The Sainte-Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy
Royal Architecture in Thirteenth-Century Paris

This book offers a novel perspective on one of the most important monuments of French Gothic architecture, the Sainte-Chapelle.

Meredith Cohen (Author)

9781107025578, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 November 2014

400 pages, 138 b/w illus. 16 colour illus.
26.1 x 18.3 x 1.9 cm, 0.88 kg

'[The Sainte-Chapelle and the Construction of Sacral Monarchy] is absolutely crammed with data, citations, documents in Latin followed by translation, measurements taken with the latest devices now in use, precise references to archival documents as well as an impressive collection of images of early drawings of many lost monuments of medieval Paris. … For readers whose research touches the themes of Cohen's book, therein lie its riches.' Meredith Parsons Lillich, French History

This book offers a novel perspective on one of the most important monuments of French Gothic architecture, the Sainte-Chapelle, constructed in Paris by King Louis IX of France between 1239 and 1248 especially to hold and to celebrate Christ's Crown of Thorns. Meredith Cohen argues that the chapel's architecture, decoration, and use conveyed the notion of sacral kingship to its audience in Paris and in greater Europe, thereby implicitly elevating the French king to the level of suzerain, and establishing an early visual precedent for the political theories of royal sovereignty and French absolutism. By setting the chapel within its broader urban and royal contexts, this book offers new insight into royal representation and the rise of Paris as a political and cultural capital in the thirteenth century.

1. The making of a royal city: Paris and the architecture of Philip Augustus
2. The Sainte-Chapelle: Parisian Rayonnant and the new royal architecture
3. The architecture of sacral kingship
4. Private, public, and the promotion of the cult of kings
5. Louis' later patronage in Paris
Conclusion
Appendices.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Medieval history [HBLC1], European history [HBJD]