ABSTRACT
This article provides an iconograpical study of a cycle of eight capitals in the crypt of the abbey church of Saint-Denis based on the legend of St Edmund, king and martyr. The capitals were in place by 11 June 1144, the documented date of the consecration of Abbot Suger’s crypt and choir. The historical king of the East Angles was martyred in 869 by the Danish invaders. Over a century later, between 985 and 987, Abbo of Fleury wrote the Passo Sancti Eadmundi to preserve for posterity the story of the martyrdom as told in his presence by Dunstan, archbishop of Canterbury. Dunstan had heard it at first hand from the king’s armour bearer. All but two of the capitals depend on this first written version of the legend.
The cycle, however, begins and ends with two scenes derived from later, more developed versions of the legend. Like the Benedict cycle in the crypt, the Edmund cycle includes Biblical events that were introduced by the author as apt metaphors to enhance the reader’s understanding of Edmund’s saintliness. The Biblical scenes give visual expression to metaphors Abbo used with reference to the saint’s martyrdom and his first posthumous miracle. Two of the other six capitals, now lost, are known only from 19th-century drawings. All the surviving capitals have suffered damage, and throughout the cycle, surface erosion has severely diminished the clarity of detail.
Since the cycle has no known parallels or prototypes in French or English sculptural programmes, reasons are suggested why a cycle based on the legend of this Anglo- Saxon saint was included in the crypt at Saint-Denis.
