Madeleine at Saint-Maximin. The church, built during the 14th century, had a long nave
with double aisles, a po lygonal apse with two diagonally placed chapels, and a three-
story elevation reminiscent of Gothic architecture in northern France. French mendicant
architecture, though it lacks common stylistic features, reflects the way in which the
demands of function, practicality, and patronage were adapted to a particular situation.
Although the mendicants stressed simplicity and poverty, their churches were
furnished with appropriate devotional paintings, sculpture, and other objects.
Unfortunately, because few of these art forms have survived in situ, direct evidence for
the character of visual arts associated with the French mendicants is limited. The
Franciscans and Dominicans had a great impact on popular piety and the iconography of
devotional art that it inspired in the later Middle Ages. Their influence is apparent in
French manuscript illumination, especially in liturgical and devotional books whose
usage indicates Franciscan or Domini-can connections. The late 13th-century north
French Psalter and Hours of Yolande de Soissons, for example, shows Franciscan
inspiration in miniatures of St. Francis preaching to the birds, the magus kissing the
Christ child’s foot, and the image of the Tree of Life. Many French manuscripts from the
13th century on utilize similar iconographic motifs. The illumination of the Belleville
Breviary of ca. 1325, produced for a Dominican, is associated with Jean Pucelle. The
complexity of the didactic imagery, including three lost miniatures that can be
reconstructed from a prefatory explanatory text, may reflect the Dominican mission of
teaching and explicating theological issues. The cycle representing the articles of faith
was the model for illustration in several other French devotional manuscripts. The
mendicants thus had a pervasive and diverse influence on French art, architecture, and
iconography in the late Middle Ages.
Karen Gould
[See also: AGEN; DOMINICAN ORDER; FRANCISCAN ORDER; PUCELLE,
JEAN; TOULOUSE]
Durliat, M. “Le role des ordres mendiants dans la creation de l’architecture gothique méridionale.”
In La naissance et l’essor du gothique méridional au XIIIe siècle. Toulouse: Privat, 1974, pp.
71–86.
Gould, Karen. The Psalter and Hours of Yolande de Soissons. Cambridge: Medieval Academy of
America, 1978.
Lambert, E. “L’église des Jacobins de Toulouse et l’architecture dominicaine en France.” Bulletin
monumental 104(1946): 141–86.
Montagnes, Bernard. Architecture dominicaine en Provence. Paris: CNRS, 1979.
Sandler, Lucy Freeman. “Jean Pucelle and the Lost Miniatures of the Belleville Breviary.” Art
Bulletin 66(1984):73–96.
Sundt, Richard A. “The Jacobin Church of Toulouse and the Origins of Its Double-Nave Plan.” Art
Bulletin 71(1989): 185–207.
MENTAL HEALTH
. In medieval scholastic theory and in everyday practice, functional intelligence and
“normal” behavior enjoyed greater latitude than today, yet their impairment was also
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