Lettres à l’archange, au sujet de l’iconographie des très anciennes et très mystérieuses sculptures romanes du trumeau de l’abbaye Sainte-Marie de Souillac

The iconography of the trumeau of the Sainte-Marie de Souillac abbey has been the subject of successive interpretations over the last hundred years. The interpretation of only one side, the one bearing the representation of Abraham’s sacrifice, is unanimous. For the other two sides, no agreement has emerged: Meyer Schapiro saw an anti-theology; Régis Labourdette a revealed homosexual subconscious; Carol Knicely the confrontation of two antagonistic attitudes, one warlike and feudal, the other monastic; Jérôme Baschet a contest between legitimate and perverted authority; Caddie Ruth Krindle the illustration of simony and impure priests. None of these interpretations has prevailed, for lack of convincing evidence, despite the authors’ numerous effortsand detailed descriptions of the relief.Here we propose another one, explaining, with the help of contemporary images and texts, each step of our reasoning. The dramatized representation of Abraham’s sacrifice thus reveals itself as the reflection of a world of struggles and tensions that tries to reconcile the divine order with that of human relations. The central face depicts the Church, which, caught up in the disorders of the world, is in sharp decline. The right side shows us monks fleeing these disorders, seeking their way and progressing little by little towards perfection.The monks of Souillac therefore posted at the threshold of their building a manifesto loudly proclaiming the virtues of the cenobitic way, at the very time when the Gregorian Reform tended to marginalize their role.Even if the form of this text is not strictly academic, its content is by the rigor of the demonstration and by the nature of the factual - not rhetorical -evidence provided.