Brancion
Brancion is a small town west of Tournus in the Region Bourgogne Franche-Comté in France . It belongs to the municipality of Martailly-lès-Brancion in the Saône-et-Loire department . Despite its small size, the place is important for tourism. Here parts of an old village are still alive and there is a church from the 12th century. Brancion can not only come up with this medieval church, but also with a castle complex .
history
The strategic importance of the place was based on its location at the pass from the Saône valley to the Grosne valley. The lords of Brancion are recorded in the 10th to 13th centuries. They were in constant struggle with the abbots of the nearby Cluny Abbey. Josserand III. moved with King Ludwig IX. of France on the crusade and died in 1250 at the Battle of Mansourah. His son Henry II sold his rule to the Duke of Burgundy in 1259. Brancion was considered one of the keys to the duchy and was fortified more strongly. In 1477 it fell to the Kingdom of France with the duchy. The last armed conflicts occurred in the Wars of Religion. In 1594 the castle was looted.
Saint-Pierre
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At the edge of the village is the Saint-Pierre church. It was always so insignificant that it was never changed. This has the great advantage that you can experience an original spatial impression of a small village church from the 12th century. The building is made entirely of ocher-colored rubble stones , including the roof and the top of the crossing tower .
Here you can also see a peculiarity of the early Burgundian churches, the so-called "nef obscur", i.e. the dark nave , a central nave with a longitudinal barrel without an upper window and relatively high aisles, which are often combined with the central nave under one roof, as here. This is a simplified construction that did not even risk endangering the vault through windows. Light comes only from the entrance, from the choir and from tiny windows in the side walls.
The floor is laid out with large, irregular stone slabs, which have taken on a marble-like sheen on the surface through long use.
This small ideal image of a Romanesque church is reminiscent of the construction technology of the Saint-Philibert church in neighboring Tournus with the masonry made of small rubble stones in thick layers of mortar, with the sparse building decor and with simple pilaster strips as the only wall structure. However, with its pointed barrel vault, Saint Pierre already shows the influence of the abbey church of Cluny III. Inside the church, heavily weathered wall paintings in the choir apse show Christ as the judge of the world with the four evangelist symbols, the twelve apostles and the resurrected. In the southern side apse you can see pilgrims in front of a church, in the side aisle two scenes with the reception of souls in Abraham's bosom. The lying grave figure in the nave from around 1250 could represent the crusader Josserand III. but only recently came here from a castle park.
La-Chapelle-sous-Brancion
Below the village, in the Grosne valley, are the churches of La-Chapelle-sous-Brancion and Lancharre.
literature
- Klaus Bussmann: Burgundy . Cologne [1977] 2nd edition 1978. (DuMont Art Travel Guide), p. 50, fig. 13.
- Bernhard Laule, Ulrike Laule, Heinfried Wischermann: Art monuments in Burgundy. Darmstadt 1991, p. 422ff.
Web links
Coordinates: 46 ° 33 ' N , 4 ° 48' E