St-Jérôme (Argelès-sur-Mer)

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The pre-Romanesque chapel of St-Jérôme is located not far from the village of Argelès-sur-Mer in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in the Occitania region of southern France in the old cultural landscape of Roussillon . It is one of the few church buildings in the south of France where influences or after-effects from Visigothic architecture are suspected. The namesake of the church is St. Jerome ( Catalan Sant Jeroni ).

Saint-Jérôme d'Argelès chapel

location

The small church is located at a height of approx. 110 m above sea level. d. M. in the French part of the Albères mountains about 3 km (footpath) southwest of the village Argelès-sur-Mer and only about 11 km (as the crow flies) from the border with Spain ( Catalonia ) near Cerbère . The partly pre-Romanesque church of St-Ferréol-de-la-Pave is only about 1 km (as the crow flies) in a south-westerly direction.

Building history

There is no information about the building history of the small chapel. However, some researchers attribute the building to the 10th century, i.e. pre-Romanesque art, while others date it much later. The small church was preserved because after the French Revolution some families from Argelès took care of the church building and thus preserved it for posterity.

architecture

apse

The stones of the church building are mostly unworked, which indicates an early construction period. Only the larger corner stones are a little smoothed and give the building the necessary degree of stability. Most of the stones lie in rows on top of each other in a masonry bond, but they are also interrupted in some places, which indicates later repair work.

Exterior construction

The chapel consists of a nave about 5.20 meters long and an apse about 2.10 meters deep , which is smaller than the nave in both width and height. A simple bell gable (without bell) rises above the unadorned west wall, in which there are hints of the originally larger entrance portal . Light penetrates through a small round window in the entrance gable and two equally small, originally unglazed, Romanesque side windows.

inner space

Both components are curved inside. The transition from the nave to the apse is formed by a so-called triumphal arch , the arch of which is slightly indented at the lower end, so that one can - carefully - speak of a horseshoe arch . This element is characteristic of Visigoth , Andalusian-Islamic and Mozarabic architecture ; in the Romanesque it appears only extremely rarely.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : St-Jérôme (Argelès-sur-Mer)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Map with altitude information

Coordinates: 42 ° 31 ′ 45 ″  N , 3 ° 0 ′ 0 ″  E