CAPELLA DEL SACRAMENTO

The façade of Rouen Cathedral in Normandy is familiar to most of us because Monet painted his famous series of thirty-three paintings of it between 1892 and 1894, showing how differently we see it at different times of the day and under different weather conditions, as if proving the basic principles of Impressionism through a scientific experiment.

The façade was built in the 13th century, starting with the left tower. The tympanum relief of its first completed St. John’s Gate was carved between 1270 and 1280. The relief depicts the death, that is, the heavenly birth of the two St. Johns. In the upper register, St. John the Evangelist, as described in the Golden Legend, descends into a tomb dug at the foot of an altar and then disappears into it amidst great brightness. In the lower register, Herod and his guests are seated at a banquet table, with Salome dancing beside them, then on the right, the executioner takes the head of Saint John the Baptist in prison, and finally, in the middle, Salome gives the head to her mother. As Matthew (14:6-11) and Mark (6:21-28) describe in unison:

“Now Herod had arrested John and bound him and put him in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, for John had been saying to him: “It is not lawful for you to have her.” Herod wanted to kill John, but he was afraid of the people, because they considered John a prophet. On Herod’s birthday the daughter of Herodias danced for the guests and pleased Herod so much that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” The king was distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he ordered that her request be granted and had John beheaded in the prison. His head was brought in on a platter and given to the girl, who carried it to her mother.” (Mt 14,3-11)

Salome has entered the Gospels and the center of the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist just as Pilate entered the Credo. The Gospels do not even mention her name – we will learn it from Flavius Josephus –, they only refer to her as “the daughter of Herodias”, just as she was only a tool in her mother’s hand. Herodias was the granddaughter of King Herod the Great, whom he gave in marriage to his son and heir on the throne, Herod II, her half-uncle. When, however, Herod II – who, for some reason, is referred to in the Gospels as “Philip” – falls out of favor with his father in 4 BC, Herodias abandons him and marries his younger brother, Herod Antipas, the new heir to the throne. Saint John the Baptist objected to this, and Herodias was determined to silence him forever.

However, the Rouen depiction is unusual for us. This is not how Salome’s dance lives in our cultural memory. We imagine Salome as a beautiful young girl who charms the old goat, Herod Antipas, with her graceful dance. As we see it in Renaissance paintings, such as Filippo Lippi’s or Benozzo Gozzoli’s Martyrdoms of Saint John:

However, the Rouen Salome is not like this, but rather a rubber-bodied acrobat woman, such as those who entertain the people of the inns in Chinese historical films.

This is probably the exact effect that this depiction was intended to produce. For medieval spectators, accustomed to couple and circle dances, the solitary dance basically meant the performances of acrobats and jugglers at fairs and inns.

But this is not the only reason. After all, the earliest depiction of Salome’s dance, in a Chartres Gospel from the early 9th century, we see not an acrobatic, but an “ordinary” dance. Something happened later, because from the 12th century onwards Salome is depicted almost everywhere as an acrobatic dancer.

The medieval church deeply condemned public entertainments – and indeed dance in general – just as it did Salome, and by linking them, the two mutually dishonored each other. As Saint John Chrysostom states in his homily on Matthew 14, Herod’s supper (PG 58:485-486):

Ὅπου γὰρ χοροί, ἐκεῖ καὶ δαίμονες· ὅπου δὲ πολλὴ κρότος, ἐκεῖ καὶ τὰ πονηρὰ πνεύματα· ὅπου δὲ αὐλοὶ καὶ κιθάραι, ἐκεῖ χοροὶ τῶν ἀκαθάρτων δαιμόνων.

“For where there is dancing, there are demons; where there is loud noise and clapping, there are evil spirits; where there are pipes and zithers, there is a choir of unclean demons.”

Καίτοιγε οὐ παρεῖσα τὴν τοῦ Ἡρῳδιάδος θυγατέρα, ἀλλ’ ὁ διάβολος, ὁ τότε δι’ ἐκείνης ὀρχούμενος, καὶ νῦν δι’ αὐτῶν τοὺς χοροὺς ἄγει.

“Even if the daughter of Herodias is not present, the devil who then danced in her person still leads the choirs through them.”

So the devil himself danced in the person of Salome. This is why she must be depicted in contorted, unnatural poses, as if possessed by a devil. As in many manuscripts, for example in this Amiens Missal from around 1323 (Royal Library of the Hague 78 D 40, fol. 108r):

or on this capital from the Abbey of St. George de Bascherville near Rouen, on which some crowned musicians are playing like in the scenes of the Apocalypse, but the woman dancing on her hands is considered by the literature to be Salome:

or on this extremely simplified and therefore very powerful depiction of the bronze gate of San Zeno in Verona:

Salome’s great era, however, came at the end of the 19th century. Oscar Wilde in literature, Gustave Moreau in painting, and Richard Strauss in music elevated her to a pedestal as the femme fatale, the archetype of the amoral woman who irresistibly seduces with her sensual dance. Which, after all, means just as much being possessed by the devil, only differently conceived and evaluated.

In the last decades of the 19th century and the first ones of the 20th century, thousands of Salomes were born in pictures and writings. Each one was a femme fatale who seduces Herod and the viewer/reader with her sophisticatedly lustful dance. But there is a notable exception, Flaubert, who in his short story Herodias describes Salome’s dance in a different way:

“Next she began to whirl frantically around the table where Antipas the tetrarch was seated. He leaned towards the flying figure, and in a voice half choked with the voluptuous sighs of a mad desire, he sighed: “Come to me! Come!” But she whirled on, while the music of dulcimers swelled louder and the excited spectators roared their applause.

The tetrarch called again, louder than before: “Come to me! Come! Thou shalt have Capernaum, the plains of Tiberias! my citadels! yea, the half of my kingdom!”

Again the dancer paused; then, like a flash, she threw herself upon the palms of her hands, while her feet rose straight up into the air. In this bizarre pose she moved about upon the floor like a gigantic beetle; then stood motionless.

The nape of her neck formed a right angle with her vertebrae. The full silken skirts of pale hues that enveloped her limbs when she stood erect, now fell to her shoulders and surrounded her face like a rainbow. Her lips were tinted a deep crimson, her arched eyebrows were black as jet, her glowing eyes had an almost terrible radiance; and the tiny drops of perspiration on her forehead looked like dew upon white marble.”

Although we know from Flaubert’s notes that he had seen Moreau’s famous painting at the Salon of 1876, that was not the model of this Salome. It was rather the depiction seen by Flaubert, who was born and raised in Rouen, throughout his childhood and youth, and which must have been the archetype of Salome for him. The dancing girl at the St. John’s Gate of Rouen Cathedral.