The choir of Saint-Quentin: Gothic structure, power, and cult

This dissertation seeks to understand the interface between French Gothic architectural design, stained glass, and social history through the comprehensive study of a single building, the collegiate church of Saint-Quentin. The interpretive difficulties that Saint-Quentin has posed for scholars of Gothic architecture provide an opportunity to examine several questions about the development of the Gothic church and its ability to convey meaning. Combining an analysis of the architectural fabric with study of figurative stained glass allows a consideration of the multiple visual, spiritual and intellectual levels on which the space might be experienced.;The builders, artisans, and clergy of Saint-Quentin participated actively in the artistic invention that characterized the decades immediately before and after 1200 throughout much of western Europe. There are both intersections and disconnections among their endeavors. Space, image, function, and interpretation are therefore treated as separate but interdependent strands that define Saint-Quentin as a monumental whole.;The first chapter is a critical examination of the historiography of Saint-Quentin and its implications for a rethinking of artistic development and social influences in Gothic. Chapter II presents the textual and archaeological background for the early medieval history that became central to the institutional identity of the church in the high middle ages. Chapter III describes the several social hierarchies, both civic and ecclesiastical, within which the collegiate chapter operated. Chapters IV--VI provide a detailed examination of the architectural fabric, and its underlying design processes, and propose a new dating for the phases of construction up to 1257.;The final three chapters look at the two surviving cycles of stained glass, and examine their subjects and the ways that the interaction of image and architectural space affect the viewer's experience. Chapter VII treats the historiated lower glass and Chapter VIII the role of donor portraits within the radiating chapels. The final chapter views the more publicly accessible hemicycle clerestory windows as a means of focusing attention on the sanctuary, where connections between images and relics provided links between past and present, between earth and heaven, and between ecclesiastical history and clerical authority.