Fryburg Ecclesiastical

Stylistically the window stands on the border of two epochs: mature Art Nouveau (the organic line of the ornament, a mosaic-like colouring, Art Nouveau decorativeness) and the early Art Deco of the 1930s (symmetry, the segmentation of registers, an ‘architectural’ rhythm, the geometricisation of the heraldry, elegant majuscule lettering with classicising elements). This stylistic duality bears witness to Mehoffer’s evolution: an artist who began in 1895 as a revolutionary of Young Poland Art Nouveau and ends in 1936 as a master of mature Polish Art Deco — in parallel with the achievements of the Warsaw school of architectural decoration.

The most characteristic formal element of the window is its expansive use of heraldry: the arms of the cathedral chapter, the arms of the Canton of Fribourg, the arms of the Diocese of Lausanne–Geneva–Fribourg, the arms of the donors. In Mehoffer’s hands heraldry is not a decorative addition but an autonomous visual language — a ‘speech of memory’, in which each heraldic shield functions like a sentence inscribed into the image. This formal gesture has its models in medieval heraldic illumination, but in Mehoffer it takes on a modernist dimension — heraldry becomes an element programmatically equivalent to the figural narrative.

The window’s palette is composed of eight dominants: ultramarine and a deep sapphire navy (#0F2F8F) in the sky and grounds; turquoise (#1FB7A6) in the details; gold (silver stain) in the heraldry, crowns and attributes; vermilion and ruby (#B0002A) in the robes of the magistrate and the chapter; emerald green (#2E8B57) in the nature of the background; ivory and white (#F2F2F2) in the Virgin’s robes and the inscriptions; accents of violet (#4B2E83) in the ceremonial details. The sum of the palette gives the impression of an illuminated chronicle — a manuscript on a monumental scale.

Lettering plays an exceptional role in ‘Ecclesiastical Fribourg’. The band of the motto ‘RELIGIONI – PATRUM – FIDELES’ (‘Faithful to the religion of the fathers’) runs across the three lancets as a monumental compositional band, dividing the window into an upper zone (authority and values) and a lower zone (persons and facts). The second monumental motto, ‘SUB HOC PATROCINIO · STAT STABIT QUE · FRIBURGUM’ (‘Under this patronage Fribourg stands and shall stand’), runs beneath the figure of the Virgin as a programmatic bracket of the patronal programme. The lettering is executed in Roman majuscule, in a classicising typography with Art Nouveau accents of ornament in the vegetal scrollwork between the letters.

The second register holds two ideal personifications with explicit inscriptions: APOSTASIA (Apostasy) and FIDES (Faith). Apostasy, shown in a dejected or aggressive pose, in dark attire, with the attributes of ruin or a broken cross; Fides — in an upright stance, in a bright robe, with the book of Holy Scripture and a cross. This allegorical binomial — before the entry into the historical narrative — communicates directly that the history of the Church of Fribourg is a history of a choice between fidelity and apostasy, which sets the window’s programme within the context of the re-Catholicising narrative of the 19th–20th centuries (the Reformation as apostasy, the Counter-Reformation as fidelity).

The third register shows the scene of the oath: the members of the magistrate of Fribourg kneel or stand at the altar, swearing an oath upon the Gospel held open (or upon a reliquary; the motif of the hand as a sign of continuity and authority). The band of the inscription RELIGIONI PATRUM FIDELES (‘Faithful to the religion of the fathers’) runs monumentally across the three lancets as a programmatic motto. The tradition of the magistrate of Fribourg swearing a Catholic oath goes back to the 16th century and was one of the foundations of local civic identity in opposition to the neighbouring Protestant cantons (Bern, Vaud). Mehoffer’s window sets this oath within the sacred space of the cathedral, making of it a programmatic trace of continuity.

The fourth register shows four monumental historical figures connected with the building of the ecclesiastical institutions of Fribourg in the 16th–17th centuries: Peter Schneuwly (1549/50–1597), provost of the cathedral, with the title PATER PATRIÆ (Father of the Fatherland) running on a banderole above his portrait; Sebastian Werro (1555–1614), likewise provost of the cathedral; Peter Canisius (1521–1597), a saint of the Catholic Church, a Doctor of the Church, a Jesuit from the Netherlands, whose apostolic activity in Fribourg (from 1580) made the city one of the principal centres of Catholic renewal in the Confederation; Giovanni Francesco Bonomi (1536–1587), papal nuncio in the Confederation in the years 1579–1581, linking Fribourg with Rome at the diplomatic level. Four statesmen of the Church — two Fribourgers, two international figures — compose a full representation of the network of influence through which Fribourg became the principal stronghold of Catholicism in early-modern Catholic-Protestant Switzerland.

