Building Name

:

Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand  

Location

:

Museum

Capital

:

Subject

:

Discord

Description

:

The capital's location within the church is unknown. It was found in 1837, rue des Trois-Piliers, buried in the foundations of the hôtel Cussard (today the Hôtel des Trois-Piliers). Text is inscribed on the taurus of the capital.

Reference

:

This capital is usually called "chapiteau de la discorde". The central scene on the corbeille gives the impression of a battle between two men, facing each other, pulling on each other's beards and threatened by snakes. The left side of the corbeille, two figures, without beards, on crutches. The other side, a man armed with a snake is perched in a tree. Emile Mâle relates this capital to the Beatus Apocalypse, very similar to that of Saint-Sever, for which there was a copy at the College of Saint-Hilaire. Upon consulting the Saint-Sever manuscript, one notes that a scene at the bottom of a page is the same scene depicted on the capital. There is a capital with a similar scene found at Celle-Bruère (Chere) where the name Frotoardus is inscribed. Katzenellebogen proposed that this capital depicts the battle between Harmony and Discord (Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Mediaeval Art, London, 1939, p.59, n.4).

Corpus Ref.

:

Vol. 1 Ville de Poitiers, 109-111