Book Being Opened by the Lion and the Eagle C-2 Christ Between Ecclesia and Synagoga

Note that panels C-2 and C-6 were switched during a recent (1990s) restoration.

Other Extant Panels

None

Location

ABBOT SUGER OF SAINT DENIS: ON WHAT WAS DONE IN HIS ADMINISTRATION

Translated by David Burr, History Department, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, and reproduced here with his kind permission.

XXXIV

We also had painted, by the hands of many masters sought out in various nations, a splendid variety of new windows below and above, from the first in the chevet representing the tree of Jesse to the one over the principal door of the entrance. One of these, urging us onward from the material to the immaterial, shows the apostle Paul turning a mill and the prophets carrying sacks to the mill. The accompanying verse says,

By working the mill, Paul, you take the flour from the bran.
You make known the inner meaning of Moses' law.
From so many grains is made the true bread without bran,
The perpetual food of men and angels.

In the same window, where the veil is removed from Moses' face, it says,

What Moses veils, the doctrine of Christ unveils.
Those who despoil Moses bare the Law.

In the same window, under the ark of the covenant,

From the ark of the covenant is established the altar of Christ.
There, by a greater covenant, life wishes to die.

Also in the same window, where the lion and lamb unseal the book,

He who is the great God, lion and lamb, unseals the book.
The lamb or lion becomes flesh joined to God.

Comparative Material

Bibliography

Suger, ed. Panofsky (1979), pp. 74-75, 211-12.

Grodecki (1976), pp. 98-102, figs. 122-34.

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Last updated by:JV Date: 03/98