Recontextualizing the Context: The Dispute Capital from Saint-Hilaire in Poitiers and Storytelling in the Poitou around the Time of the Peace of God Movement

An engaged capital thought to have come from Saint-Hilaire-le-Grand in Poitiers has generally been interpreted in relation to a text. The three sculpted sides of the capital have been read as a narrative that refers to an allegorical commentary on the Apocalypse or, alternatively, as a representation of the Old Testament story of Jacob and Esau. These texts, like the capital's depiction of hand-to-hand wrestling and beard pulling, are based on the idea of personal conflict or dispute. A fuller picture of the social context—the political atmosphere, the spiritual tone, the ritual color—facilitates the incorporation of audience into an understanding of the capital's sculptures and amplifies our sense of the circumstances within which contemporaries might have apprehended its iconography. Like other sculptures incorporated into portal compositions, facade ensembles, and nave articulations in western France of the late eleventh century, this capital can be shown to reflect the socioreligious context of the Peace of God movement.