Saint-Marcel Monastery (Saône)
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The Saint-Marcel monastery was an abbey in Saint-Marcel (Saône-et-Loire) . It is located just outside the gates of the Burgundian episcopal city of Chalon on the left bank of the Saône .
history
The market and the Saint-Marcel church are built on a former Gallo-Roman necropolis . The once to Cluny Abbey belonging Priory Saint-Marcel is to Marcellus , named a local saint of Burgundy, who. Had been martyred here in the year 179 n. Chr.
In honor of Marcellus, the Burgundian King Guntram I (532-592) built a first monastery with a basilica in 579 , which was later partially destroyed again by barbarian invasions . It was the first monastery in the Christian occident to celebrate the so-called laus perennis , the uninterrupted hymn of praise by the monks. It was liturgically performed by dividing the whole convent into three choirs, and one choir continuing the service when the previous one had finished its own. King Guntram was buried in this church in 592. Saint-Marcel had been a royal abbey since the 6th century.
It later became an episcopal monastery, then a count's abbey, and at times also a chapter of canons. After a temporary decline, the monastery fell to distant Anjou between 978 and 987 through the marriage of the landlady . Count Gottfried Graumantel von Anjou (940–987) married Adelaide von Chalon , the widow of Count Lambert von Chalon , for the second time in 978 . It is thanks to the influence of the Angevin count that the Saint-Marcel monastery was merged with the up-and-coming Abbey of Cluny .
In 988 the Cluniac order built a priory here and built the current parish church in the 12th century. At its peak, the priory is said to have numbered around 30 monks.
During the French Revolution , the convent buildings were irrevocably destroyed and the church was converted into a parish church.
architecture
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Of the simple Merovingian church building by King Guntram, only remains on the porch and on the side walls have survived. In 1434, Jean Roulin added the bell tower to the facade. The entrance portal with its columns received a new, more elaborate gable in the 17th century in the same style as the bell tower. Directly above the entrance is the Saint-Michel high chapel with wall paintings from the 13th and 14th centuries. Century. The left half of the facade collapsed in 1891 and was rebuilt four years later using stones from Comblanchien .
Upon entering the church, one comes across a modest entrance hall with a beautiful vaulted hall on the left.
The church interior is 56 m long and 18 m wide, measured at the height of the transept. The floor plan is relatively simple: the nave with lower sides is vaulted with Romanesque groin vaults, the two side aisles also have cross vaults. The transept is without a protrusion. This is followed by a flat choir room with a square floor plan; it is flanked by two apsidioles.
In this formation, the church essentially dates from the second half of the 12th century; Due to its austerity, it looks more like a Cistercian than a Cluniac building.
The north side of the church has been redesigned with the regular buttresses that support the structure.
The opposite, older side is completely different. Presumably, the cloister of the submerged priory followed directly here, in place of a supporting structure.
The former monastery buildings essentially comprised two large structures at right angles to one another. The narrow side of one bordered the choir of the church. Today only the so-called House of the Prior, at number 1 on Rue du Prieuré, remains. The gate at number 8 on the church square with its beautiful stone arcade represents the only remaining part of the priory entrance. In the 19th century, the community of the Sœurs de Saint-Joseph erected a new building here.
interior
The church decoration is limited to the capitals , which differ without exception. When walking through the aisle, one notices the so-called mayor's benches. The parish of Saint-Marcel once comprised five parishes. Five paintings hang on the side walls, two of which are monumental paintings by the painter François Devosge measuring 5 × 3 m.
The apsidioles in the choir contain on the left an altar, the retable of which depicts the life of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, on the right a carving in the Louis XVI style, and a pink marble altar.
The end of the choir is dominated by a marble base with a large group of angels by the sculptor Boichot from Chalon, erected around 1770. The two angels, one more feminine and the other more masculine, support a gilded wooden shrine with the Relics of Saint Marcellus and Saint Agricola, the Bishop of Chalon. The choir stalls and other carvings complete the choir ensemble.
