Abstract :
The three-storey rotunda at Dijon, built by William of Volpiano and consecrated in 1018, has
been reduced to its crypt, but an impressive pair of capitals survive adjacent to the burial place of
St Be´nigne. In modern times these capitals have repeatedly been described as full of monsters, and
their significance for Romanesque sculpture has consequently been neglected. Enough remains of
their dense, three-dimensional sculpture for them to be identified as representing, in fact, a lesson
commonly read in masses for the dead. Numerous saints and martyrs were marked by burials in
the crypt or by altars in the rotunda. All Saints’ Day was celebrated on 1 November, so that the
main feast day of St Be´nigne was transferred to 2 November. About 998, the commemoration of
All Souls, also on 2 November, had been introduced by Odilo, Abbot of Cluny, and is likely to
have been adopted by Abbot William. The text from 1 Thessalonians suggests the imaginative
use of the rotunda’s vertical dimension, at this particular season and others.
