The monastery of St-Denis, today in the northern limits of modern Paris, is famous for the creation of Gothic as it first appeared in the art program worked out by Abbot Suger from about 1125 to 1144.' This program is especially renowned for its innovations in artistic form in the various media of architecture, sculpture, and stained glass. But it is no less significant for the important role played by certain aspects of its conceptual basis in die artistic culture of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Until recently, Suger's new program was generally thought to be the principal initial source of the reintroduction into Western European visual art of the widespread use of "allegory" or typology or, as it was put by one scholar, "symbolism," after hundreds of years of disuse. While such sweeping assertions can no longer be considered valid in regard to the exegetical level of allegory per se, Suger's program does very much seem to be the principal initial source of a new elite art - at first in the very public claims of an exegetically based monumental art "accessible only to die litterati" that is, understandable only to the spiritually literate choir monk, and then, later, in the widespread use of a more or less similar art by a segment of the newly emerging urban class on the basis of a certain participation in religious literary culture. The use of exegesis in visual art at St-Denis has been studied in relation to die interpretation of the particular artworks in which it was employed.'1 And, more important for our purposes, it has been examined as a jus tifi cation by Suger of his new art program in response to the early twelfth-century controversy over art.4 Yet the dieoretical underpinning of this justification - in a sense, the intellectual/spiritual concept that prompted the use of exegesis in the first place, something that would have been very apparent to the educated contemporary viewer - and its implications have never been taken into consideration in an overall reading of the program.

Inventing the Exegetical Stained-Glass Window: Suger, Hugh of St. Victor, and the Construction of a New Elite Art at St-Denis

Suger (abbot 1122-51) was one of the leading ecclesiastical politicians of his time, and St-Denis was perhaps the richest and most important monastery in the French realm in the twelfth century.5 Early on in his abbacy, around the time that he was working out his art program, he was confronted by an important controversy over the monastic use of art, which apparently shaped certain fundamental aspects of his program.'' In this controversy, as most articulately put forth by Bernard of Clairvaux in his famous Apologia (1 125), the monastic use of art was challenged on a number of different levels, from the use of art to attract donations to expenditure on art as being opposed to the care of the poor.7 Suger responded to a number of these challenges in his writings, typically with traditional justifications. But the criticisms that he addressed most innovatively were his n on traditional justifications: die equation of luxurious ari with materialism and the challenge that art acted as a spiritual distraction to the monk.8

The idea of an active Pseudo-Dionysian light mysticism in the new windows of St-Denis (in the new east end of the church, consecrated 1 144; Fig. 1) - never widely accepted in Britain or continental Europe - is increasingly being called into question in the United States. In the mystical diought of Pseudo-Dionysius, a Syrian mystic who wrote about 500, human intelligence is said to share the same nature with matter, and so has to make use of what is material in order to advance toward "divine realities." This necessitates an acceptance of the material in the form of a symbol - light being one of many such symbols given by Pseudo-Dionysius - followed by a transcending of the material, die process being known as anagogy. In this system of thought, meaning comes about not through its investment in the symbol by the believer, but rather through the nature of the symbol itself as an authentic and immediate expression of divine reality. This is, however, not the conceptual basis in Suger's literarily based stainedglass windows. These windows employ the Augustinian sign, in which meaning is quite straightforwardly invested by the viewer, typically from Scripture and scriptural exegesis - the essential characteristic of Suger's written description of his windows9 - not the Pseudo-Dionysian symbol, which is not a symbol in the traditional sense of being image-based and which is typically unrelated to Scripture. Yet, at the same time, Suger superficially invokes the thought of Pseudo-Dionysius, the patron saint of his abbey, though only in a more or less uncomprehending way, to justify die materialism of his program in response to die current controversy over the monastic use of art. In other words, the consummate politician Suger - today widely believed to have authored or overseen the writing of a number of forged charters in order to represent his abbey in a more favorable position in die institutional struggles of the time10 - was simply performing one of the most common of political acts: the manipulation of ideological claims, a practice that is seen as regularly in the public affairs of the twelfth century as it is in the twenty-first, for those who care to look.

Nevertheless, although the concept of the Augustinian sign may explain die theoretical nature of the key exegetical works of art at St-Denis, it does not explain the theoretical basis of Suger's actual justification ofthat art, a justification fundamentally related to his defense of the criticism of art as a spiritual distraction to die monk. In his De administratione of 1150, a staple of virtually every introductory course on medieval art, in a passage absolutely charged with a spectrum of justifications of the use of art, Suger says diat because of the use of "allegories [allegoriarum]" in a new figurai panel installed on the main altar, this work is "accessible only to the littemti."11 The word litteratus was a technical term in twelfthcentury monasticism that referred specifically to the literate choir monk, a meaning not realized by previous scholarship.12 This was said of an art so complex in its religious literary basis that its very complexity could be used as a justification of the use of art by monks in its claim to function on the same level as scriptural study, something that was unquestioned as a legitimate monastic pursuit.

While Suger's art program is conceptually quite diverse, his written claim to an art accessible only to the literate monk is founded on acore of exegetically based works of art to which he draws attention in De administratione and in which the Life of Moses window and the so-caUed Allegorical window figure prominently (Fig. 2).13 Exegesis was the essential scholarly methodology for literary, particularly biblical, analysis in the Middle Ages. Depending on the position of the individual, it traditionally consists of either three or four categories or levels of analysis. When four levels of analysis are used, these follow a sequence of ascent from the historical (or literal) to the allegorical, the tropologica! (sometimes called the moral), and finally the anagogical (this anagogy not being the same anagogy of Pseudo-Dionysian thought). When three levels are observed, the sequence ascends from the historical to the allegorical and, as the final level, to the tropological. A three-level exegesis was the method normally practiced by Suger's contemporary Hugh of St. Victor, the leading theologian of Europe during the latter part of his life and a figure whose thought has been shown to be present in the west central portal of SL-Denis.14 Since Suger never wrote down his own views on exegesis and since the evidence suggests that Hugh's thought was important in this aspect of Suger's program as well, it is helpful to understand the three levels of exegetical methodology as taught by Hugh at the prestigious school of the abbey of St. Victor in Paris at the time that Suger was working out his program. According Lo Hugh, the historical level is the immediate sense of the narration of events contained in a given biblical text.13 The allegorical level reveals how what is said to have been done in such a text signifies something else done in the past, present, or future. And the tropological level indicates through what is said to have been done in this text something else that ought to be done.

In visual art, reference to what might be called the historical level of Scripture had been widely used since before the co-opiation of the Christian Church by the Roman imperial government. Allegory had also been employed in Christian art from the early days, but although it never completely disappeared, its use declined dramatically, and it was no longer common at the lime of Suger's program.10 However, the point is not whether there was a complete break in the use of allegory before the art of Suger's program, whether other, essentially isolated examples of the use of allegory existed in the hundreds of years after its general decline in use and immediately before its striking appearance at StDenis. What is of importance in understanding this new, widespread interest in the use of exegetical visual art in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries - which would become a major movement in medieval artistic culture - is what its source and impetus were. The general acceptance of St-Denis as the source of this new art on the basis of clear formal and iconographie transmission is widely accepted and noncontroversi al. But the impetus for the systematic reappearance of the use of exegesis in art at the abbey involves decidedly more than just a simple interest in allegory per se. For it seems that nothing less than a new conception of the religious work of art was taking place at St-Denis.

At the same time that Suger was being challenged by the controversy over the monastic use of art, northern France was experiencing an exceptional economic expansion. With this came an unprecedented artistic expansion that created new expectations of what the limits of an art program might be materially. This combination of conceptual need and material potential appears to have pushed Suger - and, with him, Hugh or the thought of Hugh - in a new direction, beyond current artistic models to the invention of the stained-glass window. To begin with, when I say that Suger's windows are exegetical, I mean that they engage fully with exegesis as a methodological vehicle for visual presentation in that his program systematically and perhaps even self-consciously employs all levels of exegesis, not just the historical or the allegorical, but now also explicitly the tropological. Methodologically, this goes beyond the traditional Christian use of art - the narration (historiam) of "things done" for those unable to read the Bible and the elicitation of compunction, as articulated by Gregory the Great- just as it does the traditional use of metaphor (as distinct from exegetical allegory), generally speaking.17 And it goes beyond it spiritually in that rather than just conveying the events of the history of salvation (the historical level) or even revealing their significance as foreshadowing (the allegorical), either of which might be compunction evoking, it actively prompts the user to the next level of exegetical interpretation, the tropological, and so leads that person to act on the moral meaning inherent in the scriptural source. Yet this alone is not what distinguishes the art of St-Denis from so much of the allegorical art of its immediate past and present. Significandy, the new art of St-Denis was also monumental, unlike the allegorical art that appeared in luxury manuscripts intended for the liturgy and that, therefore, largely remained limited in effect to a few clerical users. It was, practically speaking, public, in contrast to other monastic art beyond public access. It was more or less systematically deployed, as distinct from the occasional manifestation of so much of recent allegorical art, something that must have been quite conspicuous to those encountering the art program of St-Denis in the beginning. And it was especially conveyed through the newly exploited artistic medium of the stained-glass window, a vehicle that had an enormous impact on contemporary artistic culture in general and that was, no doubt, exceptional in this new role in attracting and holding the attention of viewers. The sudden and conscious combination of all these different aspects to create an effectively new art form is what I mean by the invention of the exegetical stained-glass window.

All this raises a number of questions. Aside from acting as a justification of his new program, what exactly did Suger's claim of an art accessible only to the literate monk entail in the sophisticated world of monastic intellectual politics of the twelfth century? Did the great scholar and exegete Hugh or his thought play a role in this new program? How did the claim of an art accessible only to the litterati operate in one of Suger's exegetical works of art? What is the relation of the theoretical basis of Suger's claim to new twelfth-century thought on spiritual hierarchy that is typically correlated with the senses and sometimes associated with art? What can this tell us not only about the works of art at St-Denis but also about the nature of visual art during this remarkable period of artistic change when we relate differing understandings of this same hierarchy to a representative spectrum of contemporary monastic images? What were the ramifications of this particular reintroduction of exegesis, an extremely common literary form of thought, into lay visual culture at this time of great demographic transformation? What does the invention of the exegetical stained-glass window at St-Denis, one of the most original art programs of Western culture, reveal about the nature of originality in the twelfth century? What does all this say about the roles of Suger and Hugh in the invention of the exegetical stained-glass window and in the construction of a new elite art, more broadly speaking?

Or, put another way, what was Suger's claim and what was the reality of that claim, at least as we might see them today?

The Claim: "Accessible Only to the Utterati"

In his De administrations, Suger writes that he had a body of new windows made for his church, implying that it was a series that began (incipit) with a Tree of Jesse window (Fig. 3), believed to have originally been sited in the eastern axial ambulatory chapel and to have ended with the western rose, above the main entrance. 1S Even if this involved only his new additions of the west and east ends, it would have been an enormous number of windows it' every window "above as well as below" received new glass aL this time, as the passage seems to indicate.19 Yet of all these windows, however many there may have been, Suger chose to discuss only two in his relatively lengthy writings on the art program: the Life of Moses window and the Allegorical window, both lancets, each composed of five vertically arranged roundels. The reason that he did this was, as mentioned above, to justify a use of art considered excessive in some influential circles of contemporary monasticism.2'1 Whatever the other windows of the program were like - and they ranged from the straightforwardly traditional to the essentially secular to the overtly ornamental - these two were meant to be accessible only to the litltrati, their use being meant to be seen as similar to scriptural study. Scriptural study largely consisted of exegetical study at this time, and, to reach his end, Suger turned, in part, to Hugh, the leading intellectual force of the highly respected abbey of St. Victor (an Augustinian house of canons regular on the Left Bank in Paris), considered by no less a theologian than Bonaventure over a century later to be one of the greatest exegetes of all time, comparing him to such figures as Gregory the Great and Augustine.21 All of the panels in die famous Life of Moses and the Allegorical windows at St-Denis rise to the claim of being similar to scriptural study, and there are a number of apparent traces of Hugh's thought in several of these - some stronger, some weaker. But only one, as far as I can tell, can be directly attributed to the thought of this contemporary scholar, permitting us to reconstruct the kind of full reading of a given topic of a very circumscribed passage from Scripture that was so common and popular in contemporary sermons, although my intent here is a visual reading of the image and nothing more. That is, only one panel allows us to reconstruct a full reading from a single, contemporary, local source rather than relying on the more common modern practice of searching through the body of patristic literature for whatever might appear applicable, whether there is a historical connection or not. This is the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit panel, with which the Allegorical window is believed to have originally culminated (Fig. 4).y" It is also a panel that is deeply involved with the issues mentioned above.

