Abbot Suger was one of those monumental men whose lives and personalities would seem almost incredible had they not lived in western Europe during the High Middle Ages. Well known today as a pivotal figure in the development of Gothic architecture, he was in fact of such diverse and admirable abilities as to merit a term like “Renaissance man”—which of course raises the question of why this term even exists, when so many to whom it applies predated the Renaissance. Let us say quite simply, then, that Suger was a “medieval man.”
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| Part of the choir of the abbey of St Denys. Around the year 1135, the abbot Suger began the process of enlarging the original Carolingian church, during which the choir was rebuilt from 1140-44. Suger created the idea of having huge walls of windows which flood the church’s interior with light, the foundation of the architecture style which we now call Gothic, and this choir is the first example of it. (Image from Wikimedia Commons by Guilhem Vellut, CC BY 2.0) |
Born in 1081 to a relatively humble family, the young Suger showed enough intellectual promise to be sent to the abbey of Saint-Denis for a monastic education. He rose through the ranks, eventually becoming secretary to the abbot and a trusted adviser to the king of France. A devout and cultured but not particularly ascetic man, Suger worked as a successful diplomat, was elected abbot, reformed his monks, wrote prolifically on various subjects, led the king toward victory against the emperor Henry V (who retreated without a fight), collaborated with Bernard of Clairvaux (another one of those monumental “medieval men”), rebuilt the church of Saint-Denis, and as the capstone of an already extraordinary life, ruled France as regent—and very capably—while the king was away on Crusade. A lesser Christian might have felt that ruinous itch for power after two years on the throne, but when the king returned in 1149, Suger handed him the crown and went back to his abbatial life, which ended, after an illness, in 1151.
One thing that Abbot Suger never adequately understood—and in his defense, few understood this until the mid-twentieth century—was the spiritual benefit to be gained by employing pedestrian, mundane, materially impoverished, or aesthetically bizarre vessels in the worship of the Most High God. Indeed, his thoughts on the matter were decidedly pre-modern:
Every costlier or costliest thing should serve, first and foremost, for the administration of the Holy Eucharist. If golden pouring vessels, golden vials, golden little mortars used to serve, by the word of God or the command of the Prophet, to collect the blood of goats or the red heifer, how much more must golden vessels, precious stones, and whatever is most valued among all created things, be laid out, with continual reverence and full devotion, for the reception of the blood of Christ!
He also shows himself woefully ignorant of the immense dignity of man, who ought not kneel or otherwise abase himself—frankly, ought not inconvenience himself in any way—when approaching the sacramental Flesh, and with it the true and infinitely sacred presence, of his divine Savior:
Surely neither we nor our possessions suffice for this service. If, by a new creation, our substance were re-formed from that of the holy Cherubim and Seraphim, it would still offer an insufficient and unworthy service for so great and so ineffable a victim.
It turns out, though, that his society was not completely devoid of the minimalistic, primitivistic impulses that would reach such a vigorous state of fruition eight centuries after his death. Some, apparently, were so concerned that the soul be rich and radiant with virtue as to neglect the gleaming, golden objects whose visible perfections exist so that we might contemplate, through them, the invisible glories of the all-perfect God. To these forerunners of the modern spirit the abbot responded with wisdom that one would have thought perennial in the Church, but which succumbed—for a time—to the unusually harsh winter of a vain and discontented age:
The detractors also object that a saintly mind, a pure heart, a faithful intention ought to suffice for this sacred function; and we, too, explicitly and especially affirm that it is these that principally matter. [But] we profess that we must do homage also through the outward ornaments of sacred vessels, and to nothing in the world in an equal degree as to the service of the Holy Sacrifice, with all inner purity and with all outward splendor. [1]
Around the time of Abbot Suger’s death, a few days’ ride from the city where he lived, liturgical artisans were crafting some of the most charming and symbolically rich sacred vessels in the history of the western Church. Here is an example:
An object such as this is called a peristerium, from the Greek word for pigeon or dove. The more homegrown name is simply “Eucharistic dove.” This particular specimen, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art i New York City, is made of gilded copper, with the surface engraved and enameled so as to resemble feathers, though visual naturalism was clearly not the guiding principle in the choice of colors. If chains are attached to the plate underneath the dove, as shown here, it can be suspended near or even directly above the altar. As indicated by the letters “IHS,” the dove’s body includes a cavity, covered by a hinged lid, in which the Blessed Sacrament was reserved.
Below is another fine example, from the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.
Here the supporting plate has holes instead of thin extensions, and the shape of the chest and head is particularly dove-like and graceful.
The copper surface of this next piece, also from the Walters, is wonderfully vivid and golden, with etchings that appear simple yet are skillfully wrought and surprisingly reminiscent of a bird’s feathers. The artisan also created lovely and pleasantly subdued coloration on the wing.
The history of Eucharistic doves is not well understood. They are mentioned in passages from the Liber Pontificalis that date to the sixth or late fifth century [2], and we may presume that they were relatively common, at least in some regions of the western Church, during the early Middle Ages. But certainty here eludes us, because the artifactual record is highly restricted in both time and space: almost all of the surviving Eucharistic doves were produced in Limoges, France, in the first half of the thirteenth century.
More important for our purposes than their history is what they tell us about our Faith, and about the symbolical modes of belief and prayer that informed the entire Christian experience during the Age of Faith. To have a beautiful, golden dove suspended over one’s altar is to signify, with the sophisticated simplicity so characteristic of medieval culture, the presence and action of the Holy Spirit during the divine Sacrifice. It is also to suggest a world cleansed by the waters of the Flood, poured out in overwhelming abundance like the grace of God or like the Blood of Christ: “And the dove came to him in the eventide, and lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf that she had plucked, whereby Noah did know that the waters were abated upon the earth.” It is, furthermore, an allusion to the mystical continuity that joins the liturgical sacrifice of the New Covenant to the animal sacrifices of the Old: “He answered unto [Abram]: Take an heifer of three years old, and a she goat of three years old, and a three year old ram, a turtle dove also, and a young pigeon. He took therefore all these unto him, and divided them in the midst, and laid every piece one against another: but the birds divided he not.” It is even, perhaps, to evoke the Holy Virgin, most blessed and beautiful above all women, and prefigured by the bride of whom Solomon sings in his Song of Songs: “Behold, thou art fair, my love: behold, thou art fair: thine eyes are as doves.”
And finally, when the Body of the Savior was placed within these winged tabernacles of the Middle Ages, symbolic realities converged in an artistic retelling of the Incarnation: the cavity within the dove signified the Virgin’s womb, such that the dove itself signified both the Virgin and her divine Spouse, whose union produced the sacred humanity of Jesus Christ and has now received it, to honor and protect, from the hands of the priest—whose labor at the altar is itself a sacramental incarnation. How profound, the unsounded depths of our Catholic Tradition; how sublime, the holy and poetic rites of our fathers. Behold, thou art fair, my love: behold, thou art fair, O liturgy ever ancient, ever new.
NOTES
1. These three quotations are from Erwin Panofsky (ed., trans.), Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures, Princeton University Press (1946), pp. 65, 67.
2. See the entries for Popes Sylvester (314–335) and Innocent (401–417).
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