Diakoni and Bishops

The window’s most original iconographic device is the band of eight virtues placed above the saints’ heads as a kind of ‘caption to the picture’. Each saint is assigned two virtues — one theological and one cardinal, or one theological and one connected with knowledge: S. Stephen: ESPERANCE (Hope) + JUSTICE (Justice); S. Lawrence: SCIENCE (Knowledge) + FORCE (Fortitude); S. Martin: PRUDENCE (Prudence) + FOI (Faith); S. Claude: CHARITE (Charity) + TEMPERANCE (Temperance). Together eight virtues — three theological (Faith, Hope, Charity; 1 Cor 13:13), four cardinal (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance; the Aristotelian–Thomist tradition) and one intellectual (Knowledge, Scientia, in the Thomist sense of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Is 11:2). In sum: a complete catalogue of the Catholic virtues in a single window.

The window’s most characteristic feature is a chromatic dominant of carmine red (#C1121F), deep ruby (#B0002A) and golden yellow (#F2C94C), completed by luminous white (#F2F2F2). This palette — programmatically ‘fanfare-like’, working in natural light like triumphant music — is deliberately contrasted with the cooler palettes of the neighbouring windows (The Apostles, The Martyrs). Mehoffer conceives the cycle as an orchestral organism in which successive windows fulfil different emotional functions — the Deacons and Bishops are, in this orchestra, the part of the fanfares and brass, festive and exalted.

In “Deacons and Bishops” Mehoffer attains one of the highest forms of his understanding of the leading as drawing. The contours of the drapery folds — especially the deacons’ dalmatics of Stephen and Lawrence — are drawn with such graphic precision that they form an autonomous system of draughtsmanship independent of the coloured fields. These lines build not only forms but characters: Stephen’s gesture is sharp, almost theatrical (a dynamic, angular contour); Lawrence’s gaze is quieter (a soft, undulating contour); Martin’s bending towards the beggar is full of emotion (a diagonal contour); Claude’s inclination towards the child is the softest of all (an almost oval contour). The window is the sum of four typologies of line.

The socle zone introduces two programmatically contrasted ‘foundations’: fountains (along both outer edges of the window) and candelabra (in the two central socle fields). The symbolism of the fountains and candelabra — water and light — refers to the twofold, sacramental programme of baptism (Titus 3:5: lavacrum regenerationis, ‘the washing of regeneration’) and of the Eucharist / the Holy Spirit (Rev 1:12–13: seven golden candelabra). The saints stand in the window not above the earth but above water and light — the two foundations of Christian initiation.

St Lawrence, second from the left, likewise in deacon’s dress, is shown as a Roman deacon-martyr (d. 258, during the persecutions of Valerian). His bearing is calmer than Stephen’s: the head slightly raised, the gaze directed upward, the face full of contemplation. His canonical attribute — the gridiron on which Lawrence was burned — appears discreetly at his feet. The figure is known from an anecdote preserved in Ambrose (De officiis I,41): when the Roman prefect demanded the treasure of the Church, Lawrence pointed to the sick and the poor — ‘hi sunt thesauri Ecclesiae’ (‘these are the treasures of the Church’). The assigned virtues: SCIENCE (Knowledge) + FORCE (Fortitude) — the first points to Lawrence’s intellectual acuity (his rhetorical riposte to the prefect), the second to the fortitude of suffering. Beneath the figure runs the motto IGNE ME EXAMINASTI (‘Thou hast tried me by fire’; Ps 16/17:3).

St Martin of Tours (316–397), the third, is shown as a young soldier (a short tunic, military footwear, a piece of armour; without mitre, crosier or episcopal cope) in a pose bending towards the figure of a beggar. This is the canonical scene of ‘the dividing of the cloak’ (Sulpicius Severus, Vita Sancti Martini, 4th–5th c.) — the most famous hagiographic episode of the West, telling of the meeting of Martin the soldier with a beggar before the gate of Amiens and the division of his military cloak in half. Here Mehoffer shows Martin as a young soldier in the classic version of the scene — still before he received holy orders — and not as a bishop; the absence of the infula and episcopal insignia confirms the soldierly rather than pontifical redaction of the episode. Beneath the figure runs the motto QUOD UNI EX MINIMIS MEIS FECISTIS / MIHI FECISTIS (‘Whatsoever you did to one of these my least brethren, you did it to Me’; Mt 25:40). The assigned virtues: PRUDENCE (Prudence) + FOI (Faith).

