Abstract
A long-standing historiographic tradition has explained the twelfth-century portal of Saint-Pierre at Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne through the lens of the struggle against heresy, connecting its monumental imagery with the writings of the abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, specifically his treatises Liber adversus Iudeorum and Contra Petrobrusianos. In this article, the unusual program of the portal is explored in light of Cluniac liturgical readings transmitted by the late eleventh-century lectionary used at Cluny (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouv. acq. lat. 2246) and other coeval sources. I argue that the portal, informed by these texts, was not only conceived as a visual progression from Lent to Easter but also possibly intended as a mirror, in which the liturgy performed in front of it resonated and was amplified to unveil its deep eschatological meaning.
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