The image of the seven gifts at St-Denis has been called an "iconographie peculiarity" by Louis Grodecki, the distinguished French historian of stained glass.23 Although partially restored, enough of the twelfth-century glass remains to assure us of the main composition and its crucial details.24 The composition consists of a central standing figure of Christ crowned, with Synagoga on his left and Ecclesia on his right. With his left hand, Christ lifts a veil from Synagoga, who holds the tablets of the law and a long bent object identified by Grodecki as a stalk (tige). With his right hand. Christ crowns Ecclesia, who holds a book, a chalice, perhaps a Eucharistie host, and the remnants of what is thought to have once been a standard.20 The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit radiate from the figure of Christ in the form of doves in roundels, with one dove centered on Christ and the remaining six encircling it, all of these explicitly connected with the central dove by pronounced bands.

Grodecki relates this imagery to Apocalypse 5:6 and 5:12, which refer to the Lamb of the Apocalypse, whose seven horns and seven eyes are described as "the spirits of God," and which Grodecki calls "the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit."20 However, there is no lamb in the St-Denis panel, nor is Christ crowned mentioned in this passage, nor Ecclesia, nor Synagoga, nor, for that matter, do the "seven spirits of God" of Apocalypse correspond to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit as canonically understood (Isaiah 11:1-3) and discussed in the Early Christian and medieval literature on the virtues. Konrad Hoffmann, in turn, sees the panel as referring both to "the Spirit of the Lord" encompassing the world and to the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (among other things).27 But an image must be visually read, and the visual syntax here simply does not read as an image of die cosmos, the indispensable element for a syndesmos figure (Hoffmann's term), that is, an image of the Lord embracing the cosmos, nor does it evoke in any way the Holy Spirit coming upon the twelve apostles, a minimal enough expectation for an image of the Pentecost.28

There is no need, though, to stray from the locus classicus of the seven gifts, Isaiah 11:1-3, to explain this panel. The image does refer directly to Isaiah, and its "iconographie peculiarity" can be fully elucidated through the extant writings of Hugh. Grodecki notes that, around the time of the creation of the panel, the doves of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit were normally associated with either the Tree of Jesse, the throne of Solomon as the seat of Wisdom, or personifications of the seven virtues. What he neglected to point out is that the seven gifts had never before been conceived of in the same configuration found in Suger's panel, with one virtue centered on the body of Christ and all the others distinctly joined to it by broad bands. Nor did he attempt to address the question: If the window program of St-Denis already had one depiction of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, one that culminates the Tree of Jesse window (Fig. 5), why would a second, different version of the seven gifts be represented - and why, with Christ crowned, Synagoga, and Ecclesia?

The Tree of Jesse at St-Denis, one of the earliest, visualizes Isaiah 11:1-3 in its medieval Christian understanding quite closely."9 This passage tells how a stem with a flower will rise up from the root of Jesse (the father of King David), and how the spirit of the Lord will rest on this flower in the form of what came to be known as the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit: wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord (according to the Vulgate tradition). In the window, the (genealogical) root of Jesse is rendered as Jesse reclining at the bottom of the window, as if asleep. From him rises the stem (virga) composed of three successive kings, indicating the royal lineage of Christ, surmounted by the Virgin (virgo), herself of priestly lineage, with the flower of Christ at the top, from which branch forth the seven gifts in the form of doves reminiscent of the dove of the Holy Spirit. With the human, royal, and priestly lineage of Christ visually conveyed in the tree proper, the gifts that radiate from Christ like a continuation of the tree - like stamens of the flower, ready to disseminate their germinating powers - refer to the continued genealogical descent of Christ, although spiritual now rather than physical.30 Thus, the Tree of Jesse window, which Suger describes as beginning his window program, offers a genealogical view, as it were, of both the intervention of the second person of the Trinity in the history of salvation and the operation of one aspect of the works of restoration within it, a conception that culminates in the presentation of the gifts of the Holy Spirit (the third person of the Trinity) , made fully available to humankind only through this historical intervention. ("The works of restoration" is a significant concept in Hugh's thought, which sees "everything that has ever been done" as encompassed hi two "works": the works of creation and the works of restoration. The works of creation consist of the world and all that helps brings about the alienation of humankind from its creator. The works of restoration comprise the Incarnation of the Word [Christ] and everything given by God that will restore humankind to its creator.31)

If the Tree of Jesse window puts forth a "macrocosmic" view of the seven gifts, one made in reference to all of humankind throughout the course of the history of salvation, at the beginning of the stained-glass program, the Seven Gifts panel at the culmination of the Allegorical window presents a "microcosmic" reading, relating just how these gifts of virtues may be acquired by the litleratus, the individual choir monk. A deep and abiding interest in and analysis of the various virtues permeate Hugh's work, a body of thought that includes a short treatise devoted specifically to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Although much of this is mainstream, the way in which Hugh reconfigured it caused it to be seen as original in his own time.32 Clearly, Suger was under no compulsion to "illustrate" any of Hugh's writings, including his treatise on the seven gifts. But, equally as clearly, the same uniqueness that characterizes Hugh's work on the virtues informs the basic conceptual dynamic that underlies Suger's panel - this "iconographie peculiarity" - and so speaks to the connection between the two.

According to Hugh, the goal of the spiritually striving individual is the restoration of the divine likeness that became damaged with original sin, original sin ultimately being the reason for the need for the Church and Scripture in general and for monasticism in particular.33 The process of "the true restoration of humankind" consists of two things: knowledge of divine things and the practice of virtue.34 These are, generally speaking, best approached through allegory and tropology, the two highest of Hugh's three levels of exegesis. In this process, the pursuit of knowledge is seen as preparatory, something for beginners. The practice of the virtues, on the other hand, constitutes the highest level of spiritual attainment, and their acquisition is specifically conceived of as for the advanced.35 In fact, the monastery or house of canons regular is nothing other than "a school of the virtues."36

On what might be called a practical level, the source of the virtues is Scripture in that the subject matter of Scripture is the works of restoration,37 and true restoration consists, as I have said, in knowledge of divine things and in the practice of virtue. In order to acquire these virtues, one must seek knowledge of them from Scripture (which, at times, enumerates them, as with die seven gifts), a process that, ultimately, the believer tropologically understands as the assimilation of the individual into the mystical body of Christ.38 But on a more immediate level, it is Christ himself who provides the model of the virtues.39 He thus does this both pragmatically, as "the giver of the Old and the New Law" through Scripture, and mystically, as die Wisdom that must be sought.4" In regard to the seven gifts in particular, they exist uniquely in Christ, for "he alone received the Holy Spirit in an unlimited way."'11 At the same time, there is "one Spirit that is seven spirits," one Spirit that is concurrently the spirit of wisdom, understanding, counsel, and so on, all of these then operating "as one and the same spirit."42 Before the coming of the Spirit, the spiritually striving individual does not see, being blind, and so never looks on what needs to be looked on. But with the Spirit, who "comes through Christ," this person becomes suddenly illuminated and now sees things for what they truly are.43 And this is exactly what is conveyed in the Seven Gifts panel.

While the two depictions of the seven gifts at St-Denis are among the earliest, the one that is part of the Tree of Jesse more or less follows the configuration most commonly found before and contemporary with the window program. In this configuration, the seven gifts appear either as branches of the Tree of Jesse in a continuation of the metaphor of Isaiah 1 1 : 1-3 or as simply orbiting the model of die virtues, Christ, or as both, as in the Tree of Jesse at St-Denis.44 But the Seven Gifts panel, whose composition is unique, goes further in providing a visual gloss on the source, operation, and acquisition of these virtues.

To begin with, Christ is portrayed as crowned specifically in order to indicate his aspect as the Davidic king of Isaiah 11:1-3 - this is why he wears the crown; there is no reference to "the spirits of God" of Apocalypse, as Grodecki would have it. Although Christ is thus shown as the immediate source of the virtues, their configuration conveys more than merely their number or source in Christ. With one virtue in the center but with a total of seven, it visualizes Hugh's thought that there is "one Spirit that is seven spirits." The bands, with their pronounced structure, that so overtly bind them together - plainly serving as more than a simple design element - articulate the closely related idea that these virtues all operate "as one and the same spirit." Their relation to Christ - centered on his mystical body, in fact, on his heart - emphasizes that he is die model for the acquisition of these virtues, the source, that "he alone received the Holy Spirit in an unlimited way," this fullness radiating out to all from its source.

This particular expression of Christ as the source of the virtues, however, is uniquely articulated by his relation to the figures of Synagoga and Ecclesia. Synagoga and Ecclesia paired can contribute to the visualization of a number of different ideas, but in the specific context of Christ and the virtues they form part of a relatively complex representation of both the Church and the word of God throughout time. Hugh wrote extensively on the subject of the Church as existing throughout the history of salvation.45 While the Church was founded with Adam and Eve, Synagoga here represents the Church as it existed after the Covenant between God and Abraham and before the coming of Christ; that is, it represents the Old Covenant, with a particular set of religious expectations traditionally seen as tending toward the ritualistic, according to the medieval Christian view. The figure of Ecclesia refers to the Church after the coming of Christ, with the establishment of the New Covenant, with its new, more spiritual expectations, as well as the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ indicated in the host and chalice. Both figures emphasize the written word of God as expressed in both Covenants in that Synagoga holds the tablets of the Old Law and Ecclesia holds a book that, under the circumstances, would seem to be the New Law in the form of the Gospels or New Testament (rather than the Bible per se or the Book of Life). This is not the traditional triumph of Ecclesia over Synagoga.46 True, Synagoga pulls back, resisting Christ as the Messiah.47 And she holds the hollow, crushed reed of Isaiah 42:3, which indicates the medieval Christian conception of Jewish religious practice as hollow and having lost its perfection through an emphasis on ritualism.48 But the full partnership of Synagoga in this conception of the acquisition of the virtues is made unmistakably clear in that the roundels of the virtues radiate as much toward her as they do toward Ecclesia. This idea is fundamentally reinforced through the treatment of the garments of all three figures, with Synagoga largely in purple, the color of royalty; Ecclesia mostly in green, the color of new life; and Christ, "the giver of the Old and the New Law" and the mystical body of the Church throughout time, evenly combining the two.49

Thus, both Synagoga and Ecclesia share a basic essence in the truth, according to Christian thought, even if the Christian hierarchy is overt, even if Synagoga is shown as "blind" before the coming of the Holy Spirit and Christ, who lifts her veil, illuminating her, which is exactly the same dynamic that takes place with the spiritually striving individual.00 For this is, ultimately, a microcosmic view of the seven gifts, as I have said. In the course of the successful acquisition of the virtues, the spiritually striving individual mystically assimilates himself or herself into the body of Christ, Christ being both the Wisdom that is to be sought above all other things and "the reward of virtue."51 In this process, the likeness of God is restored in the individual who is now no longer blind and begins to "see," and in this way Wisdom (Christ) builds its home in that person's hearth This is why the central (or first) virtue of the panel is centered on the heart of Christ, the Wisdom of God, in the same way that the first virtue mentioned in Isaiah 11:1-3 is wisdom. This panel from the so-called Allegorical window is, therefore, not actually an allegorical image at all, as is commonly stated, but a tropological one, tropology being the level of exegetical understanding that begins to provide "that through which to imitate his [God's] perfection," in this case, the virtues, which in general Hugh explicitly associates with tropology.53

Fairly recently, two scholars, Andreas Speer and Christoph Markschies, one in philosophy and the other in theology, have demanded a word-for-word dependence of Suger's writings or inscriptions on Hugh's texts as proof of the presence of Hugh's thought in the art program of St-Denis.54 However, it would be ahistorical to expect Suger to get out the written works of a living or only very recently deceased contemporary and quote them verbatim, like a modern scholar writing an article on, say, philosophy or theology. Rather than expecting the Seven Gifts panel to illustrate a passage from a particular text of Hugh's, it should instead be seen as being distinctly informed by his thought, as being informed by a particular articulation of widely held and long-expressed ideas by one of the most famous theologians of the time, who was also quite local. It is logically in the visual rather than the textual that the presence of Hugh's thought is to be found in a program of visual art - that is, in the works of art themselves - such a thing naturally not typically being detectable with the type of philological approach demanded by these two strictly textual scholars. Nor could such an approach suggest, in any event, why this panel is so complex, why the exegetical art of StDenis was meant to be "accessible only to the lillerati," or what this meant in the context of monastic artistic culture in the early twelfth century.

