Un couvercle de sarcophage paléochrétien, vestige de la dévotion à saint Jean-Baptiste à l'abbaye de Saint-Denis

Abstract

At the Maison d'Education de la Légion d'Honneur at Saint-Denis is a palaeochristian lid of a sarcophagus which has not been previously studied. It has been reused to cover an ossuary housing the bones of Bénédictine monks, exhumed during work on the cloister in the eighteenth Century and reburied in September 1886 in the cemetery of the Maison, next to the park. The slab is eut prismatically in the form of a roof with four slopes, three of which are sculpted with round imbrications in the form of carp scales. It differs from other similarly sculpted lids dating from the early Middle Ages with respect to its material : a very hard pink and white veined marble, and with respect to an engraved inscription referring to the décollation of Saint John the Baptist, yet another witness to the ancient and often attested cuit of the Baptist at the abbey of Saint Denis.