The church of Saint Quentin in Wirwignes
The triumphal arch
The triumphal arch is an archway separating the nave and chancel of a church. The one in Wirwignes was probably built around 1600. Abbé Lecoutre took advantage of the privileged location of this arch to make it a major decorative element by adding a series of statues arranged in niches. There are 15 statues on each side, 14 of saints surrounding that of Jesus Christ on the nave side and that of an angel on the choir side.
Nave side
- Saint François de Sales
- Saint Augustin
- Sainte Marie-Madeleine
- Unidentified saint
- Saint Thomas
- Saint Joseph
- Saint Jean Baptiste
- Jésus-Christ
- Saint Josse
- Saint Bernard
- Saint Stanislas
- Saint Bruno
- Sainte Ide
- Saint Jérôme
- Saint François d’Assise
On the arch is a sentence in Latin, corresponding to verse 51 and the beginning of verse 52 of chapter 6 of John’s Gospel:
ego sum panis vivus qui de caelo descendi si quis manducaverit ex hoc pane vivet in aeternum
I am the living bread which came down from heaven if anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever.
Choir side
- Sainte Cécile
- Saint François Xavier
- Sainte Barbe
- Saint Antoine
- Saint Roch
- Saint Ignace
- Saint Etienne
- An angel
- Saint Valentin
- Saint Antoine
- Saint Charles
- Saint Grégoire
- Sainte Radegonde
- Saint Ignace de Loyola
- Sainte Agathe
The arch bears a phrase in Latin, which is stanza XXI of the liturgical sequence Lauda Sion composed in 1264 by Saint Thomas Aquinas:
ecce panis angelorum factus cibus viatorum, vere panis filiorum non [mittendis canibus]
this is the bread of angels which has become food for those on the way the true bread of children [not to be thrown to the dogs].
The quotation stops at “no“. Perhaps it was while trying to finish painting this quotation that Abbé Lecoutre fell to his death on 2 November 1906.
This is the hypothesis put forward by Jean-Marc Pierru.
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