Autun Cathedral
The cathedral Saint-Lazare of Autun is the episcopal church of the diocese Autun in the style of the Romanesque and in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté .
It is a three-aisled basilica consecrated to St. Lazarus with rich facade decorations, which claims the highest place in the upper town of Autun . Since 1949 it has had the title of papal minor basilica . The cultural monument was classified as a monument historique in 1840 .
geography
The cathedral is located in the upper part of the 2 km² old town, which is enclosed by a spacious Roman wall ring and is surrounded by medieval houses. One of them is the birthplace of the famous Burgundian Chancellor Rolin, the founder of the Hôtel-Dieu hospital in Beaune , which is now used as a museum.
history
There is evidence of a Christian community in the city as early as the late 2nd century. The establishment of a bishopric in the 3rd century, however, is controversial. The first documented mentions of a cathedral date back to the middle of the 9th century. A little later, Charles the Bald transferred rulership of the city to the bishop.
The current cathedral was initially built as a pilgrimage church. Autun's episcopal church has been the Cathédrale Saint-Nazaire, a few meters to the east, since the diocese was founded. From 1195 to 1770, Saint-Lazare was co- cathedral alongside this main cathedral. Then Saint-Nazaire lost its rank and was demolished in 1785 because of dilapidation; only one side chapel remains. The old cathedral had approximately the usual east-west orientation. The New Church was built at right angles to it. Therefore, the entrance hall is in the north-north-west, the choir with the three apses in the south-south-east.
The construction of the Saint-Lazare church began around 1120. Still under construction, it was consecrated in 1130 on the occasion of the visit of Pope Innocent II . The portal in the east transept gable was mentioned in 1132. When in 1146 the relics of St. Lazarus were transferred from the old Nazarius Cathedral to the Lazarus Church, the church was almost completed; only detailed work remained, for example on the floor.
These relics originally came from the Lazarus Church in Larnaka , from where they came here via the detour from Constantinople and Marseille .
In the 12th century, an initially single-storey entrance hall was built in front of the main facade in the north, after which the wide entrance staircase that initially existed here was replaced by a palteau at the level of the nave floor. Finally, the side parts of the open hall were converted into closed chapels. In the late 13th century, the hall was raised to two storeys and the two corner towers were added to it.
In the course of the Hundred Years War , English troops from Guyenne in southwest France destroyed the city and its large pilgrimage church in 1379 . It was not until Cardinal Jean Rolin (Bishop 1436–1483) had the church restored and expanded. Since then, the late Gothic rows of chapels on the long sides and the mighty crossing tower have shaped the exterior of the church. The upper window storey of the main choir with its narrow, high pointed arch windows also comes from this renovation; previously, a hemispherical Romanesque apse dome had been added to this window at the height of today's sills . The Romanesque apse was hardly half as high as the late Gothic is now. Between this and the Romanesque choir, however, traces of an initial elevation of the apse by a further window storey were found towards the end of the 13th century.
In the baroque period, the interior was redesigned again. In 1767, for example, the inside of the apse was clad with marble and the Romanesque windows on the two lower floors were bricked up - which is hardly noticeable from the outside.
shape
The side aisles of this basilica have groin vaults , central nave and transept pointed barrels . The arcades between the aisles are ogival, the triforium above them are round-arched, as are the ceilings windows . The late Gothic rows of chapels have star vaults and are slightly lower than the side aisles, from whose former facade pillars the flying buttresses emerge. Balustrades on the facades of the chapels hide the eaves of the aisle roofs on the outside.
Thus, the nave of the church clearly follows the model of the only slightly older third church of the Cluny Abbey (built 1088–1130, still without a narthex). From there, the steep three-part wall structure, the pointed arcades between cruciform pillars , the vaulting of the central nave by a pointed barrel and the groin vaults of the side aisles are taken over. Compared to the leading abbey church at the time, the basilica in Autun is more oriented towards ancient models. This is explained by the large number of well-preserved Roman buildings in the city. There are hardly any round cross-sections, instead rectangular arcade pillars and numerous fluted pilasters .
When designing the choir , the innovation of the ambulatory choir with a chapel wreath introduced in Cluny was not followed, but instead the traditional scheme with three parallel apses was retained . On the basis of a construction seam it is assumed that after the construction of the apses a new construction phase began in which almost the entire church was built in one corridor. It was only in this second phase of construction that one orientated oneself closely to the abbey church of Cluny.
The two bay deep open vestibule under the towers at the north end of the nave is exceptionally large. After opening the side areas, which are temporarily separated as chapels, it extends over the entire width of the church.
Building plastic
Last Judgment tympanum
The famous tympanum , ie the arched area above the west portal, is considered to be the "most important representation of the Last Judgment that the epoch created". Whether the creator of this relief, like other architectural sculptures in the cathedral, "the most soulful of the great Romanesque sculptors" is correctly identified with that Gislebertus, who is called at the feet of Christ, has been doubted in recent research. The question is whether "Gislebertus me fecit" should be translated as "... made me" or "... let me do", referring to the sculptor or the client.
