The West Choir Screen at Mainz Cathedral: Studies in Program, Patronage, and Meaning

This thesis considers the diverse ways in which French Gothic forms and ideas were "received" in regions outside France, particularly in the German empire. The study centers on the west choir screen erected at Mainz cathedral in the 1230's to close off the western high sanctuary from the nave. It is generally acknowledged that this major architectural and sculptural monument commissioned for the cathedral at Mainz, the seat of the German primate and archchancellor, was executed by masters schooled at Reims cathedral. A number of German scholars have examined the fragments from the dismantled structure at Mainz from the perspectives of style and archaeology. Together with a handful of interpretative studies focusing on single components of the screen, this earlier scholarship provides a substantial base from which to pose larger, more comprehensive questions about the genesis of the project. The present study takes a broadly-based contextual approach to suggest that what was happening artistically, programmatically and historico-politically in and around the program and patronage of the highly prestigious project at Mainz was highly predictive of other important thirteenth-century German projects, such as the west choir screen at Naumburg, as well as for major undertakings of a similar sort elsewhere in Europe. Chapter one discusses the art historical importance of the west choir screen at Mainz while the following two chapters examine the conditions of the patronage at the Rhenish seat, suggesting the ways in which the stylistic and programmatic character of the screen may have been conceived to respond precisely to its location and function in the cathedral, as well as to the local historical context. Chapters four through six examine contemporary legal, political and ideological developments which, it is argued, help to illuminate the conception and meaning of the project. Viewed in the perspective of European developments at large the screen and the west choir project at Mainz emerge not as the products of predominantly "artistic" forces, but rather as monuments generated in response to certain needs and conditions at Mainz at a specific historical moment. Three appendices treat the earlier literature on the west choir screen at Mainz and on a selected group of twelfth- and thirteenth-century sculptural programs in France and Germany, as well as the historical topography and liturgy of Mainz cathedral.