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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Image et parole : le vitrail de Saint Lubin à Chartres : sens et fonction de ses images à la fin du XIIe siècle

subject

description

The enigma of saint Lubin stained glass window at Chartres, showing a wine story in the middle of the saint’s life, can be resolved by a symbolic interpretation of it’s images, if paying regard to the medieval mental schemes : the central Eucharistic mystery of the wine enables the young Lubin to achieve sainthood, through his own vocation of consecrated (the learned canon of XIIth century appearing under the VIth century monk), priest and bishop, Good Sheperd dispensing divine gifts. The unusual presence of small human figures at the outer framework of the stained glass window emphasises the important role to be played by the laity in the Eucharistic mysteries. It takes part, with the introductive images, to a preached exhortation of the window, inviting all spectators to be converted. It’s theological teaching imports as it’s means of expression the images of the Scriptures, as interpretated by glossa ordinaria, updated, and organised into a Theological Sum chapter, remaining faithfull to the Fathers’ teaching about figura and veritas, the relationship figura-veritas of the wine of the Last Supper and the blood of Christ being of the same ‘type’ as between the Old and the New Testaments, or between the Life of earthly Church and Eschatology, using the constructive resources of Logic, without submitting to its mystery devastating hegemony. Far from being an advertisement for the relic of the saint, for the bishop or the canons, the stained-glass window thus takes place in the contemporaneous stream of the Parisian ‘Biblico-moral School’, who shared with Saint-Victor, in particular with Richard, the project to lay foundations for a moral reformation of Clergy and Laity on the study, -as well historical as symbolic-, of the Bible, and on preaching.