St Claude of Besançon (d. c. 696), the fourth, is shown in episcopal dress, bending towards a small, almost naked child standing beside him. Claude, bishop of Besançon and later a hermit at the monastery of Saint-Claude (along the eastern border of the later canton of Fribourg), was in the medieval Swiss-Burgundian tradition the patron of children, cloth-workers and the suffering. The choice of Claude for the Fribourg window therefore has a regional dimension — Claude is a local saint of Burgundy and the adjoining Franco-Swiss borderland, venerated in Fribourg cathedral since the Middle Ages. The assigned virtues: CHARITE (Charity) + TEMPERANCE (Temperance) — the first points to the love of the patron of children, the second to the ascetic humility of the eremitic life. To Claude’s face Mehoffer gave the features of the aged Pope Leo XIII — a champion of the Catholic University of Fribourg — and beneath the figure runs the motto FECIT MIRABILIA IN VITA SUA (‘He worked wonders in his lifetime’).

The inscriptions of both bands (virtues + names) are executed in French majuscule typography, set within an Art Nouveau vegetal scroll. The linguistic form — French — refers to the local context of the canton of Fribourg. The choice of precisely these four saints is not accidental: the canonical pair ‘deacon-martyr’ (Stephen + Lawrence, the two most famous deacon-protomartyrs of the Church) is set against the pair ‘benefactor-bishop’ (Martin + Claude, the two most venerated benefactor-bishops of the Western tradition), forming a complete representation of the two lower and higher grades of holy orders: the diaconate and the episcopate.

The choice of precisely two deacons (Stephen, Lawrence) and two bishops (Martin, Claude) is programmatic. The hierarchy of the Church in the apostolic tradition comprises three grades of higher orders (diaconate, presbyterate, episcopate) plus the lower grades; Mehoffer chooses the two extremes — the diaconate (a lower grade) and the episcopate (the highest) — and assigns to each of them one martyr and one benefactor. We thus obtain a semantic grid: deacon-martyr (Stephen), deacon-sage (Lawrence), benefactor-bishop-soldier (Martin), benefactor-bishop-hermit (Claude). The four types exhaust the dominant modes of personal vocation in the Church of the Western tradition.

The band of eight virtues — three theological (Faith, Hope, Charity), four cardinal (Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance) and one intellectual (Knowledge) — refers to two theological traditions at once: the New Testament (1 Cor 13:13 for the three theological virtues) and the Thomist (Summa Theologiae II–II for the rest). The very appearance of Science — Knowledge, wisdom, the donum scientiae among the gifts of the Holy Spirit (Is 11:2) — situates the window’s programme within the Thomist tradition, which stresses the intellectual dimension of the Christian life, and this fits harmoniously into the Neo-Thomist revival of the late 19th century (Leo XIII, the encyclical Aeterni Patris 1879, proclaiming Thomas Aquinas ‘the universal doctor’).

The window’s chromatic dominant — carmine red, ruby, gold, white — is composed like a fanfare: the greeting of someone of the highest rank. This is a programmatic gesture: for Mehoffer the ecclesiastical hierarchy is neither a burden nor a bureaucracy but a gift of order and service. The deacons and bishops — protomartyrs and benefactors — are an ‘elite of service’, whose hierarchical rank is expressed in the red of blood (the martyrs) and in the gold of ministry (the bishops). The window’s colouring is thus at the same time theological: red = testimony, gold = glory.

“Deacons and Bishops” introduces three significant innovations into the Fribourg cycle. First — an explicit inscription band of virtues alongside the canonical name band (an innovation within the cycle, though with a medieval precedent). Second — the programmatic use of a ‘fanfare-like’ dominant as a semantics of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Third — socle symbolism (fountains + candelabra) introducing sacramental references into the base register of the composition. These three innovations make the window a programmatic turning point — a model example of the ‘catechetical window’ of the age of the Neo-Thomist renewal.

“Deacons and Bishops” is a heritage object of European rank, combining the highest standards of the stained-glass craft (a virtuosity of leading as drawing, a masterly silver stain) with a profound theological programme (a complete catalogue of the virtues, the hierarchy of holy orders) and a modern understanding of stained glass as an instrument of public didactics. The gigapixel digital documentation, produced by the Foundation for the Virtualisation of National Cultural Heritage in 2025, makes possible for the first time a detailed analysis of the typography of the virtues band and the name band — data critical for studies of the Neo-Gothic and Art Nouveau lettering solutions in Belle Époque stained glass.