At the back of the church, in the right aisle, is the chapel of St. Marcellus, where, apart from the statue of the saint, you can see a replica of the fountain in which he died. On the chapel walls there are also two portable reliquaries of Saints Marcellus and Agricola, and above the altar the former coats of arms of the priory, with a wood carving (deposition of the cross).
On the wall of the right aisle there is a stone slab, which was probably only attached after the French Revolution and commemorates the death of Peter Abelard in Saint-Marcel.
Peter Abelard in Saint-Marcel
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After Peter Abelard was condemned to silence and imprisonment in a monastery by Pope Innocent II on May 25, 1141 as a result of the Council of Sens on July 16 of the same year, the Grand Abbot of Cluny, Petrus Venerabilis , generously granted the humiliated philosopher in Cluny asylum.
In the late autumn of 1141 Abelard's health deteriorated. Although Petrus Venerabilis had the largest and most modern infirmarium (hospital) of his time there, which he had personally built around 1132 and which - as his statutes can be seen - he managed with great care and excellent medical expertise, he left Abelard in his last days not in this place, but spent it in Saint-Marcel, “because of the mild climate, which surpasses almost all other parts of our Burgundy”.
For Abelard, the priory on the Saône was also a piece of home. He had previously taught for a few years at the Saint-Hilaire church, which belonged to the Saint-Marcel monastery near Paris. In addition, Count Gottfried Graumantel, who once reformed this priory and gifted it with codices from the Loire School, also had the Donjon of Le Pallet , in whose shadow Abelard was born, built.
Abelard took up his studies again in Saint-Marcel and “read, wrote and dictated” as long as he could, but then he lost his strength and died on April 21, 1142. Petrus Venerabilis could not visit Abelard on his deathbed because he was in Spain at the time. The monks of Saint-Marcel buried Abelard on the spot, probably with all the honors due to an abbot.
But the dead Abelard should not remain in Saint-Marcel. In November of the same or the following year, Petrus Venerabilis had the body lifted from its tomb and personally transferred it to the Paraklet monastery near Nogent-sur-Seine . The second burial there took place on November 16. Abelard's body was buried in a new crypt and sarcophagus in the Petit Moustier chapel, presumably on the spot where Abelard's first oratory had once stood.
In 1708, the Benedictines Dom Durand and Dom Martène reported a beautiful Abelard cenotaph on the broad right side of the church, with a so-called Gisant , a reclining figure of the dead philosopher in the robe of a monk. According to the monks, the cenotaph is said to have adorned Abelard's grave in the chapel of the infirmary, and later it was moved to the main church. During the French Revolution, the stone coffin fell into the hands of the physician Boysset from Chalon-sur-Saône. By order of Alexandre Lenoir , it was brought to Paris in 1800 and later integrated with the couple's remains in the mausoleum, which is still located in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
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Nothing original remains in Saint-Marcel that could be associated with Abelard's grave. After all, some parts of the church still come from his time: The porch and sections at the base of the masonry, into which Abelard's cenotaph was last integrated. In honor of Peter Abelard, an epitaph with the following wording can be found on a stone slab, which was probably only installed after the French Revolution :
“Peter Abelard
Franke and monk of Cluny first lay here.
He died in 1142
and now rests with the nuns of Paraclete
in the Troyes area.
He was a man of excellent piety, famous for his writings
for his sharpness of mind, the weight of his reasoning and his He
was second to no rhetoric in any kind of science. "
Web links
- Saint-Marcel near Chalon-sur-Saône. Archived from the original on February 18, 2009 ; accessed on April 21, 2017 .
- Werner Robl: Heloïsa and Abelard: A life between reason and love. Retrieved April 21, 2017 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Jacques Baudoin: Grand livre des saints: culte et iconographie en Occident . Editions Creer, Nonette 2006, ISBN 978-2-84819-041-9 , pp. 519 , col. Paragraph 353 (French, Google Books ).
Coordinates: 46 ° 46 ′ 18.4 " N , 4 ° 53 ′ 49.4" E