Le feu Saint Antoine ou ergotisme gangréneux et l'iconographie antonine des origines à nos jours
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Bordeaux 3Disciplines:
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Abstract EN:
The frequent epidemics of ergotism were called Holy Fire or st. Antony’s Fire in Middle Ages, because of the burning sensations resulting in gangrene of limbs. Victims of ergotism could easily identify themselves with the lifelong tortured st. Antony. It was cauded by eating rye bread contamined with the fungus Claviceps purpurea. Rye was mainly eaten by the poor people, especially during famines. In 1095, the order of st. Antony was founded near Vienne, France. Until the XVIIIth century, the patients flocked during epidemics to the hospitals of the Antonines. The bones of the egyptian hermit st. Antony (251-356 AD) were sprinkled with holy water and wine and given to sufferers of ergotism. Soon the hospitals were called the “hôpitaux des démembrés” because at its entrance the spontaneously amputed limbs were exhibited as kinds of ex-votos. Due to the good treatment by providing non contamine bread, the popular hospitals spread all over Europe to a zenith of 300 establishments until 1777. Woodartz and the famous Tryptics of Jeroen Bosch (Lisbon) and Grünewald (Colmar) show not only the temptations of st Antony, with outrageously strange and diabolic scenes, patients with gangrenous limbs. St. Antony’s iconography is very important in coptic and byzantine art where st. Antony is the father of monks, because he is the more ancient hermit. In Occident, he is the master of hospitable order, intercessor and thaumaturgic, resulting in a very important iconography in statuary and painting, in all regions, but especially in Lorraine, the catholic and tridentin Lotharingia and in Corse thanks to the franciscan pastoral. A quantitative comparison is made between the representations of st. Antony, st. Fiacre, a generalist intercessor, st. Sebastian and st. Roch, two prophylactic holies against the plague. The temptations of st. Antony include five thematics. St. Antony and the devil, st. Antony and the woman, with a maximal imagery by the flemish painters in XV and XVI th centuries. Acedia or idleness is a dangerous deadly sin for the monks. The eath’s hell is illustrated by works of Bosch, Bruegel, Callot. In XIX and XXth centuries, the harm is interiorized by the symbolists G. Moreau, J. Ensor, F. Knopff, O. Redon as well as Cézanne, the surrealists Dali, Delvaux, Ernst and expressionnits Otto Dix , Claude Manesse. . . The painter identifies himselt with the hermit to create its own work. This thesis affects the metaphysic and theologic iconology of good and evil. Its transdisciplinaryty involved in medicine,religious mentality histories and the art history.
Abstract FR:
L’ergotisme gangreneux est une intoxication alimentaire par l’ergot de seigle, champignon parasite des céréales, dont les alcaloïdes vaso-constricteurs provoquent une ischémie vasculaire et la gangrène des extrémités. D’étiologie longtemps inconnue, le mal des ardents, survenant par épidémies meurtrières, tuant ou laissant estropîé, fut mis sous l’intercession de saint Antoine l’Egyptien, l’ermite du IV ème siècle qui avait résisté au feu des tentations, comme l’a rapporté son disciple Athanase. Le feu saint Antoine entraina la création de l’ordre hospitalier des Antonins, avec une abbaye-mère à Saint-Antoine-en-Viennois et 200 hôpitaux en Europe, préfigurant l’assistance publique pendant le Moyen Age jusqu’à sa dissolution à la fin du XVIIIème siècle. L’art ayant toujours été le témoin de son temps, des mentalités, et des mutations de la société, nous disposons de gravures de la sphère germanique ainsi que du célèbre retable de Bosch à Lisbonne comme images des effets redoutables du feu saint Antoine. Dans l’Eglise d’Orient, chez les coptes et les orthodoxes, saint Antoine n’est représenté qu’en père des moines, avec des différences de style permettant d’identifier les écoles productrices d’icônes.