The Martyrs

Between the central and the base zone, a hypnotic, uniform band of yellow irises (Iris pseudacorus, the yellow flag) and fantastical flowers with dark red petals runs the full height of the window. This compositional device, directly connected with the Art Nouveau cult of nature (Eugène Grasset, Émile Gallé, Viennese art nouveau), serves a twofold function in Mehoffer: decorative (the dense ornament of tendrils forms a rhythmic “carpet” out of which the figures of the saints grow) and symbolic (the yellow of the iris alludes to the radiance of martyrs’ glory, the red of the flower to spilled blood). This band is, as the original commentary aptly puts it, the “heartbeat” of the window: at once the pulse of life and the sign of the wound.

The saints stand not in Gothic, “reconstructed” canopies typical of nineteenth-century devotional stained-glass practice (Mayer, Hardman, Wailes) but in slender, Art Nouveau vegetal “laces”: densely woven interlacings of tendrils through which a cool background in blues and reds shows through. This device programmatically breaks with neo-Gothic architectural illusionism in favour of autonomous Art Nouveau ornament — a gesture akin to Wyspiański’s solutions in the Franciscan windows (1897–1902) and worked out by Mehoffer almost in parallel in “The Apostles” and “Our Lady of Victory”.

The window’s palette is built on the opposition of two dominant tones: yellow (silver stain: the iris flowers, the haloes, the luminous accents) and red (rubies: the fantastical flowers, Maurice’s mantle, Catherine’s mantle, the blood in the base zone). Between these dominants Mehoffer introduces backgrounds of deep sapphire (#0F2F8F) and blue (#2F6FD6) — a cool setting for the figures that makes them shine all the more strongly in natural light. The black of St Barbara’s patterned robe is the only dark accent in the whole composition — a programmatic gesture that makes Barbara the most theatrical and Art Nouveau of the four.

The crownings of the lancets are filled with half-figures of praying children in pairs — very human, almost intimate. Above the heads of the saints hovers a procession of angels; yet here Mehoffer adds a note of disquiet by introducing black ravens: an iconographically ambiguous motif (the raven of St Anthony the Hermit, the Lord’s raven bringing bread to the prophet — 1 Kings 17:4–6; but also the animal of death and the battlefield). This clash of angels and ravens is the strongest iconological sign of the zone of the crownings: holiness enters a world that is not pastoral — it is dark, disquieting, open to the necessity of the testimony of blood.

St Maurice, in the red colouring of an armed warrior, is shown as a soldier of the Theban Legion (the hagiographic canon connected with Agaunum / Saint-Maurice in the canton of Valais — geographically akin to Fribourg). The canonical attributes: armour, sword, the banner of the Legion. Mehoffer, however, rejects military monumentalism in favour of a more intimate characterisation: Maurice is “hard in form”, yet in his bearing one senses the heavy awareness of leading towards death the thousands of fellow believers under his command. In the base zone the scene of his martyrdom is the most psychologically harrowing in the whole window: the body, the blood, the arc of the bending torso, and beside him a woman drawing close to his face — a gesture of closeness and mourning, without caption, whose emotional force Mehoffer leaves for the viewer to complete.

St Catherine is shown in the vivid red of her mantle, with a broken wheel at her feet — the attribute of her execution (a hagiographic canon transmitted from the 10th c., supplemented in the Golden Legend). Mehoffer places the emphasis on reaction, not pose: Catherine does not display her attribute like a relic (the late-Baroque canon) but lowers her gaze towards the shattered instrument as towards a historical fact. This device places Catherine in direct continuity with Wyspiański (the St Salomea window in Kraków) and Maurice Denis (his depictions of contemplative Madonnas). In the base zone Catherine lies “closer to the viewer”, her golden hair almost in the foreground — a foreshortening gesture that draws the scene strongly towards the interior of the chapel.

St Barbara — the most theatrical of the four — is shown in a black, Art Nouveau patterned robe of rich ornament; the gesture of her hands is turned towards the Chalice and Host hovering before her, almost as towards an apparition. This iconographic device is one of the most programmatic in the whole cycle: Barbara, known for the attribute of the tower (legible in the background — Mehoffer gave it the form of the Kraków Joiners’ Tower, weaving in a trace of his native city), is joined by Mehoffer to the motif of the eucharistic vision — which is at the same time a theological bridge to the “Blessed Sacrament” window donated by the same Confraternity. Barbara, the medieval patron of a good death, is in the post-Tridentine tradition above all the saint who received her last Communion before dying — and it is precisely this moment that Mehoffer introduces into the Fribourg window. In the background, beside the tower, appears the figure of the father shaking his fist — according to legend Dioscorus killed Barbara for refusing to renounce her faith, and then received the divine punishment of death by lightning.