The 29-block relief shows the Last Judgment . The dominant motif is the enthroned figure of Christ, surrounded by the dignity sign of the mandorla , which is held by four angels. The sun and moon flank his head. The lintel at the feet of the judge of the world is part of the picture narration , and 38 resurrected people are lined up on it. Separated by an angel with a sword, 18 damned and 20 chosen ones are shown differentiated by their facial expressions or attributes , so one recognizes the indecent woman, on whose breasts snakes feed or the pious pilgrim on his pilgrim's staff, desperate gestures mark the damned while the children of to be led up to the angels. To the side of the divine central figure, the division into good and bad is continued in the quadrant fields. The main motif on the right is the weighing of the soul . The Archangel Michael presses on the scales with a poor sinner in such a way that the dragging devil cannot prevent the scales from tending to his disadvantage and the soul of the Risen One rising to heaven. The field opposite is occupied by ten apostles, further outside other chosen ones storm up to heaven. The Blessed Mother and two other apostles sit in the remaining spandrels above, a zone entirely dedicated to heavenly paradise. Four trumpeting angels accompany the dramatic events on the edge of the arched field.
The 24 elders were once depicted on the empty archivolt , further outside a band of foliage and in the third archivolt signs of the zodiac and images of the month .
Capitals
The special thing about the large capitals in the nave is that they do not belong to columns , as in Cluny and Vézelay , but to pilasters . This allowed the sculptor to arrange the narrative more pictorially on the flat trapezoidal surfaces of the pilaster capitals, without being forced to round it. Also on the walls of the west portal, in the apse, on the north portal are capital decorations from the workshop of the tympanum master, four capitals, including the famous Eve in Paradise, are exhibited in the Musée Rolin , and others in the chapter room , the former council and reading room adjoining the choir of the cathedral.
The death of Judas
Adoration of the Magi
The dream of kings
The Flight into Egypt
Sculpture style
One of the prerequisites for the great innovations in sculpture in Burgundy, as we encounter them in Autun, is the structural design of the monastery church of Cluny , of which only a few remains of the capital have survived since the abbey was destroyed, but not the tympanum. Spatiality and plasticity, restlessness and figurative movement are pre-formed there and in Vezelay (around 1120), but in Autun (before 1132) they are refined again and at the same time enhanced in expression and grace with their slim, graceful figures and their bent contours. The sculptor's creative power ranges from terrifying, demonic-apocalyptic to humanly touching scenes.
Inscriptions
Inscription in the mandorla of Christ and under the tympanum:
Mandorla on the left: "OMNIA DISPONO SOLVS MERITOSQUE CORONO" [I arrange everything by myself / I put everything in order by myself; and alone I wreath the deserving ones.] Mandorla on the right: "QVOS SCELVS EXERCET ME IUDICE POENA COERCET" [Those who are tormented by crime are overwhelmed by the punishment through me as a judge.]
On the left under the tympanum it says “QVISQVE RESVRGET ITA QVEM NON TRAHIT IMPIA VITA ET LVCEBIT EI SINE FINE LVCERNA DIEI” and God's lantern will shine for him without end.]
Then in the middle is inserted: "GISELBERTVS HOC FECIT" [Giselbertus did / had this done (i.e. the sculptures of the tympanum).]
Then follows on the right under the tympanum: "TERREAT HIC TERROR QVOS TERREVS ALLIGAT ERROR NAM FORE SIC VERVM NOTAT HIC HORROR SPECIERV (M)" [May this horror be frightened, (those) who are bound by earthly error. This horror of figures shows that the truth will be so.]
organ
The first organ was built by Louis Callinet in 1820. From this instrument only a few stylistic elements of the organ case exist today . The organ work goes back to the work that was built by Joseph Merklin in 1876 and has only been slightly expanded over time. Today the instrument has 45 registers on three manuals and a pedal . The playing and stop actions are electric.
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literature
- Franz-Bernhard Serexhe: Studies on the architecture and building history of the Saint-Lazare cathedral in Autun . Dissertation, University of Freiburg 2005 ( full text )
- Denis Grivot, Georges Zarnecki: Gislebertus, sculpteur d'Autun , Paris, Trianon, 1960. Review of this
Individual evidence
- ↑ Les remparts d'Autun (French: "The city fortifications of Autun") with a map at the beginning of the PDF available under Pour en savoir plus "Archeology in Bourgogne: L'enceinte monumentale d'Augustodunum (Autun 71)"
- ↑ Dissertation Serexhe (see web links), Text-PDF, p. 14
- ↑ Dissertation Serexhe (see web links), Text-PDF, pp. 233/234 ff.
- ↑ Dissertation Serexhe (see web links), Text-PDF, pp. 69–70
- ↑ Dissertation Serexhe (see web links) - PDF images , Fig. 47 (= very last image), construction survey with vault plan 1903 by Gabriel Ruprich-Robert
- ↑ Dissertation Serexhe (see web links), Text-PDF, p. 71
- ↑ Willibald Sauerländer : The Sculpture of the Middle Ages , 1963, p. 62.
- ↑ Willibald Sauerländer : The Sculpture of the Middle Ages , 1963, p. 60.
- ↑ Le site sur l'Art Roman en Bourgogne: Autun - Cathédrale Saint-Lazare
- ↑ http://www.pascua.de/autun/autun-start.htm
- ↑ More information about the organ
Web links
- French website with lots of photos
- Franz-Bernhard Serexhe (dissertation, 2005): Studies on the architecture and building history of the Saint-Lazare cathedral in Autun
Coordinates: 46 ° 56 ′ 42.2 " N , 4 ° 17 ′ 57.5" E