Hospices de Beaune

With little more than 20,000 inhabitants Beaune is just a small city. And yet it can boast of a truly spectacular monument from the Late Middle Ages, the Hospices de Beaune, also known as the Hôtel-Dieu. The Hospices are a hospital and alms-house, founded in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin (1376-1462), chancellor of Duke Philip the Good, and his wife Guigone de Salins (1403-1470). The hospital has been in operation for more than five centuries. Only when, in 1971, a new and modern hospital was opened in Beane, the hospital founded by Nicolas and Guigone closed its doors. To patients that is, for nowadays it is a beautiful museum, with the altarpiece of the Last Judgment, painted by the Flemish master Rogier van der Weyden (ca. 1400-1464), as its undisputed highlight.

Nicolas and Guigone

Nicolas Rolin was born around 1376 into a rich family in Autun. He studied law and became a legal counsellor to Duke Philip the Bold and later advocate of Burgundy. In 1422 he was appointed chancellor of Duke Philip the Good, who had come to power in 1419 after the murder of his father John the Fearless. Rolin would keep his position as chancellor until his death in 1462. Belgian author Bart van Loo calls him “the Richelieu of Burgundy, the man who guided his master past the most dangerous obstacles”.[1] Among his most important diplomatic achievements can be counted the Peace of Arras, which was signed on 21 September 1435 between France and Burgundy. The duchy was formally a French apanage. After the murder of Duke John it had sided with England in the Hundred Years’ War and it saw the English king as the legitimate king of France. With the Peace of Arras Burgundy abandoned its English allies again. Duke Philip the Good recognised the Frenchman Charles VII as king of France, while Charles recognised the independence of the Burgundian duke and relieved him (but not his successors) of his duties as a vassal. The French king also promised to punish the assassins of John the Fearless, a promise he quickly forgot.

Nicolas Rolin was almost sixty years old when the Peace of Arras was signed. This was very elderly for the Late Middle Ages, but Nicolas never considered retiring. For him the office of chancellor was simply too lucrative, as it was a public secret that Rolin shamelessly used it to enrich himself. To do something good for the poor and sick, who had suffered so much because of the Hundred Years’ War, he and his wife Guigone de Salins decided in 1443 to found a hospital in Beaune. The foundation charter mentions the date of 4 August 1443. The architect commissioned for the project was presumably Jacques Wiscrère, a man from Flanders about whom very little known. The Hospices de Beaune are generally considered a masterpiece of Burgundian-Flemish architecture. In 1452 the first patients were admitted. At the time the chancellor had ten more years to live. A couple of years later he was sidetracked politically after a conflict with the powerful Van Croy family, who were also trying to gain the favours of Duke Philip the Good. After his death on 18 January 1462 Guigone for her part got into a conflict with cardinal Jean Rolin (1408-1483), a son of Nicolas from his prior marriage to Marie des Landes. The conflict was taken to court, and Guigone won the case after six years of litigation. Her legal victory allowed her to continue to administer the hospital until her own death in 1470.

Exploring the Hospices de Beaune

Visitors are well advised to explore the Hospices de Beaune with an audio tour, which is available in ten languages, including Dutch. The tour begins in the grand courtyard, the Cour d’honneur, where the beautiful glazed rooftiles of the buildings immediately catch the eye. Note that these are not the original fifteenth-century tiles though. From the courtyard we enter the large hospital ward, the Grande salle des pôvres (photo above). Here the sick were tended to by the nurses. As there were no monastic orders yet in Beaune, Nicolas and Guigone founded their own order, that of the soeurs hospitalières de Beaune. Nicolas and Guigone could have been father and daughter. He was around 47 years old and she only about 20 when they married in 1423. For Nicolas it was his third marriage. The De Salins family was rich and powerful, so there were definitely political motives behind the marriage arrangement, but it cannot be denied that the two spouses showed great love for one another as well. This is convincingly demonstrated by the floor tiles in the ward, which feature the letters N and G – Nicolas and Guigone – combined with the word seule, “only”.[2] It is a word that indicates that the chancellor and his wife were the first and only for each other. The letters and the word can be found in other places in the Hôtel-Dieu as well.

The large ward has a conspicuous roof in the shape of an inverted ship’s hull. The beams of the roof emerge from the mouths of fire-breathing dragons and have been decorated with painted human heads. On the beams we also see the word seule, it is virtually omnipresent. Although judging by the standards of the day the patients received proper care, many of them would die anyway. And that is one of the reasons why at the end of the ward there was a chapel to provide the sick with spiritual healthcare. In this chapel Guigone de Salins was buried after her death; a plaque marks the spot of her grave. The chapel was the original location of the aforementioned altarpiece of the Last Judgment. The polyptych was only opened on Sundays and holidays. On regular days the patients only saw the hatches with the portraits of Nicolas and Guigone, an Annunciation and Saints Sebastian and Anthony the Abbot. Both were closely associated with disease and recovery. Saint Sebastian was shot through with arrows, but subsequently cured by Sint Irene of Rome. He is also considered a patron saint of plague-sufferers. Monks from the Order of Saint Anthony, founded in 1095, also cared for the sick and were famous for treating a disease called Saint Anthony’s fire (ergotism, a disease caused by a fungus).

