Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe Abbey

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Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe abbey church
UNESCO world heritage UNESCO World Heritage Emblem
PixAile7.jpg
Aerial view of the Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe abbey church
National territory: FranceFrance France
Type: Culture
Criteria : (i) (iii)
Surface: 1.61 ha
Buffer zone: 147.77 ha
Reference No .: 230
UNESCO region : Europe and North America
History of enrollment
Enrollment: 1983  (session 7)

The Abbey of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe is located in the municipality of Saint-Savin (Vienne) 40 kilometers east of Poitiers . The Romanesque abbey church, begun in the middle of the 11th century, is the oldest vaulted building in Poitou and is famous for the largely preserved ceiling paintings from the 11th and 12th centuries. Since 1983 it belongs to the UNESCO - World Heritage Site .

history

The abbey in 1688, engraving from Monasticon Gallicanum

The documents establishing the abbey were lost in 1598 during the Huguenot Wars . What is certain, however, is that the abbey was founded under Charlemagne at the beginning of the 9th century. They were dedicated to Saint Savin de Cerisier and Saint Cyprien, of whom little is known today. In the 11th century, La passion de saint Savin et saint Cyprien was written, which can be classified under the epics .

Tradition has it that in the 5th century two brothers, Savinius and Cyprianus, who had fled separately from Macedonia , where they had been persecuted for their beliefs, were finally reunited on the banks of the Gartempe. They were tortured and beheaded here. Savinius was buried by priests not far from today's city in a place called Cerisier (cherry tree).

Three centuries later, the remains of the two martyrs were found at the scene of their massacre. Badillus, cleric at the court of Charlemagne, decided to found an abbey there to keep the precious relics. St. Benedict of Aniane made the community subject to the Benedictine rule in 821 and had twenty monks settle there. He appointed the abbot Eudes I, who had the first church built.

In 1010, Almodis von Gévaudan, Countess of Poitou as the wife of Count Wilhelm III. from Poitou , the Abbey a vast gift for the salvation of her soul and the souls of her family. With the money, today's monastery church could be built in the second half of the 11th century. During this work, all relics of the abbey that had been hidden a century or two earlier were rediscovered, perhaps because of the threat from the Normans . An extraordinary cobalt blue glass, which was used as a reliquary and was found in 1866 during an altar change, also dates from this period. It is now in the Musée Sainte-Croix in Poitiers .

The Hundred Years War and the Huguenot Wars put an end to the prosperity of the abbey, which changed hands several times during this period. The appointment of commander abbots , who were more interested in the income of the monastery than in the maintenance of the building fabric, was added: around 1600 an abbot began selling stones from the masonry, a little later another drove the monks away and closed the abbey church his lodgings. His replacement by the Maurinians in 1640 ended this period of destruction.

Between 1682 and 1692 the restoration of the church and the construction of the remaining monastery buildings began. After the abolition of the monasteries during the revolution , the church became a parish church in 1792. The monastery buildings became apartments for teachers and the local gendarmerie, which only moved out in 1971.

In 1833, Ludovic Vitet, as inspector general des monuments historiques, recognized the monuments value of the abbey, his successor Prosper Mérimée ordered the most urgent repairs after alerting Minister François Guizot in 1835 . In 1840 the church was classified as a monument historique , in 1849 it was considered saved.

Extensive restoration work took place from 1967 to 1974, and in 1983 the abbey church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List due to the preserved ceiling and wall paintings from around 1100.

architecture

The abbey church
The ceiling of the central nave
Ceiling painting from the central nave: The Tower of Babel, around 1100
Frescoes

There is no early documentary news about the construction. The dating must be based solely on stylistic considerations. After that, the abbey church was started around 1060 with the lower tower floors, the first three western yokes , still separated with belt arches, and the transept. Between 1075 and 1095, the choir followed with its outpatient clinic and the five chapels in the polygonal apse as well as the crossing tower and the remaining seven yokes of the nave, vaulted with a continuous barrel . This construction sequence is reflected in the increasingly rich elaboration of the capitals . Construction began around the same time as that of the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral , but unlike usual, with the west side and not with the choir.

The elevation shows a hall church , the side aisles with their groin vaults are only slightly lower, so that one can speak of a relay hall here . In the first decades of the 12th century the church was essentially completed. Only the belfry is more recent, the richly structured belfry was built in the middle of the 12th century and the steeple with its finely crafted, more than 80 m tall spire was built 200 years later.

The church still has the original ceiling and wall paintings from around 1100 in the crypt , in the narthex and in the central nave. This is the most extensive and artistically most important cycle of Romanesque frescoes in France - with a total area of ​​413 m². Like few other examples, the interior gives an impression of how we should imagine the original splendor of colors and images in other Romanesque churches. Technological research in the context of recent, completed in July 2008 restorations have shown that the applied here painting method fresco-secco and fresco technique was combined by the color was not applied on fresh, but on wiederangefeuchteten plaster, from which it also explains the unusually good state of preservation.

The themes of the nave painting are taken from the books Genesis and Exodus of the Old Testament. In the vestibule the Last Judgment and the heavenly Jerusalem are depicted, above, on the upper floor of the narthex, scenes from the New Testament and figures of saints, in the crypt with the tombs of Saints Saint-Savin and Saint-Cyprien, scenes from their lives. The latter two rooms are only accessible during guided tours.

The altar tables, which have rarely been preserved in such original condition, also date from the 12th century.

literature

  • Robert Favreau (Ed.): Saint-Savin: L'abbaye et ses peintures murales. Connaissance et promotion du patrimoine de Poitou-Charentes, Poitiers 1999, ISBN 2-905764-21-X .
  • Yves-Jean Riou: Inventaire général des monuments et des richesses artistiques de la France, L'abbaye de Saint-Savin. Connaissance et promotion du patrimoine de Poitou-Charentes, coll. Images du patrimoine (No. 101), Poitiers 1992, ISBN 2-905764-04-X .
  • Emmanuelle Jeannin: Abbaye de Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe. Gaud, coll. Monuments et histoires , Moisenay 2001, ISBN 2-84080-076-4 ; New editions 2008, ISBN 978-2-8408-0185-6 , and 2010, ISBN 978-2-9537837-0-4 .
  • Jean Taralon: La France des Abbayes. Hachette Réalités, Paris 1978, ISBN 2-01-004969-1 , pp. 102-105; on the restoration of the wall paintings p. 104.
  • François Eygun: Art des pays d'Ouest, Grenoble. Arthaud, coll. "Art et paysages" (No. 26), 1965, p. 286: plans for Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe.
  • Mira Friedman: L'arche de Noé de Saint-Savin. In: Cahiers de civilization médiévale, Volume 40, No. 158, April / June 1997, pp. 123-143 (DOI 10.3406 / ccmed.1997.2679).

Web links

Commons : Abbey Church of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Abbaye de Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe on tourisme-vienne.com
  2. ↑ The date is questionable because after 1005 nothing is documented about Almodis (see Ramnulfiden )
  3. ↑ D. Simon-Hiernard, Le vase de Saint-Savin: un exceptionnel verre médiéval au musée Sainte-Croix de Poitiers , in: Revue du Louvre et des Musées de France, 2000-1, pp. 68-75. Dgl., Le verre bleu de l'abbaye de Saint-Savin au musée de Poitiers, témoin rarissime d'une production carolingienne de prestige en Europe , Le Picton, 2018.
  4. ↑ Thorsten Droste: Poitou , (Dumont Art Travel Guide), Kön 1999, p. 60. There is also a list of the illustrated themes.

Coordinates: 46 ° 34 ′ 1 ″  N , 0 ° 51 ′ 52 ″  E