St-Pierre-St-Paul Abbey Church (Solignac)

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Solignac Abbey - west facade with bell gable

The former abbey church of St-Pierre et St-Paul de Solignac is one of the most interesting and important churches in the Limousin .

location

The church and abbey building are located on a hill about 50 meters above the river bank of the Briance and today's city of Solignac .

history

The monastery was founded around the middle of the 7th century by St. Eligius (French: Saint Éloi ), who rose to the highest offices at the court of the Merovingian kings Chlothar II and Dagobert I , but later became a priest and then bishop. The first monastery in this place flourished early, but around 730 the area had to endure repeated raids by the Saracens . In the 9th century it was the Normans who made the river banks of Europe unsafe with the same goal. After their settlement in Normandy , however, calm gradually returned to the heart of France and Solignac belonged to 10/11. Century among the wealthiest and most important monasteries in France. In the 11th century, the pilgrimage route ( Via Lemovicensis ) to Santiago de Compostela became more and more important and there was plenty of money flowing into the abbey's coffers. With this money, the construction of today's abbey church began at the beginning of the 12th century, which - with the exception of the west tower - was completed in the same century; the latter was then raised at the beginning of the 13th century.

The medieval abbey buildings - completed at the same time - were damaged during the Hundred Years War and again during the Huguenot Wars , and in the early 18th century they were considered to be out of date and demolished; the buildings visible today were erected in their place. These survived the revolutionary era halfway unscathed - a girls' boarding school was set up in them in the 19th century, later the buildings were handed over to the Oblate Order founded in 1816 ; today they are used as an old people's home

architecture

Exterior construction

Solignac - choir head with radial chapels

The exterior of the abbey church impresses with its choir head with a total of five chapels - the two outer ones belong to the transept arms , the three inner ones border on the large apse ( radial chapels ). All chapels and the upper part of the apse are generously windowed and structured by services and cornices or by small arcades . The apex chapel - like the choir apse - has a polygonal break on the outside, whereas the side chapels are round.

The northern nave wall is divided into two storeys - the lower one has double blind arcades , the upper one shows large, unmistakable round arched windows and blind arcades with three-pass arches . Above the north portal without a tympanum , apart from a few console figures under the eaves, one can see the only figurative decoration of the church: a frieze shows Christ with a cross and a book in the middle (the right hand was probably raised in a blessing or teaching gesture); In the six side arcades, remains of figures can still be seen - possibly apostles.

The striking bell gable of the west tower is one of the northernmost in France; As far as is known, however, it does not correspond to the original condition, but was only put on centuries later instead of a bell storey with a square floor plan that had become dilapidated. The archivolt portal has neither a tympanum nor any other figurative or vegetable decoration.

inner space

Solignac - longhouse

Several steps lead down from the ribbed narthex room on the ground floor of the west tower into the church. At first glance, the single-nave nave looks low, heavy and unadorned, but it impresses with its clear width of around 16 meters - a dimension that at that time was only achievable through dome vaults - resting on pendentives - and deep arcade arches at the side . These in turn can clearly be traced back to suggestions from Aquitaine (e.g. Périgueux Cathedral ); so far in the north of France they can only be found in Fontevrault Abbey . In Solignac, the actual domes - in contrast to the brick pendentives - are plastered; In the Middle Ages, something like this was only ever done when the underlying and probably only roughly worked stones were to remain hidden. The motif of the small double blind arcades is repeated on the outer walls between the main arches; here, however, there is a walkway above.

The two transept arms probably originally had barrel vaults, of which the one in the south transept is still preserved, whereas the north - possibly in the Baroque period - was redesigned to an oval dome.

Choir stalls

A treasure of the former abbey church is the comparatively well-preserved choir stalls from the 15th century, which were not placed in the choir, but along the walls of the second nave yoke. So it is perhaps a so-called layman's chair , the places of which were used or rented to by high-ranking citizens of the place. On the side cheeks and below the misericordia , a multitude of grimace-cutters and small malicious monsters cavort.

photos

  • North side of the abbey church with north portal

  • North portal, figure frieze - the figures in the arcades have been destroyed

  • North portal, figure frieze - Christ enthroned

  • Look into the church

  • Choir stalls - grimace cutter

  • Choir stalls - devil mask

  • Choir stalls - eavesdroppers and tongues

  • Choir stalls - beggars (?) With pants down

literature

Web links

Commons : St-Pierre-St-Paul Abbey (Solignac)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 45 ° 45 ′ 17 "  N , 1 ° 16 ′ 33"  E