Maillezais Abbey
The Abbey Maillezais is a former Benedictine abbey in the French community Maillezais , in Vendée , in the region of Pays de la Loire. The place is about 10 km southeast of Fontenay-le-Comte and about 25 km west of Niort on the banks of the Jeune Autise. The monastery is located on the north-eastern edge of the Marais Poitevin , which was flooded by the sea until the early Middle Ages . The monastery and site stood on raised limestone plinths that protruded from the water.
history
Its founding by Duke Wilhelm IV. Eisenarm von Aquitaine is documented for the year 989, but at a point that was 2,000 m away from the current location. The first monks came from Tours , sent from the Abbey Saint-Julien. The abbey was given its current location under Wilhelm V , a committed sponsor and patron of this monastery community. He lived in it for a while until his death in 1030.
Even without his help, the abbey experienced increasing prosperity and growth in the following years, which developed from the high yields of the former floodplains drained by the monks and their management. According to a traditional bull of Pope Coelestin III. , dated to 1197, at that time Maillezais Abbey owned a good fifty priories and monasteries, which contributed to the increase in its wealth. In addition, it was located near one of the branches of the Camino de Santiago to Santiago de Compostela , which increased the monastery’s income.
Pope John XXII. In 1317 Maillezais and his area of influence became a diocese , the abbot became an abbot- bishop and the abbey church became a cathedral , which signaled the height of the abbey's heyday, not synonymous with its decline.
The abbey burned down during the wars of religion , triggered in 1587 by the Huguenots storming the buildings and facilities . The abbey was dissolved and rededicated as a fortified place for the Huguenots in 1589. The mastermind behind this action, Agrippa d'Aubigné , stayed for a while in the buildings, which were still passably preserved. After the murder of Henry IV in 1610, he had to leave the country after which he had sold Maillezais to the Duke of Rohan in good time . Already two years after the purchase, he parted with his property and transferred it to royal rule.
Too many and too high hurdles stood in the way of a revitalization of the Maillezais monastery complex with new content and a connection to past prosperity. Arson war hordes had left wreak havoc. There were also no adequate sources that could have maintained a monastery "even on a small flame". The large streams of pilgrims across Europe had long since dried up.
Pope Innocent X sealed the inexorable decline of the abbey in 1648 by granting the episcopal dignity no longer Maillezais, but the new diocese of La Rochelle . Maillezais then finally fell into a coma from which it never woke.
During the French Revolution , the monastic buildings were treated in the same way as happened to numerous former church buildings and works of art. The still upright parts of the building, much more intact than after the action, were sold for demolition as "national property". The result was a quarry from which stones that had already been cut by stonemasons could be removed without great effort. The offer was very popular in the area. Demolition contractors cleared away on a large scale. Particularly in the area of the abbey church, it was heavily torn down. Significantly more valuable building material was destroyed and removed from these demolitions and sales than through the previous effects of the war.
It was not until 1872 that the state took over the relatively sparse remains or ruins of the formerly prosperous abbey. In 1927 the ruins were classified as “ Monument historique ” , which made it possible to start conservation and restoration work .
Abbey church, temporarily cathedral
Viewed from the north-west corner, the towering components of the north aisle wall, the adjoining transept arm and the westwork with the narthex still give the impression of a passable state of preservation of the abbey church, which St. Is dedicated to Peter. But if you enter “the church” through the northern gate, you have to notice that there is almost nothing left in the area of the former nave , transept and choir . Only markings of the cross-sections of the columns and the outlines of the choir, the transept and the transept chapels can be seen on a short lawn. The right nave wall is identified by a knee-high wall.
If one turns to the tall structural elements in the north and west “in the ship ” (French: La Nef ) , one recognizes their belonging to the various stylistic epochs of the Middle Ages and their transitions. The westwork (French: Massif d'entrée) with its narthex was created in the early Romanesque period around 1080. The two towers rich today until vaulted approach the aisles , and perhaps up to two-thirds of their original height.