The Reality: The Three Levels of Spirituality

From the Gospels to Paul, from Augustine to Gregory the Great, the idea of different levels of spiritual status constituted a cornerstone of early and medieval Christianity and, more especially for our purpose, a traditional component of monastic culture.r'r' In general, this spiritual hierarchy tended to be expressed in terms of a simple dichotomy of the uninitiate (the layperson) and the initiate (the monk) in which the claim to elite knowledge was central- As used here, the uninitiate is understood as being both illiterate properly speaking and spiritually illiterate; that is, he or she would be spiritually uneducated beyond a simple understanding of a handful of stories from the Bible, the most basic doctrine, and the sacraments that most pertain to the layperson. The initiate is assumed to be both literate properly speaking and spiritually literate; in other words, on the basis of the ability to read and participate in a literary culture, he or she would possess or claim to possess elite knowledge of the divine and the Christian religion. We see this same idea of spiritual status based on elite knowledge obtained through reading in the Life of Benedict window in the crypt at Si-Denis (Fig. 6). Here, the books held by the two monks who witness the apotheosis of Benedict serve to introduce a distinct level of qualification, in that - being so prominent visually yet not mentioned in the famous textual source for this story - their purpose is to affirm the literate status of the privileged monks.51' Whether or not the typical um'nitiate visitor would have recognized this particular visual statement is uncertain. What does seem certain is that such a visitor would have understood the literal level of a number of the most basic of the biblical narratives in other of Suger's new windows: for example, the Infancy of Christ window (Fig. 7). And this uninitiate would, no doubt, have been visually overwhelmed with the sensory saturation of the holy place through the impact of the entire program, including such "ornamental" windows as the Griffin windows (Fig. 8). But, according to Suger's claim, certain aspects of the program were reserved, as it were, for the initiate. Imagery such as the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit panel were beyond the understanding of the uninitiate, accessible only to the lilterati. This would not have decreased its general impact on the uninitiate, however, who would have implicitly recognized that the monks knew the meaning of these images even if he or she did not, a dynamic that asserted the monks' elite knowledge and affirmed their privileged social status as well as the uninitiate's own inferior position. Indeed, properly run Benedictine monasteries at this time were open to the public for only a very few hours on a normal day - typically at matins, for the masses of prime and terce, and at vespers57 - something that would have exponentially increased the impact of the newly developed art form of the stained-glass window in the public's perception, both visually and in regard to the elite claims of its content. It is easy to imagine the great crowds of unwashed and awed lay pilgrims and other uninitiate visitors pressed together during the great fair of St-Denis that coincided with the feast day of the saint, packed into the double ambulatory and wondering what these visually powerful images meant to the monks, to the initiates, who spent so much of their lives in their presence.

But the artistic culture of twelfth-century monasticism was not quite so straightforward as a simple dichotomy of the uninitiate and initiate. In claiming to be accessible only to the litterati, Suger's panel and the other exegetically based works of art in his program acted as a statement of self-identity not just to the Lininitiate but to the full spectrum of the initiated as well. And among the initiates, a more differentiated, threelevel spiritual hierarchy was currently being asserted within monastic and canonial culture, and it received wide recognition. With aspects that go back as far as Origen,58 it apparently owed its more fully developed contemporary manifestation to the systematization of thought so strong during the twelfth century. Three of the greatest monastic and canonial writers of these very years - all of them a part of the regional monastic and canonial subculture of which St-Denis was a part - have given descriptions of this hierarchy, each presented in a somewhat different manner according to the purposes of the author, but each still recognizably referring to the same, three-level spiritual hierarchy.

William of St-Thierry was a close friend of Bernard of Clairvaux and a traditional Benedictine who, when abbot, left his own monastery to become a Cistercian monk. In his well-known Golden Epistle (1144-45), written to the Carthusians of Mont-Dieu, he discusses this three-level hierarchy from the standpoint of cutting-edge monasticism, identifying the succession of levels with the long-established philosophical/theological terms of animal man, rational man, and spiritual man.:>9 A vehicle used to distinguish spiritual status, all of these states are positive. For example, animal man represents the spiritually lowest level of monk, a level that is characterized by a dependence on die senses, essentially a predominance of the animal component found in the definition of the human being as a "rational animal." The spiritual level of rational man is one in which the monk no longer seeks "the truth" through corporeal eyes but looks for it through reason or rationality, an assertion of the other component of the "rational animal," rationality traditionally being seen as a fundamental aspect of the Christian concept of the human being as made in the image of God. Spiritual man, in turn, rises above mere human rationality, which is no more than the thought of damaged human nature, in the quest for the divine, a quest that, at this level, even words or mental images impede.6" The place of art in this hierarchy is strictly limited. Only the lowest level of monk, animal man, may employ "works of art or architecture [opificiu vei aedifi«]," which might still be used either appropriately (out of necessity) or inappropriately (for curiosity, enjoyment, or pride).fil But even if properly used, this use is explicitly restricted to the level of beginner, such an interaction being "unforgivable" in the intermediate state of rational man.*"2 For even something devoid of imagery, such as monumental architecture, can cause the monk to regress in his spiritual ascent.63 Such a theory, articulated by a person who often wrote respectfully of art and especially of architecture,1'4 relegates all forms of art to the lowest reputable spiritual level and generally assumes their absence in a spiritually frontline monastery, that is, one following William's own views.

Bernard takes up the same triadic hierarchy but, presenting it from the point of view of one responsible for all levels of spiritual hierarchy, the pope, introduces a veiy distinct variation. In his De ccmsideratione (1152-53), a book of advice to the first Cistercian pope, Eugenius III, a former monk of Clairvaux, Bernard discusses not spiritual states, as William does, but different methods of spiritual ascent - essentially the means of attaining or remaining in those states."5 These different methods represent different approaches io the main theme of the book, consideratio, defined by Bernard as a specific form of contemplation that seeks religious truth.66 Although he does not directly address art in this analysis, the emphasis he puts on the senses in his discussion and his generally remarkable awareness of the spectrum of issues involved in a particular subject suggest diat, given the context, his thought here could be understood to encompass art. Part of this context is his recognition that the pope has a responsibility to both "the wise and the foolish," that is, to both the initiate and the uninitiate, precisely the same justification he used in the Apologia for the use of religious art within the secular Church.'17 It is to this same uninitiate that Bernard refers in his description of the first method of spiritual ascent, the "directive [dispensativa]" in noting that this method should be used for "the salvation of many." This method is characterized as one that primarily employs the senses in its progress toward the divine, being directive in the sense of directing or managing "the senses and the things of the senses in an orderly and supportive manner" in contemplation.118 While the senses were traditionally allowed in orthodox Christianity in the pursuit of the divine, typically through reflection on God's creation, their application here to the salvation of "many" implies that this method tacitly includes religious ait and architecture within its purview, something Bernard accepts elsewhere. The second method, the "estimative [aestimal-ivfi]" is one that employs advanced learning in its estimation or assessment of the meaning of things in the contemplative quest for God. It also employs the senses, but in this context in conjunction with "philosophy," commonly thought of in the twelfth century as advanced learning in general, and probably in reference here to reflection on God's creation based on advanced learning in the physical sciences and theology. In the third method (or state, in this case), the "speculative [speculativa]," the senses and "things" (physical things or mental images) are entirely left behind in sudden flights of contemplation to the sublime in which one "speculates," or sees - like those who see (spéculantes) the glory of the Lord in 2 Corinthians 3: IS.69 Thus, like William, Bernard recognizes the legitimacy of the use of die senses - and apparently of art - in the lowest spiritual level. But, unlike William, he accepts a role for the senses in conjunction with advanced learning in the second spiritual level. He associates the second level closely with the first because of the role of the senses in it, and he places the second level higher because of the role of advanced learning in it and, in the end, the same rationality identified with the second level by William. Even though the second level is a method of spiritual ascent accessible only to die educated, the spiritually striving individual would understand it as limiting because of the prominent role of the senses in it.70

Both William's hierarchy of spiritual status and Bernard's triad of spiritual methods present rather rigid, successively attained hierarchic levels that represent spiritual movement as either upward or static (in the sense of remaining in one's own spiritual level). Hugh has left behind a large body of writings, remarkable for the consistency of its thought, in which he discusses the same three-level hierarchy in regard to both spiritual status and method.71 In these texts, he sometimes takes up one aspect of the hierarchy and sometimes another, just as writers might do today. But it is quite clear that, whereas he sees the three-level hierarchy in terms remarkably similar to those of William and Bernard, his conception of it is at the same time much broader and much more flexible, especially the purpose of the different levels and the movement of the spiritually striving person from one level to another and back again. For example, in a discussion of "the three kinds of vision of the rational soul" in his In Salamis Ecclesiastm (ca. 1137-40), Hugh speaks of these levels not so much as three distinct spiritual methods - though they are unquestionably related to the same hierarchy of methods taken up by Bernard - as succeeding levels of awareness thai operate within the contemplative process.72 In Hugh's system, spiritual awareness moves from cognition to meditation to contemplation. Very briefly put, cognition (cognitio} is the awareness of something "when the thing itself, through its image, is suddenly presented to the consciousness, either through the senses or arising from the memory." Meditation (meditatio) is "the methodical and discerning reconsideration of cognition, whether endeavoring to clarify something obscure or searching to penetrate something hidden." Contemplation (contemplatio) is "the acute and unrestrained gazing of the soul in a way that extends over every aspect of the thing under examination."'3 This is beautifully visualized by Hugh in a triadic series of personifications of these levels in his pedagogical painting The Mystic Ark, an astonishingly complex image that depicts all space, all time, all matter, all human history, and all spiritual striving and that explains explicitly through the three levels of exegesis both the nature of humankind's alienation from its creator and the means for its spiritual return (Figs. 9-11). 74 In this triad of personifications, the image of God in which the soul was created takes the form of a vessel. Damaged by the spiritual ignorance incurred with original sin, it is first discovered in its broken state by Cognition. The methodical recognition (or re-cognition) of this is realized by Meditation, who gathers the broken pieces of the vessel. Finally, the "craftsman" Contemplation melts these pieces down and recasts them "in the mold of the divine likeness." At St-Denis itself, in the panel of Moses Receiving the Law in the Life of Moses window, tins same theory of three spiritual levels from The Mystic Ark seems to be the general source for the three levels of people (hierarchically understood in relation to Mount Sinai, just as described in The Mystic Ark) , with Aaron or Joshua - significantly and contrary to traditional iconographie tradition - holding a book as a sign of elite knowledge as the basis of the relatively privileged position of this second level of the hierarchy (Fig. 12).75 What is distinctive in Hugh's conception of the contemplative process, arid in stark contrast to the systems of William and Bernard, is that the different levels are inherently permeable: that is, participation by the individual in all levels is understood. Indeed, according to Hugh, it is not possible to remain in the highest level and it is unacceptable to permanently exist in the lower two; the result is a constant struggle in the acquisition of the virtues in which the spiritually striving person operates now aï one level and now at another.71' At the same time, as he wrote in a book dedicated to the theory and practice of learning, this acquisition of the virtues is something that is primarily for those who are already advanced in learning (eruditi).77 Thus, the contemplative process he details is actually for the educated monk or canon regular, however much he strives to avoid the exclusionary tone of the systems of William and Bernard. And so, while Hugh's view is perhaps less "ideal" than the systems of William and Bernard, which ostensibly present spiritual striving in the upward direction only, it is more "real," in that the same individual, while remaining committed, participates with a certain real-world fluctuation at all three different levels at different times in his or her spiritual life.

How does this apply to the art of St-Denis? By invoking such traditional themes in his writing as art being for the honor of God and the reciprocal nature of religious art to justify the use of art at St-Denis,7B Suger did little more than propose the same justifications for religious art that had been offered since the beginnings of Christianity. But in putting forth the non traditional justification of the use of an by monks through the claim of an art that was accessible only to the litterati, he was asserting the legitimacy of his position on the basis of a spiritual hierarchy. Even if he meant this in reference to the simple dichotomy of the uninitiate and initiate mentioned earlier, the high visibility of Suger and St-Denis within the world of monastic politics would have made his program subject to an application of the widely recognized spiritual hierarchy just discussed, whether he wanted it or not. And in the world of the initiate, the place of art within this widely recognized three-level hierarchy had ramifications for the art of St-Denis beyond its initial claim of being an art accessible only to the litterati.

