E-Text 13

The Choir Stalls (c.1508-c.22)

Our story of the Life of the cathedral began with the creation of the sculptural program of the west portals c1220, probably under the direction of Dean Jean d'Abbeville.  It ends 300 years later in early the sixteenth century with a similar "image explosion" (Michael Camille's words): we can learn much by comparing and contrasting beginning and end.

The west portals designed by the clergy, opened toward the center of the city and were intended principally for consumption by layfolk.  We have seen that in the sculptural program of the portals the literal reading of the Scriptures is subordinate to allegorical and especially tropological (moral) readings in line with Church reform in the aftermath of the 1215 Fourth Lateran Council.  We have no idea of the identity of the sculptors, but close parallels with sculptural production elsewhere suggests that they were outsiders.  All this may be contrasted with the choir stalls where the raw material was not stone but wood (oak, cut in the forest of La Neuville-en-Héz near Beauvais), where the audience was almost exclusively the clergy, where the literal reading of the Old Testament produced a powerful linear narrative and where the artisans were certainly local men. 

No other artifact in the Art Humanities curriculum quite compares with our choir stalls.  Makers and users are bound tightly together in production and utilization: the clergy spent their days moving though and sitting in this installation, the surfaces of which are polished smooth by the swish of their vestments and the touch of their hands.  The physical presence of the clergy is palpable. 

The written sources reveal that work on the choir stalls was directed by a committee of four members of the clergy who also took advice from outside specialists and who sent their artisans to inspect possible prototypes in nearby cities (Beauvais, Rouen and S-Riquier).  The funds were partly derived from amends (marances) paid by canons who had missed their daily duties in the choir or who were otherwise delinquent.  Gifts were also received from individuals including Dean Adrien de Hénencourt who may have played a role in the choice of subject matter for the figurative programs.   The two principal artisans who directed the work, Arnoul Boulin (May 1509 contract) and Alexandre Huet, local men, were each paid 7 sous a day (from which apprentices were also paid) plus an annual payment of 288 sous.  In addition to themselves being woodworkers (huchers) Boulin and Huet were entrepreneurs who hired the necessary sculptors (tailleurs d'images).  Work is thought to have been complete towards 1522.

Our website provides an overview of the stalls in the four panoramas set in choir space--you can go to the south-west corner and sit in the dean's seat or to the north-west where the king or his representative would sit.   Then you can explore the exquisite figurative work adorning five different areas of the stalls: misericords located in each stall, free-standing figures on the staircase rails, low-relief panels, handrests and pendentives.  We hope soon to add appropriate liturgical music to the experience.

A misericord (mercy seat) is a projecting ledge affixed to the underside of the seat provided for each member of the clergy.  The seats are hinged and can be raised to allow the occupant to stand.  During the long periods of standing a member of the clergy might find relief (mercy) by propping himself upon the misericord, half standing and half sitting.  And so we have a paradox in that the designers provided the most compelling forward-moving Old Testament narrative (ductus) in these fixtures which, during the presence of the clergy, remained invisible.  However, the six staircase ramps leading from the lower to the upper stalls provided a vehicle to allow the successive crescendo points of the Old Testament story to pop up into sight in the unforgettable little monumental figures who populate the upper rail at the sides of each staircase.  The story begins at the south-west end in the dean's seat with the Creation of Adam and Eve and the Original Sin.  Just as in the south-western portal, the Virgin Mary is introduced right from the start of the story, her purity countering Sin.  The first misericord in the dean's seat shows Noah's Ark afloat in a flood of desolation while the building of the Ark and Noah's sacrifice are on the side panels and Cain and Abel on the rail to the right.  The Ark was a metaphor for the Church: both are vehicles of salvation: the dean is thus born up by the Church.  From Noah the narrative rushes eastward to God's promise to Abraham, the near-sacrifice of Isaac and the search for a wife for Isaac.  The story reaches a nadir at the eastern end of the stalls--the point furthest from the dean--with Jacob's deception of Isaac, his father, and the narrowly-averted battle between Joseph and his older brother, Esau.  Then, as the narrative turns back (like a boustrophedon) toward the starting point, we launch into an extended treatment of the life of Joseph as his self-promoting dreams turn his brothers against him and he is sold into slavery in Egypt; he is subject to the unwanted attentions of the wife of Potiphar (captain of Pharoah's guard), is imprisoned, correctly interprets the Potiphar's servants' dreams and then released to interpret Potiphar's own dreams.  His correct interpretation of the dream of the fat and thin cows leads him to be appointed in charge of Egyptian grain production.  It is on this triumphal note that we end the sequence on the southern stalls directly under the dean's stall and pass over to the king's stall.  The crescendos of the story are expressed by the miniature-monumental figures atop the rails of the three staircases: Jacob's flight on the eastern stair, Joseph cast into the well by his brothers in the middle and the dreams of Potiphar to the west, within sight of the dean.  Interestingly, right in front of the dean on the terminal panel of the lower stalls, is the Drunkenness of Noah (compare the contemporary Sistine Chapel).