The nave of the abbey church had seven bays . Except for the transitions in the seventh and last yoke in front of the transept, all the constructions were from the Romanesque period of the 11th century. In the side aisles of the first four bays, galleries were installed, which rested on vaults , which were supported yoke-by-yoke by belt arches (pointed?). On the north wall, the supporting semicircular pillar templates with vegetable carved capitals and belt arches are still preserved in all yokes . In the area of the former galleries you can see pointed vault contours on the wall surfaces and in the corners vaults with ridges , which indicates groin vaults . Slender arched windows , which also date from the 11th century, are cut out above and below the gallery floor . Above the galleries or the capitals, between the windows, as an extension of the lower half-columns, there are right-angled pillars, which merge into belt arches about halfway up the Romanesque windows, and slightly higher in yokes 5 and 6. Above that, one can hardly notice any traces of vaulted shapes on the walls, which extend well above the upper edges of the windows. Presumably there were barrel vaults above the galleries , which rested on the belt arches, and above each window there was a transverse barrel for the light to enter the ship . In the yokes 5 - 7 there are no signs of belt arches.
The significant extensions of the Romanesque windows in yokes 5 to 7, in width and height - two stacked one on top of the other became a common one - and their arch shape (pointed arch) dates from the Gothic period around 1300, the existing approaches reveal former tracery .
In the middle of the 7th yoke, in front of the transept, the wall thickness changes to a thinner one, the actual “seam” of the construction from Romanesque to Gothic. The contours of the high vaults on the walls have similarities in yoke 5 and 6 with the previous ones, but without the belt arches. In the yoke 7, there are approaches a pointed arch vault and, of slender ribs on a Gothic ribbed vault points.
The five massive pillars on the outside of the north wall were added in the 13th century, as there were obviously problems with the load transfer of the vaults. At their bases, slope-like bevels were attached to the outside to enlarge the contact area.
The purely Gothic architecture of the transept can still be seen in the fragments of the northern arm of the transept, which are significantly higher than the outer walls of the nave. It is its head wall with its connecting wall to the ship and a stair tower that should lead to a former bell tower (French: Clocher). Both walls are closed up to the lower edge of the window, a little above the middle of the wall height, and each structured with two Gothic blind arcades . In one of them there is the north portal and above it a Gothic window the width of the door with largely intact tracery . The large, high-level windows are almost as wide as the inner wall surfaces and are spanned by pointed arches, today without any higher wall sections. The tracery can be seen in rudiments.
The 16 pillars of the former nave and the crossing are depicted with white polished marble slabs, the missing outlines of the choir section and its three stages with narrow white curb elements. The actual size of the interior of the abbey church can be grasped a little better if one climbs on one of the tower stumps of the westwork .
The total length of the abbey church was 90 meters, its width by 20 meters, the length of the transept 32 meters. The transept was 30 meters high after it was raised after a fire in the 13th century. (for comparison: that of Chartres is 36 meters). Last but not least, the huge dimensions of the church outside of an urban center reflected the former importance of Maillezais Abbey.
The abbey building
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As with almost every abbey of the Middle Ages, the cloister (French: cloître) adjoined the south wall of the nave. Its dimensions between the walls of the surrounding buildings were approx. 30 × 30 meters, which were probably two-story as usual. The demolition contractors left nothing of that either, except for the foundation walls. You can use them to partially explain the floor plan of the rooms on the ground floor. In the east wing was the chapter house , the spiritual center of every monastery, with non-lockable door and window openings. Above it was usually the dormitory (bedroom) of the choir monks, usually with a short staircase connection to the church. In the west and south wings, the refectory (dining room) , the kitchen, a laundry room and other rooms were housed, which were considered necessary for life in the monastery. This also applied to the rest of the upper floor. A large vaulted cellar is still completely intact today, the same size as the south wing and just below it, with a pointed vault and "gigantic" belt arches. You can descend into the former storage cellar via two stairs, at one end and in the middle.