Where William, Bernard, and Hugh all agree is in the view that the senses are appropriate to the first spiritual level and inappropriate to the third. Where they differ is in the transition between the two: the second level. William allows no use of the senses and Bernard permits them only in conjunction with advanced learning. But Hugh, although he certainly would not see the use of the senses as characteristic of the second level, does not disapprove of their use at this level. He shares the traditional opinion of William and Bernard that words and even mental images impede the spiritually striving person at the highest level.(TM) Yet he himself did not hesitate to employ imagery in his own courses at St. Victor for canons unquestionably more advanced than ihe beginner or animal man of William.*" That is, it seems that Hugh, whose thought is strongly present in Suger's program, could affirm that even mental images impede the highest spiritual level but still find certain types of visual art to be within the intellectual/spiritual parameters of the advanced canon regular and monk. In strong contrast to William's and Bernard's exclusionary views of monastic spirituality, this is an intellectual/ spiritual culture in which art did have a place - not necessarily for all, and certainly not all the time, but it was a freer view of twelfthcentury institutional culture, whether canonial or monastic.

How, then, might the monastic art of the early twelfth century be understood in the context of the situation I describe of a generally recognized use of art for the first level and a contested use for the second? To begin with, as William noted, even with the first spiritual level, art could be used inappropriately or appropriately. The gratuitous portrayals of monsters, animals, and nonreligious human figures singled out by Bernard in his famous criticism of monastic art in the Apologia were no longer acceptable as newly commissioned, major works of art at monasteries that claimed to be contemporary by the time of Suger's program.81 As their gradual disappearance indicates, this would have included any number of recent works of art that undeniably claimed an underlying spiritual message - even ostensibly related to the acquisition of the virtues - from such strikingly distracting images as the almost nocturnal depiction of spiritual struggle in the tonsured centaur-monk of the Moralia in Job manuscript from Citeaux, the monastery where Bernard was professed, to the extreme personifications of the Despair capital of the heavily sculpted abbey church of Vézelay, both so valued today (Figs. 13, 14). 82 What would have been acceptable at this first level is the same sort of visual imagery described by William as allowable mental imagery for the animal man - representations of Christ's "humanity," such as his "birth, passion, and resurrection" - as well as that type of imagery so conspicuous by its absence in Bernard's Apologia, images of the Virgin, the saints, certain biblical scenes, and so on: in other words, exacdy what we see in the Infancy of Christ window at StDenis, with its conceptually undemanding narrative of the nativity of Christ (Fig. 7) .K3 Certainly, at one place or another and at one time or another, many monasteries recognized the basic principles within monastic culuire that advocated this mentality; the monastery of Cluny, for example, apparently took this position as an institution long before Bernard and the Cistercians. The evidence suggests that not only did Cluny have no inappropriate imagery in its abbey church, but its cloister, that place reserved for the monks alone, also is believed to have had no figurai sculpture whatsoever, something that may be the case even for the cloister of Vézelay.84

As to the second spiritual level, although there were unquestionably many complex works of art before Suger's program, as a conscious response to the challenges of the current controversy over art, one could not find a better example of an image that corresponds to this conception than Suger's Seven Gifts panel (Fig. 4). Predicated on an elite learning that is the visual equivalent of scriptural study, it patently manifests the application of the reason or rationality of William's rational man, the use of the senses in conjunction with learning of Bernard's estimative method, and the penetration of things obscure of Hugh's meditation. This is what allowed Suger to claim that his art was accessible only to the litterati. As Hugh wrote in about 1125,

In the same way that an illiterate who may look at an open book sees figures [but] does not understand the letters, so the foolish and carnal man who does not perceive those things which are of God [1 Corinthians 2:14] sees the external beauty in certain visible created things but does not understand the interior reason. However, he who is spiritual and is able to discern all things, in that he has considered the external beauty of the work, comprehends interiorly how wondrous the wisdom of the Creator is, ... The foolish man wonders at only the beauty in those things; but the wise man sees through that which is external, laying open the profound thought of divine wisdom. Just as in the same passage of Scripture the one will commend the color or the form of the figures, so the other will praise the sense and the signification.85

However, while Suger claimed spiritual elitism as a justification for that part of his art program to which he draws attention in his writings, the part that he leaves unmentioned - the Charlemagne window and the Griffin windows (Fig. 8), for example - contradicts his claims in a way that would have been readily apparent to any discerning member of the spiritual elite.

And so the new art of St-Denis was in the peculiar position of being at once self-condemningly conservative with respect to monastic spirituality, at least according to certain monastic circles, and dynamically progressive in regard to artistic change, generally speaking. For die lasting importance of Suger's innovations would lie not in their justification of a monastic use of art but in what that justification entailed: the programmatic translation of the exegetical method from literature to visual art. Far more Uian merely the appearance of allegory or "symbolism" or exegesis in art in the narrow sense alone, this was nothing less than a new conceptual phase in the history of Western artistic culture.

Toward a New Elite Art

Is it just a coincidence that the Life of Moses and Allegorical windows seem to have been in die direct line of sight from Suger's place in the choir, if he stood in the traditional place for the abbot in the standard Benedictine choir arrangement of the rime?86 Is it just by chance that die monks processed to the chapel in which these two windows are installed - the only windows in the shallow chapel - on the feast days of Saints Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory,87 the leading canonized exegetes of the Western Church, who apparendy were meant to respectively represent die three levels of exegesis: the literal, the allegorical, and the tropological? It is impossible to say. What is certain is that there was something unusual going on in the artistic culture of St-Denis during the years of Suger's abbacy. In his shared role in inventing the exegetical stained-glass window, Suger was not specifically trying to create a new type of art. Rather, he was primarily responding to the current controversy over the use of art by monks - in particular, to the challenge that art acted as a spiritual distraction to the monk - in the way he thought most effective. And the way he thought most effective was to use exegesis in his claim of an art that, in its complexity and literary basis, was similar to scriptural study. This exegetical dynamic, whether narrowly or loosely construed, is found throughout his program: in the stained-glass windows, in the liturgical art, in the sculpture of the west portals, in the architecture, and perhaps even in the iayout of the program itself.8*1 And nowhere is the potential for originality and complexity of message more effectively demonstrated than in the panel of the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit (Fig. 4). Taking Isaiah 11:1-3 as its starting point, the panel expounds on this passage through the thought of Hugh, elucidating the source, operation, and acquisition of the virtues by means of advanced learning. As a work of art that must be visually read and meditated on to be understood, it is meant to be intelligible only through an application of the essentially literary methodology of exegesis. In all this, Suger asserted that his art was accessible only to the litterati, only to the literate choir monk, conceiving of this relativistic claim in terms of the traditional spiritual dichotomy of the uninitiate layperson and the initiate monk. But a new spiritual hierarchy was becoming current within monastic and canonial culture, a three-level hierarchy that, however interpreted, relegated any primary role of the senses and imagery to no more than an intermediate level of spirituality. With justifications, perception is all, and, according to this widely recognized hierarchy - articulated by the most highly respected contemporary writers, of which Hugh himself was one - Suger's new art, including the Seven Gifts panel, was not perceived as being for the highest level of the spiritual elite.

However, even if certain segments of monastic and canonial culture may have interpreted Suger's claims differently than he intended, his use of exegesis in fact constituted the initial step in the construction of a new elite art. Yet it was not an art, as he thought, that was only for the literate choir monk. For the use of exegesis in religious art gradually came to be adopted in art that was for the increasingly bettereducated public as well. Certainly, in the immediate wake of Suger's program, die evidence suggests that works of art that were modeled on those of St-Denis at monastic or canonial foundations, places of the educated elite - for example, more or less directly, as in the crucifix pedestal from St-Berîin at St-Omer (ca. 1175-80; Figs. 15, 16), or indirectly, like the pulpit and later altar of Klosterneuburg (1181) - seem to have largely employed a relatively complex exegetical method.89 At the same time, the works of art related to Suger's program that appeared in secular churches soon after Suger's program - such as the Tree of Jesse window of Early Gothic Chartres Cathedral (1145-55; Figs. 17, 3)- are conceptually less demanding.911 In other words, in the first decades after Suger's program, those works of art requiring a relatively high level of exegetical ability were apparently not yet seen as appropriate for secular churches with their lay authences, while works with a less challenging exegetical component were. Even then, the earliest work related to St-Denis in a secular church is found in a cathedral, an institution with clergy better educated than in most other secular churches.

In time, however, such a distinction in complexity largely fell away, as some secular churches eventually began to employ imagery with a strong exegetical grounding, even if less original and with a less complex visual syntax than Suger's Seven Gifts panel. One example is the well-known Good Samaritan window at High Gothic Chartres, commissioned by the shoemakers (1205-15; Fig. 18) .yl One wonders if such a window might initially, at least, have been presented to the interested public - especially to the donating group, particularly if taking the form of a religiously oriented confraternity or pro toconf rate rnity - under the guidance of a cleric. But when seen in relation to some of the more straightforwardly patristically based works of art at St-Denis, with their claim to exclusivity founded on elite learning (like the Brazen Serpent panel), it does seem that the specialized (not general) lay authence for such a window must have possessed some form of literacy because of the window's similarly straightforward exegetical basis.92 For the Good Samaritan window presents far more than the actual parable related by Christ in the Gospel of Luke (10:25-37), the immediate interpretation of which Christ himself provides. Rather, the depiction at Chartres is fundamentally one that participates in a literary culture, requiring for its comprehension either literacy or oral guidance by one who is [iterate.

The parable from Luke relates how a traveler from Jerusalem to Jericho was set upon by highwaymen, beaten, and robbed. A priest and a Lévite passed by, offering no help. Then a Samaritan came along, bound the man's wounds, took him to an inn, and promised to return to him. At Chartres, the window first presents the story from the Gospel explicitly as told by Christ, who, holding a book himself, is shown relating the tale to those challenging him (Fig. 19). That is, the biblical passage is given specifically as a biblical passage rather than simply as a biblical story per se. Then, with no overt reference to Christ's own explanation of the parable, the window depicts the story of the Creation and Fall from the Book of Genesis. Finally, it punctuates all this with modest and unnecessary but apparently quite purposeful Latin inscriptions. What this seemingly inexplicable pairing of biblical tales refers to is the exegetical understanding of the parable by Origen, Ambrose, Augustine, and others, who saw it as an allegory of humankind (the traveler), which, damaged at the Fall and robbed of its divine likeness (just as the traveler was beaten and robbed) , can receive true salvation not from the Old Law (the priest and Lévite) but only from Christ (the Samaritan) and the Church (the inn). The conclusion to this visual discourse, however, is left unstated. For the point of the typology is not allegorical exposition alone - the signification of something else done in the past, present, or future. Rather, after reflecting on the allegorical information in the window, the viewer himself or herself is to come to a tropologica! conclusion, tropology being the indication through what is said to have been done of something else that ought to be done. The allegorical reading of the parable signifies only the state of the human condition in its fallen nature, that it was damaged with the fall and must be restored with the aid of Christ and the Church in order to return to its creator. But the tropologica! reading - not overtly articulated in the window - indicates one of the key means in this restoration: charity - that is, loving one's neighbor as oneself, Christ's own answer to those challenging him as related in the Gospel of Luke.93 A reasonable understanding of this window, therefore, would not be possible without some form of literacy, especially understood as participation in a literate culture.