The original altarpiece – which will be discussed in greater detail below – has been moved to a special climate-controlled room. In the chapel we now find a photographic reproduction of the work. The tapestries – with the letters N and G and the word seulle – are also copies. Original works are the two limestone statues of Nicolas and Guigone, which date from the second half of the fifteenth century. The spouses are kneeling and looking up towards heaven. There is a theory that the statues were once part of a Calvary that was destroyed during the French Revolution.

In addition to the Grande salle des pôvres the Hôtel-Dieu has four other wards. The most beautiful of these is, in my honest opinion, the Salle Saint-Hugues, dedicated to Saint Hugh of Rouen, a bishop and abbot who lived in the eighth century. In this seventeenth-century ward the wealthier patients were nursed. In all the rooms we learn more about the history of the Hospices de Beaune and about the history of medicine. The museum also provides visitors with information about the vineyards that the hospital acquired thanks to many donations and legacies. Every year on the third Sunday of November a wine auction is held, the famous Vente des Hospices de Beaune, the proceeds of which go to charity. After the wards we can admire the kitchen and pharmacy. Once we are outside again, we can enter the second courtyard, the cour des fondateurs, where we see more beautiful glazed rooftiles and statues of Nicolas and Guigone.

The Last Judgment

Rogier van der Weyden (ca. 1400-1464) painted the Last Judgment in Brussels, the city where he lived and worked. Nicolas Rolin presumably commissioned him shortly after founding the Hospices de Beaune in 1443. The work must have been finished in late 1451, when it was placed in the chapel of the recently completed hospital. As was already mentioned, the hatches were usually shut and the patients only saw the images of Nicolas and Guigone, as well as – in grisaille – those of Saint Sebastian, Saint Anthony the Abbot, the Virgin Mary and the archangel Gabriel (see the image above). Although less spectacular than the interior of the work, the hatches have beautiful details. Note for instance the coats of arms of Nicolas and Guigone, the dove (Holy Spirit) hovering near the Virgin’s face and the attributes of Saint Anthony, the crutch, the pig and the bell. Monks of Saint Anthony treated their patients with a special balm made from pork fat. Their pigs, essential for making the medicine, were provided with bells and allowed to wander around freely. This explains how the pig and bell became the regular attributes of Saint Anthony.

The altarpiece is obviously even more beautiful once it has been opened. It consists of nine panels. The central panel features Christ the Judge sitting on a rainbow, while his feet rest on a globe. Christ is wearing a red cloak and is flanked by a white lily and a sword. Below him the androgynous archangel Michael weighs the souls, a process that is called psychostasia and that we have previously seen at the cathedral of Autun. The righteous are sent to the left (i.e. to the right of Christ), and on the far left we see the gate of heaven. The damned, for their part, are obviously sent to hell. Judging by the faces of the dead, this must be an awful place, but Van der Weyden did not paint the horrible tortures that they are about to undergo.

Saint Michael the Archangel is flanked by the Virgin Mary (left) and Saint John the Baptist. Behind Mary and John there are six apostles on each side, so twelve in total. Only Saint Peter (on a chair in a red cloak) and Saint Paul (on a chair in a green cloak) are instantly recognisable. Quite intriguing are the seven figures that Van der Weyden painted behind the apostles, four men and three women. According to an information panel the four men are Pope Eugenius IV (1431-1447), Duke Philip the Good, cardinal Jean Rolin and perhaps Van der Weyden himself. The choice to include Pope Eugenius was logical, as the Holy Father had approved the founding of the Hôtel-Dieu in 1441. Duke Philip is wearing the crown of a king. It was indeed his ardent wish to become king of Burgundy, but unfortunately for hem the Holy Roman emperor and French king refused to cooperate.

If the man wearing the bishop’s mitre is indeed Jean Rolin (1408-1483), then this must have been quite painful for Guigone de Salins. Every time she entered the Hôtel-Dieu she would have been forced to look at the portrait of the man who had tried to take the hospital away from her. Fortunately for her the hatches of the altarpiece were generally closed… One of the women on the other side could be Philipotte Rolin (1409-1483), a daughter of the chancellor and a sister of Jean Rolin. Their mother Marie des Landes is said to have been depicted as well. The woman in the middle, with the crown, is certainly Isabella of Portugal (1397-1472), wife of Duke Philip the Good. In her case too the crown is a case of wishful thinking, although she could at least claim that royal blood was flowing through her veins. Isabella was the daughter of the Portuguese king João (John) I and Philippa of Lancaster (see Portugal: Batalha).

Notes

[1] In Dutch: “de Richelieu van Bourgondië, de man die zijn meester langs de gevaarlijkste obstakels gidste”, Bart van Loo, De Bourgondiërs, p. 229.

[2] Or seulle, with two ls. At the time there was no uniform spelling yet.