A Royal Tomb Program in the Reign of St. Louis

Abstract

In the year 1264 two translations occured at Saint-Denis marking the completion of the most ambitious tomb program of the Middle Ages. The bodies of eight Carolingian and eight Capetian kings and queens were moved to sites in the new crossing and their graves were identified with carved effigies on high bases.1 Scholars have assumed that Louis IX commissioned these tombs, although his presence at the translations is mentioned only in chronicles written after his canonization.2 There is no evidence of payments for the tombs in the royal or Abbey accounts, but both records are deficient in those years. Without documentary proof to the contrary, it should be assumed that the Abbey-sponsored the program just as the Abbeys of Saint-Remi, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and Saint-Médard had erected tombs and monuments commemorating their royal benefactors. The program has all of the characteristics of a Dionysian creation: it is sophisticated and unconventional and its purpose was to strengthen a privilege, in this case that of royal burial. The tombs were arranged not to impress by their numbers but to illustrate the genealogy, and thereby the legitimacy, of the royal house. The two lines of tombs, four pairs of Capetians on the north and four pairs of Carolingians on the south side of the crossing, flanked the metalwork tombs of Philip Augustus and his son, Louis VIII, symbolizing the fact that the latter kings had unified the two houses by virtue of the Carolingian descent of their mothers.3 We should not be surprised that the Abbey, attempting to induce future kings to be buried within its walls, would devise a setting with political and dynastic significance rather than promising lavish care of the soul. Perhaps no other institution identified its own welfare and prestige with that of the royal house as consistently as did Saint-Denis. It is this political theme that runs through so many of its works of art and its chronicles.

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