It is no accident that this window and others like it should have appeared precisely during that period of one of the most important social transitions of the Middle Ages: the social transition from illiteracy to literacy, properly speaking. when literacy began to become more common among the laity.94 At the same time, the popular text Pictar in carmine - a very long collection of typological inscriptions, possibly written by a monk and intended for use in monumental art programs in secular churches - indicates that by around 1200, the systematic use of allegorical works of art was considered to be newly appropriate "to occupy the minds and the eyes of the faithful," both the "illiterate" and the "literate," "in cathedrals and in parish churches."95 In this unique witness of late twelfth- and early thirteenth-century artistic culture, the author notes that while Old Testament imagery requires inscriptions relating the "event [rem gestam}" for the lay authence, the imagery from the Gospels needs only the names of the individuals depicted since the Gospels are "more familiar and better known [usiîatior et nolana sit]." Thus, not only was this a time of increasing literacy properly speaking, but it was also one of a documented rise in visual literacy for the secular viewer. But whether the lay user attained comprehension of the relatively complex meaning of the Good Samaritan window through his or her literary efforts alone or was aided through the guidance of someone else who was literate, the specialized authence as a whole was a spiritually educated lay authence, one that had achieved a kind of elite knowledge. One could hardly ask for a more striking vehicle or even site of (one variation of) the "textual community" as conceived of by Brian Stock than this window - a "textual community" being a voluntary association based not on the ability to read, although some members were literate, but on the ability to interpret a text recognized as authoritative that forms the basis of a shared belief.90

Even if literate lay users were in an extreme minority, this type of public work of art constitutes a breaking away from what at least seems to be the centuries-old culture of a simpler lay spirituality, one that at times bordered on or even sank into the superstitious. Even if the "educated elite" of this new dynamic ranked in only die second level of die threelevel hierarchy, they could claim to be Ln die rank of die initiate in die two-level hierarchy of die uninitiate and initiate, aldiough their elite knowledge may have been far less than that of the monk or canon regular. Whether literate or illiterate properly speaking, the comprehending users of this window were "spiritually literate." As an aspect of artistic culture, this might appear, at first glance, to disregard Gregory the Great's widely recognized teaching dmt "those who are illiterate may at least read by seeing on the walls what they cannot read in books," in that the spiritually literate were also now "reading the walls."9' But a better way of understanding this phenomenon is to see Gregory as expressing die traditional usage of artistic culture of about 600, while the window at Chartres expresses die new usage of the early thirteenth century, even if never articulated by someone with the universal authority of Gregory the Great. Just as a type of art employing die historical or literal level of exegesis may have been seen as standard around the time of Gregory because of a decline in literacy brought about by the disintegration of institutions that addressed and demanded secular literacy, so it seems that an exegetically allegorical or tropologica] art began to be taken up by secular churches in the later twelftii and early tiiirteenth centuries because of die increase in different forms of literacy that were a result of the ever growing establishment of similar institutions and expectations. In the same way that those great staples of later medieval lay spirituality, Marian devotion and die Book of Hours, originated in monastic spirituality, so this use of a strongly literarily and exegetically based art for religious exercises ultimately derives from monastic lectio divina, a method of reading diat implies a spiritual exposition of the text.^ Art as a spiritual distraction - the original impetus to Suger's claims to an art that acted like scriptural study - is no longer an active issue with this new type of art, since the user is lay: he or she openly lives in "the world," using "the things of this world" righdy, unlike die monk, who has "fled the world." At the same time, this permeability becomes a basic characteristic of the new spiritual dynamic in that it is essential for the layperson to be able to move freely from die material to the spiritual world and back again, as it were, as opposed to attempting to maintain a consistently high position in die spiritual hierarchy like die monk or canon regular.

If most members of the lay authence were illiterate - that is, not part of the textual community - and did not receive guidance on the content of, for example, the Good Samaritan window, their experience still would have been fundamentally different from what would be expected with the previous stained-glass format from before Suger's program as we understand it today. For instance, in the Augsburg Cadiedral windows of about 1100, the format believed tobe current when Suger became abbot and which, it is believed, had not changed since its apparent inception two hundred years earlier, the viewer was presented with a composition consisting of a single figure isolated against a largely blank ground, possibly surrounded by a broad floral border (Fig. 20) .ya This was not really any different conceptually from the old mural tradition, despite die great visual potential of the medium of stained glass. But die new format of die stained-glass window after Suger is a completely reenvisioned artistic medium, conceptually and visually, in regard to die viewer.100 Even if die illiterate viewer received no guidance on die Good Samaritan window or die other 184 stained-^glass windows of Chartres Cathedral, his or her field of vision was still flooded with brilliant light, glowing color, obviously meaningful forms, bewildering detail, and unfathomable inscriptions. In the purely visual encounter of the uninitiate with a visually complex exegetical stained-glass window - precisely because the intellectual component is removed from the intellectual/ visual proposition - one can well imagine the figures of the most complex windows seeming to fuse in the viewer's perception with the ornamental borders and the sometimes stippled backgrounds that surround them. The compositional structures of quatrefoil, trefoil, roundel, and so on, in their disruption of a stricdy linear sequence, tend to contribute to an illusion of a dissolution of a continuous narrative, and so to a sense of seemingly dissociated imagery as pattern - yet pattern with apparently some profound meaning, even if incomprehensible to the uninitiate. The great roses dazzle not only through their powerful color and images but also through their almost hypnotic designs, the primary imagery perhaps being recognized but the secondary figures acting in a near blur of indistinct elements in these almost sidereal kaleidoscopes, awesome in size and engineering. Even the great distance of the windows from the viewer tends to remove their specific content from the intellectual experience in that he or she is less likely to focus attention on that content, instead being attracted to the unaccustomed light, color, and immateriality of it all.

In this, the exegetical stained-glass window, with its intellectual and spiritual claims, works together with the liturgical ceremonies and the other components of die High Gothic cathedral toward the same overwhelming effect of the sensory saturation of the holy place in a way that would have been unimaginable to Suger, but that ultimately owes its conception to him in his earlier example of taking into consideration both the initiate and the uninitiate in his program.101 Again, there is nothing specifically theoretically objectionable about this in a spiritual (as opposed to social) sense for lay culture at this time in Western European history.102 As a practical manifestation of the experience of religious art, it is essentially in agreement with Hugh's own inclusive view of spirituality, one in which the participation of all spiritual levels is recognized.103

Finally, if relatively restricted elite images such as the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit panel were beyond the intellectual understanding of the uninitiate in the two-level hierarchy, and so tended to affirm the social distinction between the two groups and thus reinforce the social structure, this is not the case with the new elite public art, even if it were seen as operating in the three-level spiritual hierarchy. For the new and relatively public elite, images such as the Good Samaritan window of Chartres with their "textual communities" would seem to have contributed to the social transformation of medieval society. At least in the beginning, they would have challenged the centuries-old monopoly on literacy of the various wings of the Church and so played a part, however small, in the visible emergence of the literate new urban elite, broadly understood. At the same time, they would have intensified the distinction between this new literate urban elite and what might be called the illiterate lower class, both of them formerly conceived of as forming the same social group. Works of art like this, far from reinforcing the current social structure, would have contributed to the dynamic of change that pervaded contemporary society.

As to the shared role of Hugh in the invention of the exegetical stained-glass window at St-Denis, I have shown elsewhere that Hugh or his thought - whether in spoken or written form - was critical in the invention of the Gothic portal and the construction of a new public art at St-Denis. 104 The first identifiable step in this process was the successful adaptation of literature's ability to express complex thought to Hugh's large-scale pedagogical image of The Mystic Ark. This was brought about through the transformation of a variety of literarily based schemata from advanced learning - devices for systematizing relatively large bodies of knowledge visually - into the equally complex artistic image of the Ark. The second identifiable step was the translation of certain aspects of the schematic structure of the image of The Mystic Ark to the large-scale public art of the sculpted portals of St-Denis. Through this new public art, the Church was able to address itself to the general public outside the confines of the holy place in a way that was newly complex, both conceptually and visually, in both cases, being increasingly able to hold the attention of its ever more restive flock while attempting to assert its authority. While this new public art was intended to be experienced visually by potentially many at once, the new elite art was intended from the beginning to be more personal, to be typically for the individual when used exegetically as part of spiritual exercises. Still, the patterns in the invention of both the Gothic portal and the exegetical stained-glass window share a certain amount in common. This is the transference of a Hterarily based method - a way of thinking - from literature to visual art: a method of systematization of knowledge in the one and a method of analysis of knowledge in the other. If the Gothic portal at St-Denis adapted certain aspects of the schematic structure already worked out in The Mystic Ark, the exegetical stained-glass window also received at least some of its impetus from this same image. For, while St-Denis may be the principal initial source from which the new interest in the use of exegesis in monumental art sprang in the twelfth century, Suger's program does not actually represent the first manifestation of the full and systematic use of exegesis in visual art in the region of Paris at this time, as has been believed for so long. The full and systematic use of exegesis in visual art had already appeared about fifteen to twenty years before the consecration of the east end of Suger's new church, in the highly successful large-scale image of The Mystic Ark, painted at St. Victor in Paris about 1125 to 1130, during the same years that Suger spent so much time as an adviser to the king, often at the royal palace, only a short walk from St. Victor.105 The Ark of Noah, the vision of Isaiah, the crossing of the Red Sea, the forty-two stopping places of the Hebrews in their wandering in the wilderness, the exile to Babylon, and more - all of this received deep and often very complex exegetical interpretation in Hugh's image, the subject of a weeks-long lecture course related to exegetical methodology, in all probability focusing 011 tropology. 1(lfi That is, Hugh created a fully developed visual exegesis specifically for the spiritual education of the highly literate canon regular or monk around die same time that Suger was beginning to plan his program (perhaps beginning about 1 125, as 1 have said) and before any of the works of art for that program are known to have been made (the west end, with sculpted portals, was consecrated in 1 140; the east end, with stained-glass windows, in 1 144; Hugh died in 1141).

But if Suger borrowed the idea of the systematic use of exegetical art from The Mystic Ark, it ultimately was not The Mystic Ark that was the initial source for its eventual widespread employment in Western European artistic culture. The majority of the traditional iconographie imagery meant for exegetical interpretation in the inherently pedagogical image of The Mystic Ark was far too specific to its complex narrative - intended for lengthy lecture and group discussion - to be readily adapted to imagery suitable for the educated public. Instead, this essentially new form of visual art was made usable (or user-friendly, as some might say today) in the context of individual spiritual exercises in a church environment only with its transformation from the complex, pedagogical image of The Mystic Ark to the relatively more self-contained images of St-Denis - relatively more self-contained and so relatively more conducive to intellectual assimilation on an individual basis during those times set aside in the day for individual prayer in the monastery (for example, during matins and prime). Still, Hugh or the thought of Hugh was essential to the core dynamic of perhaps the most original art program of the entire Middle Ages, and in the process central to the invention of the exegetical stained-glass window at St-Denis, something previously attributed to Suger alone.

This raises the question of just what constituted originality in the early and mid-twelfth century. One medieval author wrote, "If new things please you, look into the writings of Master Hugh."107 Hugh himself once said of one of his own works that it was "not as if forging something new, but rather as if bringing together certain things long in existence [but] scattered about"108 Certainly, the concept of originality as we think of it today was recognized at this time in the intellectual circles of Hugh and Suger. The famous scholar Peter Abelard, an opponent of Hugh's, a former monk of St-Denis, and original by any standard, was severely criticized by Bernard as "that new inventor of new assertions and new assertor of new inventions," precisely for his self-conscious originality. Like some modern scholars, Abelard seemed to be "more eager for novelty than zealous for the truth, and to be reluctant to think of anything as others do or to speak unless he is either the only one or the first to have so spoken."109 Rather, it was the "bringing together certain things long in existence [but] scattered about" that was seen more broadly as an acceptable form of originality by the contemporary authence. The originality both of Hugh's thought and of a number of important aspects of Sugar's program lies not so much in the degree to which they break with the past but rather in the way in which they construct their subjects from préexistent sources in order to meet the newly recognized needs of the present. This is as true for Hugh's highly successful protosumma De sacramentis - a body of centuries of previous theological thought but newly conceived in regard to both its "bringing together" in one place and its systematized presentation - as it is for Suger's new architecture, a bringing together of previously existing elements of pointed arch, groin vault, and rib into a newly conceived structural system. In the case of the exegetical stained-glass window, figurai stained glass had been around since at least the ninth century, and the use of exegesis had been an essential part of Christianity since the Gospels and Paul. Similarly, using the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit panel as an example, the iconography of Christ as ruler and of Ecclesia and Synagoga had been in use since the Early Christian period, and the imagery of the Seven Gifts as doves for two generations or more.110 With this new elite art, originality lay not in the way it broke with the past but in the way it employed these previously existing elements to address contemporary needs. And, precisely because of this combination of originality, exegesis, and the medium of stained glass, it addressed these needs in ways that were both conceptually and visually new - and this at a time when the new was very much sought after. Just as the originality of The Mystic Ark was explicitly recognized by Hugh himself as one reason for its great popularity in academic circles,1" so the originality of this new exegetical art was one reason - an important reason - for its great success with the educated public.

And so we see that the invention of the exegetical stainedglass window at St-Denis had a major impact not just on the art but also on the artistic culture of the time. Intended by Suger in partial response to perceived challenges in the greatest controversy over art in the West before the Reformation, this art - in its ability to function in a way similar to scriptural study - claimed to be accessible only to the litterati, only to the highly educated choir monk. But, unintended by him, the special potential of his particular conception of a fully exegetical, monumental, publicly accessible, and systematically deployed work of art in the medium of the stainedglass window gradually became apparent beyond the highly circumscribed confines of monastic and canonial culture. The social dynamics of twelfth-century France were changing dramatically, and the increasingly better-educated public, no longer content to remain at the lowest level of the spiritual hierarchy, wanted to participate more actively in the acquisition of elite spiritual knowledge. In borrowing this strongly literarily and exegetically based art for religious exercises, this aspect of lay spirituality grew out of monastic spirituality, and both Suger and Hugh took part - however indirectly - in the construction of a new elite art for the properly literate and spiritually literate layperson, an essentially new form of visual art that would become a fundamental part of artistic culture in the West for centuries.

