The Holy Spirit

In both side lancets of the window Mehoffer places five personifications with explicit French inscriptions: PIÉTÉ (piety), SAGESSE (wisdom), FORCE (fortitude), PATIENCE (patience), JOIE (joy). This is a ‘lexicon of the Spirit’ — the semantic key of the window. The five inscriptions refer at once to the tradition of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (Isa 11:2: spiritus sapientiae et intellectus, spiritus consilii et fortitudinis, spiritus scientiae et pietatis, spiritus timoris Domini — the spirit of wisdom and understanding, of counsel and fortitude, of knowledge and piety, of the fear of the Lord) and to the twelve fruits of the Spirit (Gal 5:22–23: caritas, gaudium, pax, longanimitas, mansuetudo, bonitas, benignitas, fides, modestia, continentia, castitas). Mehoffer selects five from these treasuries, making the window a catechetical handbook of the gifts and fruits of the Spirit.

The window is executed in the idiom of late Art Nouveau with clear tendencies towards early Art Déco — in full stylistic accord with the other two windows of the triptych. Less of the soft, floral vegetation typical of the side-aisle windows; more axiality, synthetism, and geometrisation of the ‘crystalline’ orders of ornament. This is the ‘chancel’ Mehoffer — the artist in the final phase of synthesis.

The window’s palette is composed of five dominants: turquoise (#1FB7A6) and emerald green (#2E8B57) — colours of the Holy Spirit in the iconographic tradition (air, freshness, ‘rosa caelestis’); ruby (#B0002A) in the accents of Pentecost (an allusion to the fiery dimension of the Spirit); violet (#4B2E83) in solemn details; luminous white (#F2F2F2) in the dove, the olive branch and the passages of Mary; gold (silver stain) in the haloes, inscriptions and attributes of the personifications. Turquoise and emerald dominate to such a degree that the window becomes a luminous poem in which the colour of the Spirit is the colour of water and air at once.

The central zone of the window holds the scene of the Annunciation (Lk 1:26–38) — the moment in which the Archangel Gabriel announces to Mary the conception of Christ from the Holy Spirit (Lk 1:35: Spiritus Sanctus superveniet in te — ‘the Holy Spirit shall come upon thee’). Mary, shown in the iconographic type of Maria contemplans (absorbed in prayer, with hands joined or one hand raised in a gesture of acceptance), stands in the lower part of the central lancet; Gabriel — in a side lancet or in the upper part of the scene — in an announcing posture, with a lily (a Marian attribute — Lilium candidum, purity) or without. The whole scene is anchored to the vertical axis of the dove: the Spirit descends from above, the annunciation takes place in the middle, and Mary’s answer (‘Be it unto me according to thy word’, Lk 1:38) is at the bottom.

The inclusion of Mary at the very centre of the window’s Trinitarian-pneumatological programme has a particular local dimension in Fribourg. Mary — beside St Nicholas — is the second patron of the cathedral; the local Marian cult (confirmed by the motto ‘Sub hoc patrocinio stat stabitque Friburgum’ present in the side window ‘Ecclesiastical Fribourg’) makes her presence in the triptych of the Trinity a deliberate patronal gesture: Mary, as the instrument of the incarnation of the Spirit, becomes at once the patron of the civic and cantonal community.

The five allegorical female figures with inscriptions function as a deliberate ‘lexicon of the Spirit’. PIÉTÉ (piety) — in a prayerful posture with the attribute of a censer or joined hands; SAGESSE (wisdom) — with a book or a dove, the classical attributes of wisdom in Western art; FORCE (fortitude) — with a column, a sword or a lion, the canonical attributes of the cardinal virtue; PATIENCE (patience) — with the attribute of a lamb or a cross; JOIE (joy) — with the attribute of a musical instrument (lyre, harp) or flowers. These allegories are at once the gifts of the Spirit (the Isaian tradition) and the fruits of the Spirit (the Pauline tradition), synthesised within a single programme.