Beneath the canopies of the saints runs a band of inscriptions bearing the patrons’ names, in French majuscule typography: S. SEBASTIEN / S. MAURICE / S. CATHERINE / S. BARBE. The linguistic form points to the local context of the canton of Fribourg (the French-speaking part of Switzerland), testifying to a deliberate adaptation of the programme to the cultural identity of the place. The German form “St. Sebastian / St. Mauritius / St. Katharina / St. Barbara” — used in the German-speaking part of Fribourg — does not appear, which is a subtle but eloquent sign of the preference of the workshop and the donor.

The window’s iconographic programme belongs to the profound movement of Catholic revival of the late nineteenth century, oriented towards the rehabilitation of the martyrs of the first centuries. The influence of this movement is visible, among other things, in: the encyclicals of Leo XIII Quod multum (1886) and Annum sacrum (1899) calling for the cult of the martyrs; the archaeological discoveries of Giovanni Battista De Rossi in the Roman catacombs (1840–1894); the publication of the critical Acta Sanctorum by the Bollandists; and the works of Louis Duchesne on the historiography of the first centuries. Mehoffer’s “Martyrs” is therefore not only a devotional image but a theological manifesto of its age — an expression of the conviction that the traditional Church draws its legitimacy from the testimony of the martyrs’ blood, and not from diplomacy.

The window’s base zone is Mehoffer’s strongest iconological gesture in the whole cycle. Mehoffer rejects the devotional aestheticisation of martyrdom typical of the nineteenth century (Bouguereau, Cabanel, the academic martyria of the salons) in favour of a bare, clear, literal bodily truth. White antique glass, animated by delicate Schwarzlot glazes in reddish-brown tones (the shadow of blood rather than a literal stain), builds the impression that the bodies of the martyrs are at once realistic and transcendent — “light that has been broken”. This device places Mehoffer in an extraordinary dialogue with two traditions at once: the medieval typology of Christ the Lamb (the body as light) and modernist bodily realism (Käthe Kollwitz, Edvard Munch, the expressionism of the early twentieth century).

The introduction of black ravens into the zone of the crownings — beside the angels — is one of the window’s strongest programmatic gestures. Here Mehoffer rejects the pastoral quality of devotional hagiography and opens the iconography to existential drama: holiness unfolds in a world that is not pure. The ravens, which in the biblical tradition signify both providence (the ravens feeding Elijah, 1 Kings 17) and death and the battlefield (Isaiah 34:11; Revelation 18:2), form a semantic counterpoint to the angels. This clash places the window’s programme within the climate of the tragic theology of the late nineteenth century (Léon Bloy, Joris-Karl Huysmans), while at the same time anticipating the expressionist iconographies of sacred art in the first half of the twentieth century.

In “The Martyrs” Mehoffer introduces for the first time in the cycle such an extensive use of the base zone as an autonomous dramatic narrative — a device that would be continued in the later windows (Saints and Holy Women, Nicholas of Flüe). Technologically the Kirsch & Fleckner workshop achieves virtuosity here in Schwarzlot glazes on white antique glass — the “shadow of blood” effect remains one of the most studied examples of stained-glass polychromy of the period (see Sauterel/Noverraz 2019).

“The Martyrs” is a heritage object of European rank, uniting the highest standards of the stained-glass craft with a profound theological programme (the rehabilitation of primitive hagiography in the spirit of Leo XIII’s Catholic revival), with a bold psychology of character (Sebastian instead of a pose — the calm of decision; Maurice instead of a monument — the tenderness of a bending woman) and with modernist formal daring (ravens beside angels; the base zone as truth instead of a devotional, beautifying aestheticisation). The gigapixel digital documentation, produced by the Foundation for the Virtualisation of National Cultural Heritage in 2025, makes possible for the first time detailed studies of the micro-textures of the band of flowers and of the masterly “shadow of blood” glazes in the base zone — data critical to the study of Kirsch & Fleckner technology at the threshold of the twentieth century.