Notes

This article is a pendant of sorts to "Inventing the Gothic Portal: Suger, Hugh of Saint Victor, and the Construction of a New Public Art at Saint-Denis," which recently appeared in Art.History (33 [2010]: 568-95), the one dealing with the construction of a new public art at Si-Denis and the other with a new elite an.

I would like to express my deep gratitude to Teodora Bozhilova for her beautiful photographic work on the windows of St-Denis. which has contributed so much to this article. I would also like to thank Stuart Whatling for his generous provision of the fine images of Chartres through medievalan .org.uk, Scoti Gilchrist For his generosity in regard to the general view of the windows of St-Denis, and the anonymous readers for The Art Bulletin for their very useful comments.

1. A charter of March 15, 1125, suggests that Abbot Suger began planning his portal program as early as this date, even if his conception of the entrance changed over time; Suger, Oeuvres complètes de Suger, ed. Albert Lecoy de la Marche (Paris; Mme. Ve. Jules Renouard, 1867), 320. For a few of the more important works on the art program, all with full bibliographies, see Sumner McKnight Crosby, The Abbey of St.'Denis, 475-1122 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942); Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger: On the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art. Treasure.·!, 2nd ed. (1946; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979); Crosby, L'Abbaye Royale de Saint-Denis (Paris: P. Hanmann, 195â); Jules Formigé, L'Abbaye Royale de Saint-Denis: Recherches nouvelles (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1960); Paula Lieber Gerson, "The West Facade of St.-Denis: An Iconographie Study" (PhD diss-, Columbia University, 1970); idem, ed., Abbai Suger and Saint-Denis: A Symposium (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1986); and Crosby, The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis: From Its Beginnings to the Death of Suger, 4751151, ed. Pamela Z. Blum (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).

2. Charles Cahier and Arthur Martin, Monographie de la cathédrale de Bourges, première partie: Vitraux du XlIIe siècle (Paris: Poussielgue-Rusand, 1841-44), 122-27; Emile Mâle, "La part de Suger dans la création de l'iconographie du Moyen-Age," Revue de l'Art Ancien et Moderne 35 (1914-15): 91-102, 161-68, 253-62. 339-49; and idem. Religious Art in France: The Twelfth Century; A Study of the Origins of Medieval Iconography 1922; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978). 154-86, Cf. W. R. Lethaby, "The Part of Suger in the Creation of Mediaeval Iconography," Burlington Magazine 25 (1914): 206-11; M. Laurent, "Godefroid de Claire et la Croix de Suger à l'abbaye de Saint-Denis," Revue Archéologique 19 (1924): 79-87; and Louis Grodecki, "Les vitraux allégoriques de Saint-Denis," Art de France 1 (1961); 19, 41.

3. In addition to the sources in n. 2 above, see esp, Panofsky, Abbot Silgar, 180-83, 201-16; Marie-Louise Thérel, "Comment la patrologie peut éclairer l'archéologie," Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 6 (1963): 145-58; Konrad Hoffmann, "Sugers 'Anagogisches Fenster' in St. Denis," Wanraf-Kchariz-Jahrbuch 30 (1968): 57-88; Louis Grodecki, Les vitraitx de Saint-Denis: Élude sur le vitrail au XII siècle, Corpus Vitrearum (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1976); Thérel, Le triomphe de la Vierge-Église: À l'origine du décor au portait occidental de Notre-Dame de Sentis (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1984), 217-18; Grodecki, Études sur les vitraux de Sugar à Saint-Denû (XUf .rièc/ej, éd. Anne Prache et al., Corpus Vitrearum (Paris: C.N.R.S., 1995); Jacqueline Frank, "The Moses Window from the Abbey Church of Saint-Denis: Text and Image in Twelfth-Century Art," Gazette des Beaux-Arts 128 (L996): 179-94; and, for a review of the scholarship on the windows, Madeline Harrison Caviness, "Suger's Glass at Saint-Denis: The State of Research," in Gerson, Abbot Suger and Saint-Denis, 257-72.

4. Conrad Rudolph, Artistic Change at St-Denis: Abbot Sugar's Program and the Early Twelfth-Century Controversy aver Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990); Jean-Claude Bonne, "Pensée de l'art et pensée théologique dans les écrits de Suger," in Artistes et philosophes: Educatfursfed. Ch, Deschamps (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1994), 13-50; Herben L. Kessler, "The Function of Vitrum Vestitum and the Use of Materia Saphìmrum in Suger's St. Denis," Cahiers du Leonera d'Or 5 (1996): 179-203; idem, "Real Absence: Early Medieval Art and the Metamorphosis of Vision," in Morfologie sodali e culturali in Europa fra tarda antichità e alto Medioevo, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sull'alto Medioevo 45, 2 vois. (Spoleto: Presso La Sede del Centro, 1998), voi. 2, 1207-11; and Jean Wirth, L'image à l'époque gothique (i140-1280) (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2008), 94-96.

5. On Suger, see esp. Otto Cartellieri, AbI Suger von Saint-Denis, 1081-1151 (Berlin: E. Ebering, 1898); Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 1-37; Marcel Auberl, Suger (Saint-Wandrille: Fontenelle, 1950); John F. Benton, "Suger's Life and Personality," in Gerson, Aòbat Suger and Saint-Denis, 3-15; Michel Bur, Suger: Abbé de Saint-Denis, régent de France (Paris: Perrin, 1991); Françoise Gasparri, éd., Suger: Oeuvres, 2 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1996-2001). vol. 1, VTi-LIV; and Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis: Church and State in Early Twelfth-Century France London: Longman, 1998).

6. Rudolph, Artistic Change.

7. On Bernard's Apologia, see Conrad Rudolph, The Things of Greater Importance: Bernard of Clairvaux 's Apologia and the Medieval Attitude toward Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990).

8. On both of these issues in general, see Conrad Rudolph, "Art as a Spiritual Distraction to the Monk," in Rudolph, TAe Things of Greater Importance, 104-24.

9. Suger, De administratione 2.18, in Gasparri, Suger: Oeuvres, vol. 1, 146-50 or see Suger, De administratione 34, trans, and ed. Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 72-76).

10. Grant, Abbot Suger of St-Denis, 80-81, 119-20, 191-92.

11. Suger, De administratione 2.12-13, ed. Gasparri. 130-38. esp. 132-34 (or see De administratione 33, ed. Panorsky, 60-66, esp. 62); this particular justification is best understood within the broader context of the extended passage, For my reasons for dating De administratione to 1150, see Rudolph, Artistic Change, 20-24.

12. Rudolph, Artistic Change, 60-63.

13. Suger, De administratione Z. Il , 2.12, 2.18, ed. Gasparri, 130, 132-34, 146-50 (or see De administratione 32, 33, 34, ed. Panofsky, 58, 62, 7276).

14. On Hugh's exegesis in general, see Henri de Lubac, Exégèse mêdièvais: Les qttatre sens de l'écriture (Paris: Aubier, 1959-64), vol. 2, pt. 1, 287359. On Hugh's distinction between two types of allegory (simple allegory and anagogica! allegory), a distinction followed by others, see de Lubac, vol. 1, pL 2, 139-46, esp. 140-41. On the relation between Hugh and the art of St-Denis, including the likelihood that Suger knew Hugh, see Rudolph, Artistic Change, 32-47; and idem, "Inventing the Gothic Portal: Suger, Hugh of Saint Victor, and the Construction of a New Public Art at Saint-Denis." Art History 33 (2010): 1-28.

15. Hugh of St. Victor discusses exegesis in many places throughout his numerous writings, each presentation being a bit different to suit the needs at hand. This particular explanation is from De sacramentis CAmtianuefidei pro, 4, in Patrologia latina (hereafter PL), ed. J.-P. Migne, vol. 176, cols. 184-85.

16. This is put into conceptual context in Herbert L. Kessler, "Pictures as Scripture in Fifth-Century Churches," Studia Artium Orìentalis et Occidentali* 2 (1985): 17-31; and idem, "Diction in the 'Bibles of the Illiterate,' " in World Art: Themes of Unity in Diversity, Acts of the XXVIth International Congress of the History of Art, ed. living Lavin, vol. 2 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), 299-300. For a recent discussion on the use of exegesis in visual an in general, including the most recent statement on the place of St-Denis in this progression, see Wirth, L'image à l'époque gothique, 79-95.

17. Gregory the Great, fíegistrum epùstularum libri 9.209, ed. Dag Norberg, Corpus Christìanorum Señes Latina (hereafter CCSL), vols. HO-140A (Turnhoui: Brepols, 1982), 768 (alternative numeration 9.105). See also Registrum 11.10, pp. 873-76 (alt. 11.13); and the spurious Regislrum, app. X, esp. 1110-11 (all. 9.52). For an overview of Gregory's position on art, see Herbert L. Kessler, "Gregory the Great and Image Theory in Northern Europe during the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries," in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque and Gothit; in Northfrn Europe ed. Conrad Rudolph (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006}, 151-72. For a contemporary definition of metaphor, see John of Salisbury, Metalogicon, 1.24, trans, and ed. Daniel McGarry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1955), 68.

18. Suger, De administratione 2.18, ed. Gasparri, 146 (or see De administratione 34, ed. Panofsky, 72-74). On this, see Grodecki, Les vitraux de Saint-Denis. 27-28, 30.

19. "Superius quam inferius." Cf. Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 211. On the possibility that the expression "above as well as below" means both the clerestory and aisle windows, cf. Theodericus, De lotis sanctis: Libellus de lacis sanctis 6, ed. M. L. Butst and W. Bulst (Heidelberg: Winter, 1976), 14-15, "inferius et superius," said in comparison to the Palace Chapel at Aachen.

20. By "excessive art," I mean anything that goes beyond the common expectations of luxurious art for a particular social or religious group in material, craftsmanship, size, quantity, or subject matter; for its relation to "luxurious art," see Rudolph, The Things of Greater Importance, 7.

21. Bonaventure, Opusculum de reduciione artium ad theologi-am 5, ed. the Franciscans of Quaracchi, in Opera omnia, 10 vols. (Quaracchi'· Colegii S. Bonaventurae, 1882-1902), vol. 5, 321.

22. Grodecki, "Les vitraux allégoriques," 22: and idem, Les vitraux de Saint-Denis, 100.

23. Grodecki, "Les vitraux allégoriques," 34: "bizarrerie iconographique," and, on this panel, see ibid., 22, 32-35, 41; Hoffmann, "Sugers 'Anagogisches Fenster,' " 69-71; Grodecki, Les vitraux de Saint-Denis, 100101 ; Philippe Verdier, "Suger, a-t-il été en France le créateur du thème iconographique du couronnement de la Vierge?" Gesta 15 (1976): 230-33; and Thérel, Le triomphe de la Vierge-Egfhe, 217-18. GroverZinn, "Suger, Theology, and thé Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition," in Gerson, Abbot Suger, 37, refers to Hugh's ideas on "the gift [sir} of the Hoiy Spirit" in relation to the tympanum and windows of St-Denis. On the iconography of this subject, see Englebert Kirschbaum, LfxtkoTi der christlichen Ikonographie, 8 vols. (Rome: Herder, 1968-76), s.v. "Gaben des Geistes"; and on the virtues in general, see Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and. Vires in Mediaeval Art London: Warburg Insti tuie, 1939).

24. The Lord in this window has a cruciform halo and crown Christ the king), all of these elements being formed of original glass; Grodecki, Les vitraux de Saint-Denis, fig. 133.

25. For the best details, see Grodecki, fctudes sur les vitretvx de Xugsr, fig. 19. The standard, if that is what the vertical objeci held by Ecclesia originally portrayed, may be in reference to the standard mentioned in Isaiah 11:1 1-12, and so may be related to the original source passage of Isaiah 11:1-3.

26. Grodecki, "Les vitraux allégoriques," 34.

27. Hoffmann, "Sugers 'Anagogisches Fenster,' " 69-71.

28. For an image that incorporales the seven gifts with the Pentecost, see Katzen e llenbogen. Allegories of the Virtues und Vices, 37-38, Rg. 39, for his discussion of the FIoreffe Bible, British Library. London, MS Add. 17738, fol. 3v.

29. Male. The Twelfth Century, 171-77; Arthur Watson, The Early frnnography of the Tree ofjesse (London: Oxford University Press/Humphrey Milford, 1934), 77-82; and Grodecki, Les vitraux de Saint-Denis, 71-80.

