Gardners Art through the Ages A Global History

The monastery cloisters of the 12th century are monuments to the
vitality, popularity, and influence of monasticism at its peak.
Moissac’s cloister sculpture program consists of large figural re-
liefs on the piers as well as historiated (ornamented with figures)
capitals on the columns. The pier reliefs (FIG. 17-9,right) portray the
12 apostles and the first Cluniac abbot of Moissac, Durandus

(1047–1072), who was buried in the cloister. The 76 capitals alter-

nately crown single and paired column shafts. They are variously

decorated, some with abstract patterns, many with biblical scenes or

the lives of saints, others with fantastic monsters of all sorts—

basilisks, griffins, lizards, gargoyles, and more.Bestiaries—collec-

tions of illustrations of real and imaginary animals—became very

438 Chapter 17 ROMANESQUE EUROPE

T

he most influential theologian of the Romanesque era was
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153). A Cistercian monk and ab-
bot of the monastery he founded at Clairvaux in northern Bur-
gundy, he embodied not only the reforming spirit of the Cistercian
order but also the new religious fervor awakening in western Europe.
Bernard’s impassioned eloquence made him a European celebrity
and drew him into the stormy politics of the Romanesque era. He
intervened in high ecclesiastical and secular matters, defended and
sheltered embattled popes, counseled kings, denounced heretics,
and preached Crusades against the Muslims (see “The Crusades,”
page 442)—all in defense of papal Christianity and spiritual values.
The Church declared Bernard a saint in 1174, barely two decades af-
ter his death.
In a letter Bernard wrote in 1127 to William, abbot of Saint-
Thierry, he complained about the rich outfitting of non-Cistercian
churches in general and the sculptural adornment of monastic clois-
ters in particular:

I will overlook the immense heights of the places of prayer, their

immoderate lengths, their superfluous widths, the costly refinements,

and painstaking representations which deflect the attention ...of

those who pray and thus hinder their devotion....But so be it,let

these things be made for the honor of God ....[But] in the cloisters,

before the eyes of the brothers while they read—what ...are the

filthy apes doing there? The fierce lions? The monstrous centaurs?

The creatures, part man and part beast?... You may see many bodies

under one head, and conversely many heads on one body. On one

side the tail of a serpent is seen on a quadruped, on the other side the

head of a quadruped is on the body of a fish. Over there an animal

has a horse for the front half and a goat for the back ....Everywhere

so plentiful and astonishing a variety of contradictory forms is seen

that one would rather read in the marble than in books, and spend

the whole day wondering at every single one of them than in medi-

tating on the law of God. Good God! If one is not ashamed of the

absurdity, why is one not at least troubled at the expense?*

Bernard of Clairvaux on Cloister Sculpture

WRITTEN SOURCES

17-9General view of the cloister (left) and detail of the pier with the relief of Abbot Durandus (right), Saint-Pierre, Moissac, France, ca. 1100–1115.
Relief: limestone, 6high.

The revived tradition of stonecarving seems to have begun with decorating capitals with reliefs. The most extensive preserved ensemble of
sculptured early Romanesque capitals is in the Moissac cloister.

* Apologia 12.28–29. Translated by Conrad Rudolph,The “Things of Greater

Importance”: Bernard of Clairvaux’s Apologia and the Medieval Attitude toward

Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 279, 283.

1 ft.

17-9ADoubting

Thomas, Santo

Domingo, Silos,

ca. 1090–1100.