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Defacement: Practical Theology, Politics, or Prejudice: The Case of the North Portal of Bourges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Margaret Jennings
Affiliation:
Margaret Jennings is a professor of English at St. Joseph's College in New York.
Francis P. Kilcoyne
Affiliation:
Francis P. Kilcoyne is a member of the theology department of Boston College and Executive Director of Harvard's archaeological excavation in Ashkelon, Israel.

Extract

The Cathedral of St. Étienne at Bourges, which Ribault justly styles “un chef d'oeuvre gothique” (a Gothic masterpiece), did not escape the Huguenot depredations of 1562. Especially vulnerable to the pikes and pry-bars of the Reformers were the choir screen in front of the main altar, the north and south doorways commemorating respectively Mary in Majesty and Christ in Majesty, and several areas of the West facade: the jamb statues (whose subjects are currently unknown), the spandrel sculptures under the dado that celebrated events of the Christian scriptures and of the book of Genesis, and the five extensively carved tympana dedicated from right to left as one faces them:

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 2003

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References

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2. The Presentation of the Virgin Miniature by Jean Colombe (from the Trés-Riche Heures of the Duc de Berry) indicates that jamb statues decorated at least three doorways of the West facade. Colombe's depiction, however, is inaccurate in many respects and may be highly imaginative. See Bayard, Tanya, Bourges Cathedral: The West Portals (New York: Garland, 1976), plate XXXVI.Google Scholar

3. The original tympanum—probably depicting the legend of a local saint—was destroyed when the north tower of the cathedral fell in 1506; we are describing the one in place in 1562. (The same comments apply to the spandrel sculptures.)

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113. Ibid., 257–76.

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116. Ibid., 195 and 157.

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