30. Gting Anita Guerreau-Jalaberl ("L'arbre de Jessé et l'ordre chrétien de la parenté," in Marie: Le culte df. la Vierge darts la société médiévale, éd. Dominique logna-Prat, Eric Palazzo, and Daniel Russo [Paris: Beauchesne, 1SÍ96J: 137-70), Jean Wirthf L'image à l'époque mmane (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1999), 421, sees this shift from the physical to the spiritual as coming from 7'Ai Mystic Ai* (see Hugh of St. Victor, Thf Myxfic Ark 2, in Dc archa Noe: Libelhis deformations arche, ed. Patrice Sicard, Cnrpua Christtanorum Continuait» Medievali (hereafter CCCM), vol. 176 [Turnhout: Brepols, 2001], 127-31). I believe, however, that tlie components of the doves are simply too different in concepì from the list of the popes in 77«? Mystìf Ark to allow this argument; moreover, these doves were iconographie al Iy current before Hugh created his image.

31. Hugh of SL Victor, Dr aarramentis l.pral. 2, 1.10.2, 1.10,5, 1.10.8, ed. Migne, cols. 183-84. 329, 334, 341.

32. While some of the ideas of Hugh's that I refer to in this discussion of the panel of the Seven Gifts may have been expressed by other Early Christian and medieval authors in contexts unrelated to the virtues, as cited here they specifically come from Hugh's extended body of thought on this subject. Hugh of St. Victor, De seplem. donis Spiritus Saniti, in Six upuseulex spirituels, ed. Roger Baron Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1969), 120-33 (perhaps with influence from Augustine, De doctrina cÁrhtiana 2:8-13, ed. J. Martin, CCSL, vol. 32 [Turnhout: Brepols, 1962], 36-40). See also idem, Didascalicon 6.10 (on the seven gifts), in Hugoms de Saneto Victore Didascalico?! de studio legendi, ed. Charles Buttimer (Washington, D. C.: Catholic University Press, 1939), 127; De laude cantate, ed. J. -P. Migne, PL, voi. 176, cols. 963-76; De quinqué sefitenis (with reference to the seven gifts), ed. Baron, 100119; and De sacramenti* 2.7.6, 2.13.2 (on the seven gifts), 2.13.2-12 (on virtues in general), ed. Migne, cols. 462, 527, 526-50.

33. This is a very broad subject for him, and at one urne he chooses to emphasize one aspect of it, while at another time anoUier aspect; what 1 present here is a carefully considered composite view. On Hugh and the divine likeness, see his Didasr,alir.an 1.1 (the likeness is restored through insiruction), 1.8, ed. Buttimer, 5-6, 15-16; and The Mystic Ark 5, e.d. Sicard, 149-50. And see ZJí .ím/jíwris el ¿cripioribus sacris 1. ed. J-P. Migne, PL, vol. 175, cols. 9-11; De sacrarnmlis 1.3.21, L6.2, ed. Migne, cols. 225, 264; and Jerome Taylor, The Didascalicon of Hugh of Sl. Victor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 29-30.

34. Hugh of St. Victor, De saeramentis l.prol. 6, ed. Migne, col. 185; Didascalicon 1.8, ed. Buttimer, 15-16; Moral Ark 1.3-4, in Sicard, De archet Noe, 8-9.

35. Hugh of Sl. Victor, Didascalicon 5.8, ed. Buttimer, 108.

36. Hugh of St. Victor, De imtitutione novitiorum 6, in L Oeuvre de ifugues de Saint-Victor, ed. H. B. Feiss and P. Sicard, vol. I (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), 36.

37. Hugh of St. Victor, De saerameniu 1 .prol. 2, ed. Migne, col, 183.

38. Hugh of St. Victor, De sacmmentis 2.13.2, ed. Migne, cols. 526-27; Bidascalicon 5.7, ed. Buttimer, 105; and Moral Ark 1.5, ed. Sicard, 31-32. For a more detailed discussion of this idea, see the subsection "The Body of Christ" in the main section on die Ark of Mother Grace, in Conrad Rudolph, TAi Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint, Victor and the Multiplication and Systématisation of Imagery in the Twelfth Century (forthcoming) .

39. Hugh of St. Victor, Moral Ark 2.7, ed. Sicard, 42-44.

40. Hugh of St. Victor. The Myslic Ar* 1, ed. Sicard, 122; DtdascaUeon 1. 1, p. 4; and Moral Ark 3.7, ed. Sicard, 66. See also idem, In hierare hiam coeleslem Ll, 2, ed. J.-P. Migne, PL, vol. 175, cols. 923-25. 940.

41. Hugh of St. Victor, Didascalicon 6.10, ed. Buttimer, 127, whieh may be based on Gregory the Great, Moralia in ??? 29.73-74, ed. Marcus Adriaen, CCSL, vols. 143-143B (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979-85). 1486-87,

42. Hugh of St. Victor, Df supina donis 2, ed. Baron, 1 23-24 (with reference to 1 Cor. 12:11).

43. Hugh of Sl. Victor, DF. sacramenti.·, 2.2.1, ed. Migne, col. 415. 44. FOT example, cf. the Dijon Bible (Bibliothèque Municipale, Dijon [hereafter BiW. Mun., Dijon], 2.148, in Watson, Thf Tree ofjesxe, pi.

14. and the Lambedi Bible (Lambeth Palace Library, London, MS 3, fot. 198r, in Walter Cahn, Romanesque Biblf Illumination [Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982], cat. no. 34, fig. 151).

45. Hugh of St. Victor, Moral Ark 5, ed, Sicard, 23-24; 7'Aí Mystic Ark 2, ed. Sicard, 127; and Dt saeramentis 2.2.1-3, ed. Migne. cols. 415-17.

46. Grodecki, "Les vitraux allégoriques," 32-33, 35, also thought this. On Ecclesia and Synagoga in general, see most recently Nina Rowe, "Synagoga Tumbles, a Rider Triumphs: Clerical Viewers and the Furstenportal of Bamberg Cathedral," Gesta 45 (2006): 15-42.

47. U may also be that she is to be understood as having a bent back; see Augustine. De àvitatf Dei 18.46, ed. Bernhard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, CCSL, vols. 47-48 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1955), 644, citing Ps. 69:24 (Vulgate).

48. For this passage in die context of Christ and the Holy Spirit, see Augustine, De tivitiue Dei 20.30, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 756-57. See also Gregory the Great, Moralia in lob 33.7, ed. Adriaen, 1675-76; and Haimo of Auxerre, Commentariorum in haiam libri ires 43, ed. J.-P. Migne, PL, vol. 116, col. 923.

49. For an expression by Hugh of the commonly held idea that the Church is the body of Christ, see Moral Ark 1.3. ed. Sicard, 10. For restorations to this window, see Grodecki, i¿s vitraux de Saint-Denis, fig. 133. For a conceptually similar use of color in the same general subject, see die Bible of Stephen Harding, Bibl. Mun., Dijon, 14.60, color illustration in Charles Oursel, Miniature.·, cisterciennes (i1091134) (Macón: Protat Frères, 1960), fig. 4.

50. Hugh of St. Victor, Didasealicitrn 6,6, ed. Buttimer, 123; and Oi septem dona 2-4. ed. Baron, 124-28. Hugh sometimes uses the traditional expression for the Old Testament, the Hebrew Truth, "Hebraica venias"; for example, De scripturis, ed. J-P. Migne, PL, vol. 175. col. 17.

51. Hugh of St. Victor, Didascaliäon 1.1, ed, Buttimer, 4; and Moral Ark 2.5, ed. Sicard, 41

52. Hugh of Sl. Victor, Moral Ark, passim, but esp. 1.2-3, 3.7, ed. Sicard, 7-9, 17.63-64.

53. Hugh of Si. Victor, Didascalicon 6.3, ed. Buttimer, 116. On Hugh's association of tropology with the virtues, see Didasralican 5.6, ed. Buttimer, 104-5; De vantiate 2.3, ed. J.-P. Migne, PL, vol. 176, col. 717; De fftcrawentis l.prol. 6, ed. Migne, col. 185; and De meditation "2.3, ed. Baron, Six oftuscuhs, 48.

54. Andreas Speer, "Stand und Methoden der Suger-Forschung" and "Zum philosophisch-theologischen Hintergrund von De consecratimie," in De consfcratione: Kommentierte Stuthenausgabe, ed. Günther Binding and Andreas Speer (Cologne: Universität zu Köln, 1995), 84-85 (though elsewhere he himself sees connections between Suger and Hugh, for example, 90-91); and Christoph Markschies, Cibi es eine "Theologie der gotischen Kathedrale?": Nochmals; Suger von Saint-Den.is und Sankt Dionys vom Arfopag (Heidelberg: C. Winter. 1995) 37. Speer repeats his position in a number of articles.

55. For some examples among many, see Malt. 13:1-35; 1 Cor. 2:14-3:2; Augustine, DK doctrina 3.25, ed. Martin, 92-93; and Gregory die Great, Homiliae in Hiezjtchihelfni pmphffam 1.6.2, ed. Marcus Adriaen, C(XL, vol. 142 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971), 67.

56. For the panel of the Benedict window, see Grodecki, Les vitraux de Saint-Denis, 109, pi. XfV; and idem, Études sur les vitraux de Sugnr, 10929, esp. 113-18, pi. VI1 fig. 48a. Grodecki certainly never meant to say, as his note implies, that the inscription on the window comes direcdy from the Legenda aurea; it is from Gregory the Great, Diatogorum libri 2.37.3, in Dialagues, ed. Adalbert de Vogué, 3 vols. (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1978-80), vol. 2, 244. An extremely widely read text in monastic culture, Dialogues was regularly read at St-Denis in ihe refectory; Ph. Schmilz, "Les lectures de table à l'abbaye de Saint-Denis vers la fin du Moyen-Âge." Revue Bénédictine 42 (1930): 166.

57. Ordo Cluntacensis 1.55, 1.58, in Vetus disciplina monastica, ed. Marquard Hergott (1726; reprint, Siegburg; F. Schmitt, 1999). 250-51, 255, cited in Alfons Mettier, "Die zweite Kirche in Cluni und die Kirchen in Hirsau nach den 'Gewohnheiten' des XI. Jahrhunderts," pis. I. 2, Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arckicectur 3 (1909-10), 4 (1910-11): pt. 1, 278.

58. Bernard McGinn, The Growth, of Mysticism (New York; Crossroad. 1991), 234-36.

59. William of St-Thierry, Epistola adjratres de Monte Dd 41-92, 195-300, in Opera didactica et spiritualia, cd. Paul Verdeyen, CCCM, vol. 88 (Tumhout: Brepols, 2003), 236-47, 269-89 (with reference to 1 Cor. 2:14). For the larger context of this passage, see Rudolph, The Things of Greater Importance, 115-19.

60. William of Si-Thierry, Speculum Jidei 115-22, in Ofnatola advenus Petmm Ahaelantum et de fide, ed. Paul Verdeyen, (,'6'CM, vol. S9A (Tiirnhout: Brepols, 2007), 125-27.

61. William of Si-Thierry, Adfratrea 59, ed. Verdeyen, 240.

62. William of St-Thierry, Ad fratmx 41 , ed. Verdeyen, 236.

63. William of St-Thierry, Ad fraina 152, ed. Verdeyen, 260.

64. For example, William of St-Thierry, De natura corparis et antimae 11011, in Verdeven, Opera, didáctica et spiritualitt, 142.

65. Bernard of Clairvaux, De consiaeratitme 5.3-4, in Sancii Bernardi opera, ed- Jean Leclercq and H. M. Rochais, 8 vois. (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957-77), voi. 3, 468-69.

66. Bernard of Clairvaux, De consideratione 2.5, ed. Leclercq and Rochais, 414.

67. Bernard of Clairvaux, Dt amsûtemiione S.2, ed. Leclercq and Rochais, 432 (in reference to Rom. 1:14); and Apologia 28, in Rudolph, The nings of Greater Importance, 104, 318-19.

68. Bernard of Clatrvaux, DK consiihvatitmi' 5.4. ed. Leclercq and Rochais. 469. For a discussion of this in regard io the subject of art as a distraction, see Rudolph, The Thing* of Greater Impartftnte, 1 15-19.

69. This is noi the speetilalio of the twelfth-century theologians; cf. G. R. Evans. Olii Arts and New Theology: The Beginnings of Theology us an Aaideanr Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980). 91.

70. Bernard of Clairvaux, De fenaideratimtf 5.1-2, ed. Leclercq and Rochais, 468: cf. Bernard of Clairvaux, De conversione 10, in Sancti Bn-nardi opera, eel. Leclercq and Ruchais, vol. 4, 82.

