THE STONE CAVERS OF VÉZELAY
by Ferzini Frans (2001) © L'Informatore del Marmista, Verona, Giorgio Zusi Editore, n.480, pp. 40-42 [original
title: Il segno degli scalpellini di Vezelay]
A Basilica in a small village in Burgundy bears witness to
the work of "cathedral builders".
Vezélay is a small village in Burgundy with steep, austere yet
charming street leading up to the Basilica of Sainte Marie-Madeleine
, which dominates the highest point in immobile and serene
expectancy of the "coming of the skies". From its square, the
Basilica interacts with the immutable horizon, opening out on the
sequence of the Morvan Hills and the bed of the Vallée de la Cure,
where Girard de Rossillon set up, in about 860, the community of
monks which culminated in the foundation of the Basilica of Vézelay.
The harmony between the Basilica and surrounding nature is a
symphonic example of divine and human aspirations, an osmosis
culminating in the final work. A nearby shop, the Magasin du Pelerin,
recalls that the monastery was one of the four starting points on
the roads to Compostela: the Via Lemocivensis.
History would not have preserved the memory of this monastery
without the appearance in the early XI century of an extraordinary
cult dedicated to Mary Magdalen around the precious relics conserved
at Saint-Maximin - La Sainte Baume and here in Vézelay. A multitude
of pilgrims arrived to venerate she who "so pleased God in pure
love..."; sculptors outdid themselves to carve forms and signs of
the larger tradition, symbolism often disguised and overshadowed by
the magnificence of the tympanum in the narthex and the stories
narrated in the procession of capitals in the naves. The most
intimate signs are revealed in the symbolic meaning of the door in
the narthex and the luminous ambulatory rich with the marks of stone
and light.
Passing through the main door of the facade, the original structure
of which dates from 1150 - subsequently modified with the addition
of a Gothic fronton in 1250 - access is gained to the narthex, the
west wall of which has a second door dominated by a majestic
tympanum where the hieratic figure of Christ with open arms seems to
say: "I am the doorway!". The penumbra of the narthex opens on to a
brighter route marked off by columns leading from peaceful
luminosity to the sparkling intensity of the choir. What may seem to
be separate is, in reality, surprisingly continuos.
The design gives the stone an idea of progressive continuity from
obscured weight to the total lightness of illumination.
And thus that particular sense of "passing" from the darkness of the
west to the light of the rising Sun, the definitive triumph of
Christ over death. It is no coincidence that the narthex was defined
in the XII century as "Galilee", precisely because Christ on saying
to Mary Magdalen "I shall go before you i Galilee" makes it clear
that Galilee is the "Place of passage", the "narrow gateway" leading
to resurrection. The "Place of passage" in Aramaic was also the
place where John baptised and called Christ the Lamb of God; anyone
passing the threshold of the narthex of Magdalen Basilica is
welcomed by clarification of both sight and soul.
The contrast with the kingdom of death is to the east, where the
choir becomes the ambulatory in the spatial cotinuity which departs
from the colonnade of the naves to blend into the soft and
harmonious chapels arranged like spokes, in an overall setting of
universal geometry.
Order, measure and beauty are the rules of composition imitating the
work of God; the Mediaeval "marker", fascinated by universal beauty
aimed to build "the antechamber of the sky", just as Solomon built
in total submission to the rules set by the cosmos, which "...speaks
of the glory of God and the work of His hands announcing the
firmament" (Psalm 18.2).
Here, in the ambulatory which the stone cutter identified with his
guild trademark, a mysterious star embodies the secret golden number,
personal trademarks and especially lobate leaves are carved directly
on the column drums, an ancient guild symbol whose secret even finds
it roots in Celtic traditions: the Confédération Eduenne des
Centonaris. All these hallmarks in any case define the deeper sense
of being cathedral builders, perceptible in every Romanesque-Gothic
work, in the ribbing, the mouldings, the transitions between bases,
drums and capitals and every place where the dark-light relationship
is evident. This relationship not only defines the volumes but
especially the conventional symbols of the "life of Man", the
ambivalence of "worked matter", stone and the human soul.
By no coincidence, those stone carvers who "signed" the columns of
the choir are still today "at work" for the Compagnons du Devoir de
Liberté: they are nicknamed "Loup", since the wolf is the animal of
Apollo, son of darkness emerging like light from the shadows to
create shafts of luminous hope in contrast with the obscure wells of
the conscience.
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