Notre-Dame Cathedral of Le Puy-en-Velay – Wooden Doors

The wooden doors of the Notre-Dame cathedral of Le Puy have been preserved and are still in place, despite their poor state of repair[1]. They give access to two chapels, reached through the entrance porch, one dedicated to Saint Giles, the other to Saint Martin. Each door is comprised of two valves composed of four vertical panels of larch wood about five centimetres thick. The door to the Saint Giles chapel is dedicated to the Infancy of Christ[2], while that of the Saint Martin chapel refers to the cycle of the Passion[3]. Using a technique of champlevé or low relief, the design lies very flat on a carved ground. Originally, a polychrome treatment enriched the representation but today only a few traces remain in the higher registers of the cycle of the Infancy of Christ.

The door of the Infancy of Christ carries an incomplete inscription that tells us something of the artist and the patron: “Gauzfredus me f[e]cit, Petrus edi[ficavit]”. Gauzfredus has not been identified but it is generally recognised that Pierre, the master-builder, was the bishop of Le Puy. And hence he has been identified as Pierre III, who held the Episcopal seat between 1143 and 1156. But he is also sometimes claimed to be Pierre IV of Solignac (1159-1189). On this same door there is an Arabic inscription in pseudo-Kufic script of a typical sacred phrase in Islamic ornamentation: “There is no other God beside Allah”. Emile Mâle has claimed: “Here the presence of Islam is evident and any doubts we may have had are hereby dispelled.” He thus viewed these doors as the workmanship of a Muslim artist. While we would not contest either the presence of this phrase or that it was taken directly from Islam, the artist, without necessarily being Muslim, may simply have taken his inspiration from the Islamic objects in circulation at the time in the countries around the Mediterranean; one such example in Le Puy was the presence of an ivory horn, presently in conservation at the Crozatier Museum and considered to be of Saracen manufacture from the workshops of Southern Italy. Nor was this type of decorative Kufic script uncommon; indeed, it was quite frequent in the Toulouse and Languedoc regions of the Midi, in Moissac, Saint-Pierre-de-Rhèdes, Lavoûte-Chilhac, and as far as the Iberian Peninsula.

As Walter Cahn has pointed out, ever since the 19th century we have tended to exaggerate the Islamic influence, omitting the Latin and Western dimension to these doors. A major example of Romanesque art, these doors testify to the importance the Middle Ages gave to the door and its representations as symbols of the doors of Paradise. The idea of opposing the cycle of Christ’s Infancy to that of the Passion was frequent during the Romanesque period and can be seen, for instance, on the doors of Santa Maria in Capitolo in Cologne from the 11th century or on the series of Italian monuments built in the 12th century—the bronze doors realised by Bonanus for the Pisa and Monreale cathedrals in Sicily, for instance. The work of the Salvation of Christ on earth is thus featured at the entrance to the edifice, which likely drew its inspiration from the illustration of a Romanesque Bible. Guardian of the entry to the church, the doors, whether in bronze or wood, act like the open double page of a manuscript which the faithful are invited to read before entering into the celestial kingdom materialised by the church.

[2] The cycle began from the lower left by the Annunciation, followed most likely by the Visitation and the Nativity—no longer present today—and then the Announcement to the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Kings, the Magi’s Pilgrimage, the Massacre of the Innocents, the Presentation of the Temple.

[3] The Resurrection of Lazarus, The Entry into Jerusalem, The Last Supper, Jesus’ Arrest, the Christ before Pilot, The Carrying of the Cross, the Crucifixion, The Women Saints at the Tomb, the Ascension and the Pentecost.