71. On the consistency of Hugh's thought, see Beryl Smalley, The Study of the RiMe in the MiMIe AgKi, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1953), 86: Taylor, The [ndasmliron., xi; and AeI red Squire, imrodiiction to Hugh of Sa-inl-Virtor; Safaristi Spiritual Writings, trans, by a Religious of C.S.M.V. (London: Faberand Faber, 1962), 21-22.

72. Hugh of St. Victor, In Sabmmtis Ecelextasten, ed. J.-P. Mtgnc, in PL, vol. 175. cols. 1 16-17. For further discussion of this triad, see the subsection "The Cold of the West: Cognition/ Meditation /Contemplation and the Restoration of ine Integrity of the Soul," in lhe main section on the Ark of Mother Grace, in Rudolph, The Myatir Ark.

73. Suger uses lhe terms cagnitw, medttalio, and fontemplatio, but unsystematically (thai is, not as a coherent sequence) and, in any event, without the technical precision of Hugh (wilhout relation to any theoretical constructs), and so wilhout the same meaning.

74. For this passage, see Hugh of St. Victor, The Myalir. Ark 5, ed. Sicard, 149-50. For an introduction to The Mystic Ark, including a provisional reconstruction, see Conrad Rudolph, "I<trxt, I Find tlu- Center Point"; Rttitding -the Text af Hugh of Saint Victor's "The Mystic Ark' (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2004).

75. Grodecki, Études sur les ïiitraux tie. ,S'ugrr, fig. 36. If this is the case, it is only loosely related to Hugh's thought and does noi illustrate it in a visually literal manner. Grodecki, Les vitraux de Saint-Denis, 96, implies that the composition of Aaron or Joshua holding a book is unchanged. This three-part spiritual succession appears in other places in The Mystic Ark: see The Mystic Ark 4, 6, ed. Sicard. 145-46, 150-51. And see also Hugh's discussion of "the three eyes," Oe sacramenti!, 1.10.2, ed. Migne, cols. 329-30; discussed in the subsection "The Cold of the West," in Rudolph, The Mystif Ark.

76. Hugh of Si. Victor, Moral Ark 1.5, ed. Sicard. 30-31.

77. Hugh of St. Victor, DidastaUcon 5,8, ed. Biittimer, 108.

78. The idea of the reciprocal nature of art conceives of lavish art as merely a returning to God of a small part of what he has already given to the individual or corporate commissioner; for how this applies to St-Denis. see Clark Maines, "Good Works. Social Ties, and the Hope for Salvation: Abbot Suger and Saint Denis," in Gersoii, Abbot Suger. 77-94; and Rudolph, Artistic Change, 19-31.

79. Hugh of St. Viclor. In kierurchiam 3, ed. Migue, cols. 976-78; and De sacramenta 1.10.2, ed. Migne, cols. 328-29.

80. At least some of the Mystic Ark lectures were concerned with tropology and the acquisition of virtue, and therefore musi have been for Hugh's advanced students; see the subsection "The Old* and the 'New' Theologies, Hugh, and The Mystic Ark," in the main section on lhe Mystic Ark lectures in Rudolph, Tile Mystic Ark.

81. On this type of art. see Rudolph, The Things of Greater Importance, 119-24.

82. On the image from the Moralia in Job, see Conrad Rudolph, Violence and Daily Life: Heading, Art, and Polemics in the Citeaux Moralia in Job (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 3-4, 56-58. On the capital from Vézelay, see most recently Kirk Ambrose, Tlte Nave Kiralptwre nf Vézrlay: The An af Monaslir Viewing (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2006), 92, with full bibliography. On the gradual disappearance of this type of imagery, see Winh, L'image à l'époque gatthique, 86.

83. William of St-Thierry, Adjmtnx 174, ed. Verdeyen, 264-65. Cf. Bernard, Apologia 28-29, in Rudolph, The Thing* tif Greater Important, 278-82. On die Infancy of Christ window, see Michael Cothren, "The Infancy of Christ Window from the Abbey of St.-Denis: A Reconsideration of Its Design and Iconography." Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 398-420; and Grodecki, Ktudes sur If.x vitrmtx de Suger, 21-45.

84. Lydwine Sautnier and NeU Stratford, La sculpture oubliée rie Vêzztay Geneva: Droz, 1984), 171 n. 47. See also the comments of Meyer Schapiro on the restrained approach to manuscript painting at Cluny, The Parma fldcfonsus: A Romanesque Illuminated Manuscript from CUuny and Retateti Works (New York: College An Association, 1964), 6.

85. Hugh of St. Victor, De tribus rlietrua 4, ed. Dominique Poirel, CCCM. vol. 177 (Turuhout: Brepols, 2002), 9-10; Hugh's passage is based on Augustine, In bannis evangelium 24.2, ed. R. Willems, CCSL, vol. 36 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 244-45.

86. I base this on the place of the abbot as given in Mettler, " 'Gewohnheiten' des XL Jahrhunderts," pt. 2, 2, in relation to the position of the choir in Si-Denis as given in Edward B. Foley, ed., Tlte Pint Ordin.tay tif the Royal Abbey of St. -Denis in Franrp (Parts, Bibliothèque Mazaritw 526) (Fribourg: University Press, Frihourg, 1990), fig. I; I have confirmed this on-site to die best of my ability.

87. Foley, The First Ordinary af St.-Dtnis. 207.

88. For the liturgical art, see Suger, De administrations 2.11, 2.12, ed. Gasparri, 130, 132-34 (or see De administrations 32, 33, ed. Panofsky. 58, 62). For the portals, see the discussion of the Wise and Foolish Virgins in Rudolph, "Inventing the Gothic Portal," 587. As to die architecture, I refer here [o Suger's well-known interpretation of his own consecration ceremony of the wesi end; Suger, Df tulminhlrationf 2.3. ed. Gasparri, 114 (or see De administratione 26, ed. Panofsky. 44-46): see also Panofsky, Abbot Suger, 154-55. And in regard to the layout, this is raised as a question, only, in the conclusion of Conrad Rudolph, "The Architectural Metaphor in Western Medieval Artistic Culture: From the Comer Stone to The Mystic Ark," in The Cambridge Hilary vf Religious Architecture, ed. Stephen Murray (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

89. On the relation between diese works of art and St-Denis, see Male, The Twelfth Cmtwy, 154-86. On lhe crucifix pedestal from Sl-Bertin, see ibid., 155-58 (esp. figs. 135-38); and Philippe Verdier, "La grand croix de l'abbé Suger à Saint-Denis." Cahiers de Civilisation Médievale Xe-XIIe Sueles 13 (1970): 1-31. On the pulpit and altar of Klosterneuburg, see Mâle, 167-68; and Helmut Buschhausen. Der Verduner Altar: Das Emailwerk des Nikolas von Verdun im Stift Klosterneuburg (Vienna: Tusch. 1980), who takes up a different aspecl of the place of Hugh in the an program at Si-Denis.

90. On the Tree of Jesse window al Chartres, sec Colette Manner Deremble, Les vitraux narratifs de la cathédrale de Chartres, Corpus Vitrearum (Paris; C.N.R.S., 1993), 239-48.

91. On the Good Samaritan Window, see Emile Mâle, Religious Art in France. The Thirtnmth Century; A Study af Medieval Iconography and Its Sauras (1902; Princeton: Princeton University Press. J984). 199-202: Manhes-DcrembU·. Les vitraux narratifs, 154-59; the popular bur quite detailed Colette Manhcs and Jean-Paul Deremble, i? vitrail du Im» Samaritan: Cftertres, Sem, Bourges (Paris: Notre· Histoire/Le Centurion, 1986), 29-73; and Wolfgang Kemp. The Narratives of Gothic Stained, (Haas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 74-78. The thesis of Jane Welch Williams, lireail-, Wind, and Money; The Windows of the Trades at CJiartm Cathedral (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) . which sees the donor signatures of the irades at Chartres Cathedral as contrived by lhe cathedral chapter, seems to me to be completely oui of sync with medierai social and religious practice, owing more to the late twentieth century than to the early thirteenth.

92. On the panel of the Brazen Serpent, see Grodecki, Les vitraux de SaintDenis, 97; and Kessler, "The Function of Vitrum Vestrum," 187-89.

93. I recognize dial a full reading of the Good Samaritan window involves more than I give here, which is only partial, for lhe purposes of this paper.

94. James Westfall Thompson, The Literary ofth? I Mitt in the Middle Agra (New York: Bun Franklin, 1963), 130-47; M. B.'Parkes. Saifax, Scripts, ami Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation., and Dissemination of Medieval Texts (London: Hambledon Press, 1991), 275-97; and M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 224-40.

95. Pictor in earmine, in M. R.James, "Pifiar in (amane," Arehaeolagia 94 (1951): 142-43. On stained-glass windows as Bibles of the poor (thai is, the illiierate), see Madeline H. Caviness, "Biblical Stories in Windows: Were They Bibles for the Poor?" in The tiibk· in the Middle Ages: hi ÍTiJtufnce im Literítíure and Art, ed. Bernard S. Levy (Binghamion, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992), 1(13-47.

96. Brian Slock. The Imptìrettions of Literttcy: Written Language and Mode, k of intefpretatim iti the ¿favrnlh and Twelfih· Centuries (Printeion: Princeton University Press, 198S), 90-92, 522; and idem, I.tsfen.irtg far the Text: On the ficj of the Past (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). 22-24.

97. Gregory the Great, Registram 9.209. ed. Norherg, 768 (all. 9.105).

98. Jean Leclercq, "La 'lecture divine,' " La Maiwti-Difu ? (1946): U 1-33; idem, The Latte uf Lettrrting und the Déniée [or God: A Study of Altmaxtir Culture, Sra ed. (New York: Fordliam University Press, 1982), 13-17, 72-73.

99. On ihcse windows, sets Alben Boeckler, "Die romanischen Fensier ries augsbiirger Domes," Zeilsclaift des deutsche» \'erei.n ffir KuitxtwissettJicItuff 10 (1943): 153-82; for a mure recent discussion, sec Louis Grodecki. Lf vitrail mman. 2nd ed. (Fribourg: Offire du Livre, 1983), 49-54, and cf. figs. 31, 35.

100. For more on ihis, see Rudolph. Artistic Change, 65-68.

101. For í'urüier discussion of this idea, see ibid,, 64-65.

102. For the leading social objection - art as opposed to the care of the poor - see Rudolph, The Things of Greater importance, 80-103.

103. Hugh of St. Victor. Tltf Myxtir Ark 4, ed. Sicard, 145-46. 1 cl« noi mean to imply here that Hugh's thought is specifically related to lìiis phenomenon.

104. Rudolph. "Inventing the Gothic Portal."

105. William of St-Deiiis, Sugt-rii vita 1. in Gasparri, .S'wgrr; OWITM, vol. 2. 299-301. 307. For my reasons for believing that The Mystic Arii is noi a work of ekphrasa or primarily a memory aid and thai il was, in fact, painted at St. Victor, see Rudolph, "Fini, I l'ina thf Center l'oint, " ??78. One of several reasons for believing ihe I'ormer is that, in die instructions for constructing it, Hugh recommends shortening the length of the Ark proper by one-lhird "because of its more suitable form," an altering of die original dimensions from Scripture, no less, thai the mind has no need of but that is necessary for the image to be small enough to fil on a cloister wall: Hugh of St. Victor. The Mystif Ark 1, ed. Sicard, 123.

106. For my ideas on this course, see the subsection "The Old' and the 'New' Theologies, Hugh, and Thf Mystir Ark." in the chapter "The Myslif Ark Lectures," in Rudolph. 7V Mystic Ark.

107. Peter of Celle, fy.istntn 167, ed. J. -P. Migue. H., vol. 202. coi. 610.

108. Hugh of Si. Victor, Proctite ftfrmmtriae, pro]., in Huganit di- Snudo Vtrtm pern firapetileutica, ed. Roger Baron (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 19R6), 15; see also De sacramentL· 2.1.4, ed. Migue, col. 376.

109. Bernard, fyistola 77.7, 77.1 1, ed. Leclercq and Rocháis, vol. 7, 189. 192-93.

110. See Watson, The Tree offesse, pi. III.

111. Hugh of St. Victor, Mimtl Ark 1.1. ed. Sicard. 3.

Author affiliation:

Conrad Rudolph has held Guggenheim, Getty, and Mellon fellowships. This study comes out of his nearly completed work The Mystic Ark: Hugh of Saint Victor and the Multiplication and Systematization of Imagery in the Twelfth Century, which has provided the foundation from which some of its conclusions have been drawn [Department of the History of Art, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, Calif. 92521, conrad.rudolph@ucr.edu].