Klöster im Hochmittelalter

234 I Thomas Coomans

rium, and the Sainte-Chapelle of Paris as shrine of the relics of Christ. Even
though the monastic Westbau was a traditional structure, its presence in a Cis-
tercian abbey and its forms combining old and new - a Romanesque gateway
with Gothic vertical structures, a central traceried window, and blind arched
decorations - definitely were innovative. Bandmann underscores the western
part of the church where forms of symbolic, indicating meaning first, were gath-
ered and made visible to everyone entering.73
Chronologically, the Westbau of Villers (completed 1266) and the Dominican
choir of Leuven (completed ca 1265d) are contemporaneous, but they belong to
different generations of patrons from the same dynasty, who positioned them-
selves differently on the international landscape. The German imperial ambi-
tions of Henry II (f 1248) and the French royal networks of Henry III (f 1261)
were confirmed by their matrimonial policies and memorised through the ico-
nography of their tombs and the stained glass. Obviously, architecture and
tombs were part of a coherent memorial visual culture that certainly included
prestigious gifts, relics and specific rituals performed by the Cistercians and the
Dominicans.
The Franciscan church of Maastricht and the Beguinage church of Leuven,
the two other cases of this essay, are not related with territorial princes but em-
bedded in growing urban contexts. They belong to the monastic masculine and
feminine reformation movements of the early thirteenth century. Maastricht's
Franciscan friary and Leuven's Beguinage were founded in the same year, 1234,
but the churches we see today were built in two phases, one from the early four-
teenth century (respectively ca. 1300 and 1305), the other later (respectively ca.
1392d and 1421-1444). This chronology shows an obvious pattern.
In the last chapter of Early Medieval Architecture as Bearer of Meaning,
entitled "decline of symbolic and historical meaning", Günter Bandmann
states that the partial liberation of the monastic orders from the grip of the
landlords, especially the rise of mendicant friars and of a bourgeois society, put
an end to the historical-symbolic significance of religious architecture.74 Aart
Mekking contests this point of view: "it has escaped him [Bandmann] that the
political content of monastic architecture did not become weaker, but merely
changed in content. After all, the landlords were replaced by others, in the best
case by their own congregation, the structure of which being as hierarchical as
that of the surrounding lay state. The rise of the cities was accompanied by a

73 Bandmann, Early Medieval Architecture (as in note 12), p. 243.

74 Bandmann, Early Medieval Architecture (as in note 12), pp. 237-241.