The lowest zone of the window holds a deliberate conclusion: Noah’s Ark (Gen 6:14–22) with the dove carrying the olive branch (Gen 8:8–11). The dove returns with the olive branch — the first sign of the receding flood — inscribing itself typologically as a prefiguration of the Holy Spirit and of a new order after catastrophe. In 1918, immediately after the First World War, this motif takes on extraordinary sharpness: the dove with the olive branch is directly a sign of peace (an international symbol, ultimately canonised in the 20th century by Picasso, La Colombe de la paix, 1949, but present since the Middle Ages). Mehoffer inscribes into the cathedral a deliberate hope for a new peaceful order after catastrophe.

The juxtaposition of the Annunciation scene (new life) with Noah’s Ark (peace after catastrophe) is the iconologically strongest gesture in the whole triptych of the Trinity. In 1918 — immediately after the end of the First World War, in which about 17 million people died — the deliberate inscription into the cathedral of the motif of the dove with the olive branch takes on the dimension of a theological declaration: the Holy Spirit is the giver not only of spiritual but also of historical peace. The window thus becomes not only pneumatological but also pacifist — in parallel with the window ‘Nicholas of Flüe’ (1918–1919, motto ‘La paix est toujours en Dieu’) it composes Fribourg’s post-war programmatic pair.

The choice of five virtues — PIÉTÉ, SAGESSE, FORCE, PATIENCE, JOIE — is selective but deliberate. Mehoffer does not reproduce the full list of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit from Isaiah 11:2 or the twelve fruits of the Spirit from Galatians 5:22–23; he chooses five canonical dispositions of the Christian life, synthesising the two traditions. PIÉTÉ comes from the Isaian list (‘pietas’); SAGESSE and FORCE — also from the Isaian one (‘sapientia’, ‘fortitudo’); PATIENCE and JOIE — from the Pauline list (‘longanimitas’, ‘gaudium’). Together the five virtues synthesise the fullness of Christian spiritual life. It is as if Mehoffer were writing: behold what fruits the Spirit yields in a person open to its action.

The inclusion of Mary — the one to whom the Annunciation is made, open to the Spirit — on the central axis of the pneumatological window is a gesture both theological and local. Theologically: Mary is that in which the Spirit, for the first time in the history of salvation, performs the act of incarnation; she is thus the axis mundi of the meeting of divinity with humanity. Locally: Mary is the patron of Fribourg; her presence in the cathedral chancel beneath the axis of the dove deliberately joins the dogmatic theology of the incarnation with the local Marian cult of Fribourg.

The window is the only explicitly pneumatological work in the entire Fribourg cycle. In it Mehoffer makes a theological gesture of programmatic significance: he shows the Holy Spirit not as a third-rank attribute of the Trinity (as in many traditional iconographies of the Western Trinity), but as a full Person with a work of its own (incarnation, gifts, fruits, historical peace). This gesture anticipates the pneumatological renewal of the 20th century — from Pius XII’s Mystici Corporis Christi (1943) through the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) to the pneumatological theology of Yves Congar, Heribert Mühlen and Wolfgang Pannenberg.

Mehoffer’s ‘The Holy Spirit’ is a monument of European rank, one of the most original pneumatological windows of the 20th century. It combines a masterful compositional solution (the vertical axis of the dove binding the three zones of the window) with a deep theological programme (the Annunciation + the five gifts of the Spirit + Noah’s Ark as a prefiguration of peace) and a historical one (the motif of the dove with the olive branch as a deliberate conclusion after the First World War). The gigapixel digital documentation, carried out by the Foundation for the Virtualisation of National Cultural Heritage in 2025, makes possible for the first time a detailed analysis of the modelling of the dove (the key central motif), of the inscriptions of the five personifications and of the microstructure of the Noah’s Ark scene — data critical for the study of the pneumatological iconography of interwar Europe.

The window ‘The Holy Spirit’ closes Mehoffer’s Fribourg cycle in the numerical dimension (window no. 13). Together with the two neighbouring windows of the triptych of the Trinity — with the four choir windows (the Trinity + the historical ones) — with the nine side-aisle windows — with the forty-one years of work by Mehoffer and the Kirsch & Fleckner workshop — it constitutes one of the largest monographic works of stained glass in European art of the 20th century.