1.These words (Ego sum ostium, dicit Dominus, per me si quis introierit salvabitur)
are inscribed around the representation of Christ in Majesty above the portal of the church of
Alpirsbach in Baden-Württemberg. See Werner Weisbach, Religiöse Reform und
mittelalterliche Kunst (Einsiedeln/Zürich, 1945), p. 204, n. 106. Weisbach also calls attention
to the inscription, Adest porta per quam justi redeunt ad patriam, "this is the door through
which the just return to their native land," which appears around an ornamented door pull on the
west portal of the church of Ébreuil in the Auvergne.
2.For the Alexandrian tradition, see Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle
Ages (1952; rpt. Notre Dame, Ind., 1964), pp. 6-14.
3.Bede, De Schematibus et Tropis 2: 12, trans. Calvin B. Kendall, Bede's Art of
Poetry and Rhetoric (Saarbrücken, 1991), p. 207.
4.By "full" leonine hexameter or pentameter verse, I mean verse with disyllabic rhyme
linking the caesura with the line-end (here, pergentes / mentes). I refer to verses with
internal monosyllabic rhyme as "common" leonines.
5.The texts of this and all inscriptions cited below are based on my own transcriptions,
unless otherwise noted; translations are mine.
6.Text and translation, The Divine Comedy, vol. 1: Inferno, ed. Charles S.
Singleton (Princeton, 1970).
7.J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 2nd ed., ed. J. O. Urmson and
Marina Sbisa (Cambridge, Mass., 1975), p. 22 (his italics).
8.Austin, How to Do Things, p. 116.
9.On the application of speech-act theory to medieval texts, see Clare A. Lees, "Working
with Patristic Sources: Language and Context in Old English
page
126
Homilies," in Allen J. Frantzen, ed., Speaking Two Languages: Traditional
Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies (Albany, 1991), pp. 157-80; esp. pp.
159-60, and nn. 12 and 13 (pp. 265-66).
10.See Calvin B. Kendall, "The Voice in the Stone: the Verse Inscriptions of Ste.-Foy of
Conques and the Date of the Tympanum," in Patrick J. Gallacher and Helen Damico, eds.,
Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture (Albany, 1989), pp. 163-82, at p. 169. The present
paper makes explicit some of the theoretical assumptions that underlie my essay on Conques.
11.The bracketed letters are now illegible; for these I accept the reading of Georges Paul
and Pierre Paul, Notre-Dame du Puy: essai historique et archélogique (Le Puy,
1950), p. 103.
12.Paul and Paul, Notre-Dame du Puy, p. 111. Here and throughout, an asterisk
indicates that the inscription is no longer extant.
13.Arthur Kingsley Porter, "Iguácel and More Romanesque Art of Aragon,"
The Burlington Magazine 52 (1928), 115-27; see also his Spanish Romanesque
Sculpture, 2 vols. (Florence, 1928), 1: 63.
14.Hec est porta Domini unde ingrediuntur fideles in domum Domini, que est ecglesia in
honore sancte Marie fundatha. Iussu Sancioni comitis est fabricata una cum sua coniuge nomine
Urraca. In era T centesima Xa est explicata regnante rege Sancio Radimiriz in Aragone . . . .
Amen. My transcription differs in some details from Porter's.
15.Porter, "Iguácel," p. 115.
16.Walter Muir Whitehill, Spanish Romanesque Architecture of the Eleventh
Century (London, 1941), pp. 243-44.
17.Cited by Whitehill, Spanish Romanesque Architecture, p. 245.
18.Whitehill, Spanish Romanesque Architecture, p. 252.
19.Angel Canellas Lopez and Angel San Vicente, Aragon roman (La Pierre-qui-Vire, 1971), p. 77.
20.San Vicente remarks that the elegiac couplet of San Juan de la Peña "resembles a
couplet of the Carolingian poet Boniface, which was also composed for the portal of a basilica"
(Canellas Lopez and San Vicente, Aragon roman, pp. 77-78). The image of the fountain of
life can be found in the elegiac verses composed in the 5th century and still to be seen carved on the
octagonal architrave above the interior columns in the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Laterano in
Rome.
21.Joan Evans, The Romanesque Architecture of the Order of Cluny (Cambridge,
1938), p. 29, n. 8; Jean-Maurice Rouquette, Provence romane: la Provence rhodanienne,
2nd ed. (La Pierre-qui-Vire, 1980), p. 50.
22.Edouard Junyent, Catalogne romane, 2 vols., vol. 2 trans. from Catalan into
French by Emmanuel Companys (La Pierre-qui-Vire, 1960-1961), 2: 50-75; for the date of the
foundation, see p. 50; for the date of the construction, see p. 73. Porter, Spanish Romanesque
Sculpture 1: 71, associates the west portal with the foundation of the monastery in 1117.
page 127
In light of the (to me) probable dependence of the portal
decoration on Maguelone (see below), Porter's inference seems untenable.