The Old Testament narrative then leaps across to the upper stalls on the north side, starting with the king's stall featuring the triumph of Joseph and the granaries of Egypt bursting with grain.  Joseph's story then continues along the high stalls toward the east with the famine in Canaan and an extended treatment of his deception of his brothers sent to buy grain in Egypt.  At the eastern end the death of Jacob is featured on the staircase rail.  Then the narrative turns back on itself along the lower stalls on the north side with Moses, Samson, and David.  The middle and western staircase rails feature Moses and Samson. 

What was the overall plot?  The theme is very much travel, as Isaac's retinue moves along the back row of the southern stalls and Joseph comes to Egypt in the lower southern stalls.  Here we reach a kind of triumph as Joseph achieves great power and saves Egypt from famine as the story passes over to the king's seat.  And then along the rear stalls on the north the brothers are travelling between Canaan and Egypt while in the front row the Israelites, led by Moses, set out for the Promised Land: key points along the way are shown in the reception of the Law on Mount Sinai and the Israelite spies bring back tokens of the of the Promised Land.  Whereas the triumph depicted on the south side unfolds in Egypt, not the final home of the Israelites, on the north side the story of arrival in the Promised Land is almost complete.  However, it ends--right under the king's nose--with that most enigmatic of Old Testament stories, the Sufferings of Job.

Did the clergy assembled in the choir rehearse and meditate upon these themes during the long hours of the Divine Office?  Given the invisibility of the misericords, did they retain a mental map of the grand narrative and relieve their enforced stasis with thoughts of passage to the Promised Land?  I would want to believe that Dean Adrien de Hénencourt, probably dominant amongst the group that devised the scheme, indeed did.  Did the authors of the plot deliberately set out to show how the great narrative of God's Plot and his promise to his Chosen People was worked out in ways which, at times, were fraught with struggle and risk?  The role of the relationship between brothers is particularly interesting: was this a subject of reflection on the part of canons who, like Dean Adrien de Hénencourt, were younger brothers (like Joseph).  And what was the relationship of the clerical "iconography committee" and the carvers (tailleurs d'images) who created the wooden sculpture: did the former determine form as well as content through the use of cartoons?  The possibility that the carvers could themselves read the Scriptures is rendered more likely by the fact that vernacular versions of the Bible began to circulate early in this area.  The literal reading of the Old Testament in the sculpture of the misericords provides a fascinating parallel to the insistence of the priority of the Scriptures in the contemporary preaching of reformers like Martin Luther.

Whereas the misericords and the staircase rails must be read closely together, the New Testament Narrative, carved in the low-relief panels of the terminal walls, is more loosely linked, though grounded in the role of the Virgin starting with the Purity of the Virgin on the outside of the dean's stall and the Virgin as the New Eve inside.   You can use the website to follow the narrative from west to east, first on the south side where we see Apocryphal images of the Conception, Nativity, and childhood of the Virgin, ending with her Betrothal and the Nativity of Christ, depicted on the eastern terminal wall.  Just as in the misericords the story then leaps back to resume at the west end of the north side where we find, astonishingly attached to the exterior of the king's stall, the image of the Massacre of the Innocents, an image often seen as a sign of Bad Governance.  Then, the Christological narrative goes from west to east with the childhood of Jesus, his ministry and his Crucifixion, Entombment, Resurrection and Ascension.  In the eastern terminal wall of the southern stalls the Virgin Mary reappears at Pentecost and in the Dormition, Assumption and Coronation.

The remaining two features of the sculptural program of the stalls are free from dependence upon biblical narrative.  In the extraordinary handrests secular figures from the life of the layfolk come to join the clergy and the artisans as the Three Worlds of the Cathedral come together.  And added to this there are images that express the Other--figures that are grotesque, amusing or erotic.  And this repertory continues in the pendentives where figurative images alternate with exquisite foliage.