Dialogue des chapiteaux de l’abside et de l’autel dans l’abbatiale lyonnaise de Saint-Martin d’Ainay

Abstract

Ainay abbey was one of the main medieval abbeys in Lyon. St Martin’s abbey church was rebuilt during the last decades of the 12th cent. Only two Romanesque capitals in the apse display an iconographic program. Their position on both side of the altar creates a dialogue with liturgical action, also constituting a very scholarly theological commentary on the Eucharistic liturgy. To identify the logic of this performative program, it is therefore necessary to first analyse each image (four per capital), then the links between these images, finally the capitals interactions in relation to the place, the altar and the liturgical practices. Here, as at the cathedral, references to texts date back to the first centuries of the Lyon Church, founded in the 2nd cent.: the two capitals of St. Martin are obviously inspired by the Contra haereses of Irenaeus (late 2nd-early 3rd cent.), second bishop of Lugdunum.