Bay 3 - Key

Index to panels:
(Click captions below to open detailed view in this window or click the relevant panel on the diagrams to the left to open in a new window).

1) Signature panel - killing a pig
2) Signature panel - selling meat
3) Signature panel - killing an ox

4) Abraham & Isaac climbing mountain

5) Sacrifice of Isaac stopped by angel

6) Road to Calvary

7) Elijah with the widow of Sarepta

8) Passover sacrifice/marking with the Tau

9) Moses brings forth water from a rock

10) Crucified Christ

11) Moses with gilded serpent

12) David/Pelican

13) Lioness licking newborn cub

14) Resurrection of Christ

15) Elisha revives the widow's son

16) Jonah spat out by the whale

17) Isaac blessing the sons of Joseph

The Bourges 'New Alliance' window is one of a small group of 'typological' windows made in France around the early 13th century (the other prominent examples being at Chartres, Le Mans, Tours, Lyon and Rouen). In each case, the aim was to draw typological parallels between the Old and New Testaments, with events in the former reinterpreted as prefigurations (or 'antetypes') of the latter. It shows, in the words of Clement & Guitard, "the substitution of the Law of the Gospels for the Law of Moses; of the Church for the Synagogue."

The three central medallions (6, 10 and 14) show an abbreviated Passion series flanked by their Old Testament antetypes. See the detail pages for the individual O.T. panels for details of their exegetical relationships.

For a dated, but still highly informative account of such typological concordances, see book four of Emile Male's classic "Religious Art in France; the Thirteenth Century". A more theologically rigorous study of the detailed iconography and its origins in the Glossa ordinaria and other medieval exegetical texts can be found (albeit in rather ponderous 19th century French) in Cahier & Martin.

Grodecki Bay #: 11
Clement & Guitard p.16
Cahier & Martin vol.2 p. 66ff

Other References:
Grodecki & Brisac, 1984, p.56