Unknown artist

The Ark of the Covenant (Quadriga Aminadab), detail from The Allegories of Saint Paul window, 12th century, Stained glass, Abbey Church, Saint-Denis, France; Photo: Bulloz © RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

A More Perfect Tent

Commentary by Robin Griffith-Jones

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In the 1140s Abbot Suger rebuilt and beautified the Abbey of St Denis, outside Paris. Suger himself wrote an account of the work. Among its wonders were the new stained-glass windows. Here is the most famous.

The lowest of the five roundels was once the scene of St Paul turning a mill. (This is now the middle roundel.) Suger explained: ‘One [window], urging us onward from the material to the immaterial, shows the apostle Paul turning a mill and the prophets carrying sacks to the mill’ (Suger 1996: section 34). From the edible but hard outer bran Paul extracts inner grains of spiritual truth.

None of the roundels shows a story from the Bible; each, instead, combines biblical and theological motifs into a single stylized, emblematic, and revelatory scene. They are following the example set by Hebrews 9, in its progress from the material to the immaterial Holy of Holies.

Once at the window’s centre (and now at its top), the most startling of all Suger’s images brings old and new ‘Ark’ together. Beside the scene are two Latin verses:

From the Ark of the Covenant the altar is set up with the cross of Christ;
It is under a greater Covenant that Life wishes to die.

Beneath is the simple phrase: CHARIOT OF AMINADAB. This is a reference to the Song of Solomon 6:9, ‘My soul has troubled me on account of the chariots of Aminadab’.

Aminadab had helped manage the joyful transport of the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem at King David’s command (1 Chronicles 15:10; cf. Abinadab’s cart, 1 Samuel 7:1–2; 1 Chronicles 13:6). The twelfth-century commentator Honorius (Expositio in Cantica canticorum) interpreted Song of Solomon 6:9 as follows: the Shunamite woman who is speaking represents the Synagogue as she will be when at last she is led by the Gospel to belief in Christ; the chariot of Aminadab represents the Gospels, its four wheels the Evangelists.

For Suger as for Honorius, everything that was opaque in the Old Covenant is being revealed and fulfilled in the New; and above all, the character of the Holy of Holies, its priest and offering.

  

References

Abbot Suger. 1996. On What was Done in his Administration, trans. by David Burr, available at https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/sugar.asp [accessed 8 January 2018]

Cusimano, Richard, and Eric Whitmore (trans.). 2018. ‘The Book of Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis: His Accomplishments during His Administration’, in Selected Works of Abbot Suger of Saint Denis (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press), pp. 66–126

Honorius Augustodunensis. Expositio in Cantica canticorum. 1895. Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Latina, vol. 172, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne (Paris), pp. 352–53

See full exhibition for Hebrews 9

Hebrews 9

Revised Standard Version

9 Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly sanctuary. 2For a tent was prepared, the outer one, in which were the lampstand and the table and the bread of the Presence; it is called the Holy Place. 3Behind the second curtain stood a tent called the Holy of Holies, 4having the golden altar of incense and the ark of the covenant covered on all sides with gold, which contained a golden urn holding the manna, and Aaron’s rod that budded, and the tables of the covenant; 5above it were the cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat. Of these things we cannot now speak in detail.

6 These preparations having thus been made, the priests go continually into the outer tent, performing their ritual duties; 7but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood which he offers for himself and for the errors of the people. 8By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the sanctuary is not yet opened as long as the outer tent is still standing 9(which is symbolic for the present age). According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper, 10but deal only with food and drink and various ablutions, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation.

11 But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) 12he entered once for all into the Holy Place, taking not the blood of goats and calves but his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. 13For if the sprinkling of defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, 14how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify your conscience from dead works to serve the living God.

15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, since a death has occurred which redeems them from the transgressions under the first covenant. 16For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. 17For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. 18Hence even the first covenant was not ratified without blood. 19For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20saying, “This is the blood of the covenant which God commanded you.” 21And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. 22Indeed, under the law almost everything is purified with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.

23 Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. 24For Christ has entered, not into a sanctuary made with hands, a copy of the true one, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the Holy Place yearly with blood not his own; 26for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27And just as it is appointed for men to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

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