The fifth register — central in the composition — contains the monumental figure of the Virgin (the Notre-Dame de Fribourg type, the local Marian patronage venerated alongside St Nicholas since the Middle Ages). Beneath her figure runs the programmatic motto:

SUB HOC PATROCINIO · STAT STABIT QUE · FRIBURGUM ‘Under this patronage Fribourg stands and shall stand.’

This motto — formulated in a direct, proclamatory form — functions as the city’s programmatic incantation of identity. The present tense ‘stat’ + the future ‘stabit’ + the conjunction ‘que’ (‘and’) establishes continuity: the Virgin’s protection is not a historical act from the past but an enduring and future one. This is a radical gesture of the theology of patronage — the inscription of the city into the eschatological endurance of salvation.

The lowest register contains an institutional bracket in the form of dating medallions: AD 1512 — the year the parish church of St Nicholas was raised to the rank of collegiate church (by Pope Julius II, simultaneously with the foundation of the Chapter); AD 1924 — the year the collegiate church was raised to the rank of cathedral of the Diocese of Lausanne–Geneva–Fribourg (by Pope Pius XI). Beside the dating medallions Mehoffer shows the figures of the cathedral chapter with the labels of their offices: DECAN, CANTOR, PRÆPOSITUS — the highest canonical offices of the chapter. The heraldry of the chapter, the canton and the diocese seals the composition as a final ‘signature of the institution’.

The motto Religioni patrum fideles (‘Faithful to the religion of the fathers’) is a programmatic manifesto of Fribourg’s Counter-Reformation identity. Fribourg, as one of the seven Catholic cantons of the Confederation (alongside Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Unterwalden, Zug, Solothurn, Valais), preserved its fidelity to Catholicism in the 16th century in the face of the spreading Swiss Reformation (Zwingli in Zurich, Calvin in Geneva). This preservation of fidelity — programmatically inscribed into the architectural band of the motto — has both a historical dimension (the 16th century) and a symbolic one (the years 1934–1936, when European Catholicism stood before the threat of the totalitarianisms, of National Socialism, of the anticlerical Spanish Civil War). The motto is made current — ‘fidelity to the religion of the fathers’ rings out especially sharply in 1936.

The window’s second programmatic manifesto — Sub hoc patrocinio stat stabit que Friburgum — sets the city within the field of patronal eschatology. Mary is not here merely the historical patroness of Fribourg; she is the guarantor of the city’s endurance in eschatological time. The temporal formula ‘stat + stabit’ (‘stands and shall stand’) has its models in medieval civic mottoes (Roma aeterna; Augustine’s Civitas Dei), but in Mehoffer it takes on a theological radicalism — the city under Marian patronage participates in the eternity of God. In 1936, as the world moves towards the Second World War, this declaration of political theology rings out with particular force.

The choice of the four figures of the gallery — Schneuwly, Werro, Canisius, Bonomi — is programmatic. First: two local figures (Schneuwly and Werro, two Fribourg provosts) and two international ones (Canisius, the Dutch Jesuit, and Bonomi, the Italian nuncio), which programmatically juxtaposes local patriotism with the universalism of the Church. Second: two clergymen and two missionary-diplomatic figures — a full picture of the Counter-Reformation infrastructure of the Church. Third: the canonisation of Canisius (1925, by Pius XI) directly precedes the second design (1934) and his proclamation as a Doctor of the Church (1925) — Mehoffer inscribes a fresh papal decision into the monumental programme of the window. This makes the window an altar of living identity — not a reference to the past but a manifestation of a current decision of the Church.

A comparison of ‘Ecclesiastical Fribourg’ with the ‘Apostles’ shows the full course of Mehoffer’s stylistic evolution. The ‘Apostles’ (1896) — Art Nouveau in full, revolutionary flowering; dense scrollwork, densely modelled faces, a dynamic chromatic mosaic. ‘Ecclesiastical Fribourg’ (1934–1935) — Art Nouveau in dialogue with Art Deco; the segmentation of registers, monumental symmetry, elegant lettering, the geometricisation of heraldry. Mehoffer travelled — in parallel with the whole of European art of the last four decades — the path from organic Art Nouveau to mature Art-Nouveau-cum-Art-Deco, while nonetheless preserving his characteristic language of the lead-line drawing, the chromatic mosaic and the silver stain.

‘Ecclesiastical Fribourg’ is a monument of European rank, combining a monumental narrative composition with a masterly command of a historical-institutional programme. It is a work iconologically unprecedented in the sacred art of its epoch: the inscription of the portraits of historical figures, of institutional dates, of mottoes of identity, and of the heraldry of the chapter and the magistrate into a monumental stained-glass composition of a cathedral choir constitutes a gesture without analogy in European art of the 1930s. The digital gigapixel 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 typography of the mottoes (the majuscule layout, the vegetal scrollwork between the letters), of the portraits of the historical figures (physiognomic features that can be compared with other source material) and of the heraldic microstructure of the shields — data critical for research into the iconography of Fribourg’s Counter-Reformation identity.