23.The inscription is so badly worn that it cannot be read with certainty. Another
possibility is that Renard gave seven gold coins (Mo[r]abitinos) for the project. See Junyent,
Catalogne romane 2: 73.
24.Jacques Lugand, Jean Nougaret, and Robert Saint-Jean, Languedoc roman: le
Languedoc méditerranéen (La Pierre-qui-Vire, 1975), pp. 231-33.
25.For the probable existence of this hypothetical earlier tympanum at Maguelone, see
Lugand, Nougaret, and Saint-Jean, Languedoc roman, pp. 235-36.
26.Compare the inscription at Ébreuil, cited above, n. 1.
27.Details summarized from Jean Favière, Berry roman, 2nd ed. (La Pierre-qui-Vire, 1976), pp. 200-201; L. H. Cottineau, Répertoire topo-bibliographique des
abbayes et prieurés, 2 vols., (Macon, 1939), col. 956, gives the date of foundation as 907.
28.Reported by Jean Hubert, "L'abbatiale Notre-Dame de Déols," Bulletin
monumental 86 (1927), 5-66; pp. 46-57.
29.Hubert, "L'abbatiale Notre-Dame de Déols," p. 52.
30.The adoring angels of the inner archivolt at Déols correspond to the twenty-four
Elders of the archivolts of the central (Christ in Majesty) tympanum of Chartres; the arts and
sciences of the middle archivolt correspond to the Seven Liberal Arts of the right (Incarnation)
tympanum of Chartres; the Works of the Months of the outer archivolt correspond to the archivolt
of the left (Ascension) tympanum of Chartres.
31.The right side of the tympanum with the Eagle and the Bull and the rest of the
inscription is missing. The missing words (in brackets) are supplied from the transcription of Father
Dubouchat.
32.Father Dubouchat transcribed these verses as: Auri grata sonent sunt sacra dictio
partes --Per te doctrina reliqua noscuntur et artes (Hubert, "L'abbatiale Notre-Dame de
Déols," p. 50, n. 2). Hubert, p. 50, proposes several corrections, which, with the exception
of noscantur for noscuntur, I have adopted.
33.The first verse, which is omitted here, of this couplet does not make sense in Father
Dubouchat's transcription. I have accepted Hubert's emendation (p. 50) of Note que to
Notaque in the second.
34.Pierre Riché, "Recherches sur l'instruction des laïcs du IXe au XIIe
siècle," Cahiers de civilisation médiévale Xe-XIIe siècles 5
(1962), 175-82. For El Cid and his wife, see Riché, p. 176, and n. 10, and Richard Fletcher,
The Quest for El Cid (New York, 1990), p. 109. Riché also calls attention to the
development of a new phenomenon in the late 11th and 12th centuries, namely the existence of
persons, both cleric and lay, male and female, who were literate in their own tongue, but not in
Latin.
35.Émile Benveniste, "The Nature of Pronouns," in his Problems in General
page 128
Linguistics, trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek (Coral Gables,
Fla., 1971), pp. 217-22: at p. 219.
36.Benveniste, "The Nature of Pronouns," p. 220.
37.Austin accepts many varieties of written discourse as genuine performatives or,
ultimately, following his collapse of the categories of performatives and constatives, as illocutionary
acts. Some of his illustrations of performative utterances, for example, are taken from legal texts.
38.Michael Hancher, "Performative Utterance, the Word of God, and the Death of the
Author," Semeia 41 (1988), 27-40, at p. 36.
39.On the presence of illiterates and semiliterates in "medieval textual communities" and the
routine expectation that they would "participate in textual culture, having the necessary texts, and
their interpretation, read to them," see Martin Irvine, "Medieval Textuality and the Archaeology of
Textual Culture," in Frantzen, ed., Speaking Two Languages, pp. 181-210; at p. 185, and n.
11 (p. 277), with references to the work of Franz H. Bauml, M. T. Clanchy, Rosamond McKitterick,
and Brian Stock. Although definitive evidence is lacking, I am persuaded of the likelihood that
churches frequented by pilgrims would have provided commentators to explain the sculptures and
translate the inscriptions of the portals.
40.Suger, De Administratione 27, ed. Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger on the
Abbey Church of St. Denis and its Art Treasures, 2nd ed. by Gerda Panofsky-Soergel
(Princeton, 1979), p. 48.
41.Suger, De administratione 27 (verses 3-5), ed. Panofsky, Abbot Suger,
pp. 46-48.
42.I am grateful for the helpful comments and cautions of Professors Rita Copeland, Allen
J. Frantzen, and Michael Hancher.
