Dark Age Bodies: Gender and Monastic Practice in the Early Medieval West

Chapter 5. Inscribing the Rule onto Carolingian Sacred Space

Chapter  Inscribing the Rule onto Carolingian Sacred Space Architectural historian Charles McClendon looks to a singular monumental type, the so-called Frankish westwork, as indicative of the innovative nature of Carolingian building. At the same time, early medieval westworks are notoriously problematic architectural creations. In fact, scholars remain divided as to their precise structural attributes because extant westworks evidence great diversity in form, scale, and function. A general typology for the classic Carolingian westworks of the eighth and ninth centuries is as follows: ‘‘stair towers flanking the western entrance of a church and leading to an interior gallery or tribune.’’1 Typically, a westwork is lodged within the precincts of a monastery or even in a royal palace complex, such as Charlemagne ’s sprawling buildings at Aachen in modern-day Germany. The spatial practices of these western edifices are as contested as are their confused typologies. Complicating matters further, literary evidence that might shed light on the ritual uses of westworks is slim. Nevertheless, architectural historians from the 1930s to the present day have proposed a number of scenarios for the monumental western entryways to Carolingian churches. Westworks, they argue, enclosed an array of ritual practices and social interactions . Above all these structures functioned as ceremonial entryways, a Christian adaptation of a Roman triumphal arch, itself designed to frame and commemorate the jubilant procession of military celebrations.2 Certain westworks also served as funerary crypts, throne rooms, baptismal arenas, and perhaps defensive fortresses. All these theories about the meaning of westworks continue to be debated by historians and architectural historians, especially the imperial associations of the edifice (as a Kaiserkirche) or the Sacred Space 135 interpretation of a Frankish westwork as a symbolic recreation of the church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.3 Westworks were also liturgical galleries designed to display a screened view of the bodies of chanting monks on solemn feast days. This last ritual use of the space suggests that Carolingian holy men envisioned the tribune as a western choir, an additional liturgical area set apart from the hallowed east choir of a basilica. As such, Carolingian westworks are imperialistic spaces, monastic outposts within the lay district of a basilica. Although extant westworks preserve little evidence of their original altar dedications, sacrificial tables were probably included in the interiors of these monumental structures because the spaces were used as oratories.4 It is equally likely that the westwork was a place where lay and clerical elites met, an encounter burdened with spiritual and carnal anxieties. As an assembly space for pilgrims and monks, westworks transplant the design of early Christian atria, open-air courtyards situated in front of the entrances to major basilicas, to Frankish monasteries. In fact, certain Carolingian westworks stand over preexisting monastic atria or even ceremonial, freestanding arches.5 The westwork remains a fluid architectural form, one housing diverse activities and clientele and one only partially known to the expert eye. Though there is no scholarly consensus as to the form and function of the Carolingian westwork, architectural historians agree that one of the best preserved and most illustrative examples can be found at the abbey of Corvey on the Weser River in present-day Westphalia (early medieval Saxony).6 The abbey of Corvey was founded in the 820s by monks from the motherhouse of Corbie in Picardy, and the abbey enjoyed the special favors of the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious. Between the ninth and the eleventh centuries, Corvey emerged as one of the most influential monasteries in the empire.7 For architectural historians, the abbey’s renown stems from its relatively intact westwork in spite of Romanesque and sixteenth-century additions as well as post–World War II renovations. The exterior of the westwork is marked by one of the great stylistic innovations in Carolingian building: intense verticality in contrast to the pronounced horizontal mass of the early Christian basilica form (Figure 5.1). Corvey’s monumental front is set off by two soaring towers punctuated by slit-window openings, a four-story projecting central porch serving as the entryway to the westwork’s ground-level interior, and two curved arches on either side of the porch. Formerly there was an oculus located at the very top of this entry porch where today a statuary niche can be seen (Figure 5.2). Figure 5.1. Exterior façade of the westwork at Corvey, Germany (ca. 885). Photograph courtesy of...