Romanesque Art by Charles Victoria. & Klaus H. Carl

Author:Charles, Victoria. & Klaus H. Carl [Charles, Victoria & Carl, Klaus H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783103256
Publisher: Parkstone International
Published: 2014-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire

The beautiful Benedictine abbey of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, located in the town of the same name in Loiret, also deserves mention. The relics of St Benedict of Nursia, the founder of the Benedictine order, who lived as a hermit for some years, are kept here. Thus, the abbey was a place of pilgrimage for those who revered the saint for many centuries.

Cluny Abbey

Founded in 910 A.D. by Count William III of Aquitaine, known as Towhead, as the then largest place of worship in the Christendom, Cluny Abbey (p.72-73-74) became one of the most influential and largest religious centres of the Middle Ages. For over two centuries it ruled more than 1,000 monasteries and more than 20,000 monks. The abbey church, a vaulted basilica with four side-aisles, had two transepts and a choir with ambulatory and a ring of chapels. The vaulting of the nave at Cluny took place at the same time as that of Speyer Cathedral in Germany. On the one hand, the abbey has a classic early medieval monastic foundation, on the other hand, the foundation documents contain something completely new for the time. This was a dual release, which removed the monastery from the realm of the bishop as well as that of the secular prince, and placed it directly under papal control. Due to these privileges and free abbot elections, Cluny became the starting point for a series of monastic reforms, known as Cluniac Reforms after the abbey.

The use of massive pillars and walls as supports, which had to bear the heavy stone vaults, led to a blueprint in which the entire construction consisted of several small, connected elements, the so-called bays. These bays are groin-vaulted rooms that rise above a rectangular or square floor plan.

The abbey was dissolved in 1790, one year after the French Revolution, destroyed, and sold off stone by stone. Today, only a portion of one of the two transepts remains.

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