Mélanges: À l'ombre de Cluny: L'hagiographie et la politique du portail de Saint-Hilaire de Semur-en-Brionnais

This paper is devoted to a reconsideration of the main portal of the church of Saint-Hilaire in Semur-en-Brionnais, mentioned in past scholarship as being «a reduced copy» of the destroyed Great Portal of Cluny III. The tympanum may barely confirm this comparison, but the lintel seems to be an intentional deviation from the supposed model of the abbey church. An examination of the style and theme of the Saint-Hilaire portal places the sculpture in the context of the regional Romanesque school of the Brionnais. But the major concern of this paper is the iconographie scheme and the stand of both the lords and the religious community of Semur in Cluniac politics. The lintel of Semur bears a rare depiction of the schismatic council gathered in Seleucia in A.D. 359. This thematic choice is assumed to be connected to the 1160s papal schism, in particular its implications for Burgundy and Cluny. A schismatic council convoked on Burgundian soil in 1162 as well as the abbacy of a schismatic abbot at Cluny appear to be the specific targets of the lintel's iconography. As a consequence, a post-1164 dating is suggested for the portal under discussion. Thus, a careful consideration of the model/copy dichotomy of Cluny/Semur leads to the conclusion that the Semur portal was never intended to be a faithful copy of its exalted model. It appears that the infamous political situation involving Cluny and the region motivated the lords of Semur, in whose fortified precinct the church stood, and the religious community, to express their political disapproval of Cluny by means of their choice of subject matter. And so, rather than being an exalted model, Cluny may have represented an anti-model from which to depart and with which to argue in a monumental form of discourse. Saint Hilary's anti-heretical convictions may be perceived here as conveying an ideological paradigm, replacing the old art-historical one, chosen by both the community of Saint-Hilaire and the lords of Semur in their confrontation with contemporary schismatics.