Ex Oriente Lux: The eastern models of the abbey church of Sainte-Foy in Conques

Based on a semi-statistical method, it is shown that the medieval abbey church of Sainte-Foy in Conques had a distinctive Neo-Byzantine character. Twenty of its characteristic elements had prominent models on a prototypical pilgrimage route from Conques to the Holy Land, but hardly anywhere else. In contrast, the famous tympanum of the Last Judgment can be considered a Neo-Carolingian project. From the histories of the spirituality and iconography of the Last Judgment, it is derived that the tympanum can best be understood as a reflection of the Carolingian spirituality of the afterlife. The main sources of this spirituality, Matthew 24-25, Reichenau’s Visio Wettini, and Augustine’s Enchiridion 29:109-111, provide a surprisingly detailed blueprint of the unusual iconography of the tympanum.