The extension of the cloister and its garden is made visible today through a planting of lavender. In the middle of the garden there is still the old fountain with its surrounding wall.
It is thanks to the Huguenots occupying the abbey and transforming it into a "fortified place" around 1589 by d'Aubigné that the western front of the abbey building and the westwork of the abbey church were almost entirely clad with several layers of stone thickly with massive stone masonry is. With it all possible window and door openings were barricaded, except for a few loopholes. At the foot of the “facing”, the fastening was given a slope-like bevel with an incline of approx. 45 °. This condition is still preserved today, apart from further attempts to break it off.
At a greater height above the former main portal of the church there is a series of large corbels , stepped from top to bottom , which presumably once formed the basis for a battery of so-called “ machiculis ” that supplemented the above-mentioned fortification.
Convention and hotel building
Not far away in front of the south wall of the abbey building there is a slope ( embankment ) about three meters down, which then continues to the east. Before the Marais was drained, this was the boundary between sea and land. Beyond the subsidence, the terrain continues to fall significantly flatter to the first drainage ditches. Above the embankment stands the abbey and, in continuation of its southeast corner, some of its outbuildings, which were connected to one another by a weir and flood protection wall. Further to the east, the protective wall is bent at an acute angle. On top of the sharp vertical edge sits a round sentry box, a kind of landmark for Maillezais. Presumably this is a former “ breakwater ” that broke the force of the rolling swell .
The hotel and convent buildings are both two-story, seen from the upper level. Both have basement floors that can only be accessed from the upper level via stairs and from the lower level at ground level. The hotel (French: Hôtellerie), oriented north-south, had a refectory on the ground floor and a dormitory on the upper floor , where only the guests of the abbey were accommodated. In the basement there was a prison called the "Cachot de Rabelais".
The convent building (for lay brothers ), almost the same size as the hotel and arranged at right angles to it, houses a refectory on the ground floor and a dormitory on the top floor , both for the use of the abbey's lay brothers. The common kitchen for lay brothers and hotel guests was located in the corner of the two refectories and spatially connected to each other. Below the kitchen and the refectory of the lay brothers there is a spacious cellar with a slightly pointed vault for dry storage of salt that was extracted in the nearby salt pans of the Marais. Both refectories now house exhibitions of historically significant finds from the abbey grounds.
Museum, head portrait, forked tongue talking
Museum, capital with birds
Museum, wattle, Merovingian
Capital, on the north wall of the church
The convent building is stiffened on its southern longitudinal wall and in its extension on the gable wall of the hotel with nine generously dimensioned wall templates, which extend over three, in the gable even over four floors. The wall reinforcements with wall templates are also known on the longitudinal walls of the hotel. The bases of the templates are partially abraded on the front and widened on the sides.
Between the convent building and the south corner of the abbey building there are the remains of the so-called gate tower (French: tour porte) on the upper edge of the embankment . On the side facing the sea, the outer wall is supported by three sturdy wall templates, as is the case with the neighboring buildings, between two gates with round arches at the lower edge, which presumably gave rise to the name of the relatively small building.
- Locally set up display boards and writing boards (French)
- Poitou, Thorsten Droste, DuMont 1999
Outdoor area
In the outdoor area to the west of the abbey, visitors are introduced to construction techniques from the Middle Ages in the form of “adventure archeology” . When the off-season is idle, you can see: vertical transport of heavy components with wooden cranes, driven by running wheels, wooden scaffolding for building arches and vaults, horizontal transport of heavy loads with wheelbarrows and others.
The stone extremities (head, arms, feet) of an oversized giant, the work of today's stonemason artist, are scattered near these “workshops”.
swell
- Thorsten Droste: Poitou, western France between Poitiers and Angoulème - the Atlantic coast from the Loire to the Gironde. Dumont-Buchverlag, 1st edition 1999. ISBN 3-7701-4456-2 , pp. 139-142.
Web links
Coordinates: 46 ° 22 '24 " N , 0 ° 44' 51" W.