The two major capitals in the crypt of Saint-Bénigne at Dijon

Abstract

AbstractThe three-storey rotunda at Dijon, built by William of Volpiano and consecrated in 1018, has been reduced to its crypt, but an impressive pair of capitals survive adjacent to the burial place of St Bénigne. In modern times these capitals have repeatedly been described as full of monsters, and their significance for Romanesque sculpture has consequently been neglected. Enough remains of their dense, three-dimensional sculpture for them to be identified as representing, in fact, a lesson commonly read in masses for the dead. Numerous saints and martyrs were marked by burials in the crypt or by altars in the rotunda. All Saints’ Day was celebrated on 1 November, so that the main feast day of St Bénigne was transferred to 2 November. About 998, the commemoration of All Souls, also on 2 November, had been introduced by Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, and is likely to have been adopted by Abbot William. The text from 1 Thessalonians suggests the imaginative use of the rotunda’s vertical dimension, at this particular season and others.