Papal Palace (Avignon)

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Front facade with main entrance gate
Ehrenhof, looking towards the main entrance

The Papal Palace in Avignon ( French: Palais des papes = Palace of the Popes ) was the residence of various popes and counter-popes between 1335 and 1430. The palace and the old town of Avignon are part of the world heritage . It is one of the largest and most important medieval Gothic buildings in Europe. The courtyard of the palace has been awarded the European Heritage Label by the French state .

history

The often celebrated Rhone Bridge , Notre Dame Cathedral , Papal Palace
Cloister

Avignon was a contemplative provincial city when it became a center of the world public from 1309 through the Avignon papacy . As a result, the appearance of the city changed radically and quickly. The mighty palace complex was built in two construction phases. At first glance it looks like a fortress, inside it looks more like a castle.

prehistory

1304 was Pope Benedict XI. died after a short pontificate, and the French King Philip the Fair wanted to turn the papacy into a personal instrument of power. The French influence in the College of Cardinals was very great at that time, and so the Archbishop of Bordeaux was elected as Pope Clement V in 1305, who did not appear in Rome for his consecration, i.e. for his liturgical consecration, but stayed in France and in Lyon was crowned. Although this city was nominally part of the empire, it was already under French influence at that time. Clemens repeatedly expressed his will to move to Italy, but stayed only in central and southern France for health and political reasons. In the search for a worthy residence, Avignon was chosen shortly afterwards and made it the “biggest construction site of the century”. Avignon was in the possession of the Count of Provence , who as King of Naples was also the vassal of the Pope, the Comtat Venaissin east of the city had fallen to the Pope as early as 1271.

However, Clement V only resided temporarily in Avignon and lived in the Dominican convent . His successor was the 72-year-old Pope John XXII. who had been bishop of Avignon from 1310 to 1312 and raised the incumbent bishop, his nephews , to cardinal and administrator of the diocese, and who after his pompous coronation in Lyons settled in the episcopal palace, which he had expanded and enlarged. This palace stood on a slope south of Notre-Dame-des-Doms Cathedral .

Building history

Papal Palace with Avignon city wall

Despite the improvements, this “permanent home” appeared to Pope Benedict XII. insufficient. He bought it, had it torn down and, in its place, built a four-wing palace from 1335 onwards by his master builder Pierre Poisson . This part is known today as the old palace, or Palais-vieux .

His successor Pope Clement VI. added the great structures known as the New Palace or Palais-neuf to the south and west . Its architect was Jean de Louvres and its best-known painter Matteo Giovanelli from Viterbo . As a result of the expansions carried out from 1342, the size of the palace was doubled.

Pope Innocent VI completed and secured the work of Clemens VI. after 1352. During his pontificate from 1362 to 1370 Urban V had the "Roma" built in the gardens to the east of the palace. Pope Gregory XI. finally dealt mainly with the return of the Holy See to Rome, which first took place in 1376.

During the French Revolution , part of the palace was converted into barracks and assigned to the pioneers. Between 1881 and 1900 there was an infantry regiment in what was now called “Caserne Duprat” after General Jean Étienne Benoît Duprat .

Architecture and equipment

Layout
Audience hall
Chapel of St. Jean
Entrance gate, above it a short battlement with machicolations

The Papal Palace is divided into the Old Palace (built 1334-1342) and the New Palace (built 1342-1370). With around 15,000 m² of usable space, it is one of the largest feudal castles of its time. The whole system is very complicated with nested room systems.

The palace is clearly part of the architectural tradition of fortress construction. The massive, repellent facade shows numerous arrow slits in the characteristic cross shape. The horizontal opening served as a support for the heavy rifles, the vertical one for moving the gun barrel downwards onto the attackers. In the upper area there are large machicolations . The building site of the palace consists of massive rock. This was also not unimportant in the 13th century, because at that time there were numerous successful attempts to conquer a castle with the help of underground passages.

The inner courtyard of the New Palace, known as the courtyard, is so large that extensive artistic events can also be held without any problems. The building, which looks like a fortress on the outside, is clearly a castle on the inside, and according to the will of the Popes it should be. The halls inside are usually very large and, as a result of the destruction during the French Revolution , largely stripped of their once precious furniture. In 1810 the palace became a barracks , which meant the end of the remaining art treasures. Numerous frescoes were taken down and sold in fragments to antique dealers. The empty rooms are now poorly decorated with tapestries and portraits of the Pope.

The consistory hall is located on the level of the inner courtyard of the Old Palace and has a size of 34 × 10 meters. At the time of the schism, the highest tribunal of Christianity met in this hall . Furthermore, Birgitta was canonized by Sweden here and Cola di Rienzi condemned. The so-called Jesussaal connects the consistory with the papal tower. Papal correspondence was also kept in the sacristy. The chamber of the chamberlain with the vaults set into the floor is located directly below the Pope's room, the two floors are connected by a staircase. Another staircase leads down to the Great Treasury, the seat of the papal financial administration, as well as the actual vault on the second floor of the Papal Tower.

The Pope's dining room ( Grand Tinel ) on the upper floor of the Old Palace above the consistory has a large barrel vault made of wood, which was restored after a fire in 1413. It has a length of 48 meters and a width of 10 meters, which meant that a very large party could be fed princely. The fact that the dining room is the largest room in the palace is indicative of the situation of the Curia in the 14th century. On the north side of the dining room is the access to the kitchen ( Magna coquina ), which was built in 1342 in the newly built kitchen tower and impresses with a pyramid-shaped, 18-meter-high chimney.

There are several chapels in the Papal Palace, including the St-Jean Chapel. The medieval frescoes are partially preserved here. However, the frescoes were removed and sold up to a height of two meters. Only the higher area has been preserved. It was previously assumed that the frescoes in the vault were created by Simone Martini , who is known to have been in Avignon. In the meantime, however, there is a tendency to attribute it to his student Matteo Giovannetti .

From the point of view of art history , the so-called deer room, which was painted with secular hunting scenes in 1343, is one of the most important rooms. While the other halls were decorated exclusively with religious themes, the square-shaped room featured a profane theme that was very popular at the time: hunting in its various types - from falconry to hunting with dogs. The room got its name from a depiction on the west side of a hunting greyhound ripping a deer with its teeth. The north wall, on the other hand, is decorated with a fishing scene with four people grouped by a fish pond. The painter of these frescoes from 1343 is unknown.

The northern sacristy represents the transition to the New Palace, from here one led under Innocent VI. built bridge over the main courtyard, which was destroyed in the 19th century. The central room of this part of the building is the 52 × 19 meter large chapel ( Magna Capella ), which was built by Clemens VI at Whitsun 1351 . was inaugurated. Below is the audience hall ( Audientia nova ), which is lower and divided by 5 pillars, where the papal court met. Noteworthy is a fresco completed by Matteo Giovannetti in 1353 depicting twenty prophets, kings, and patriarchs of the Old Testament. Access to the Great Chapel was via a two-part, elongated staircase and the Magna Porta , which was badly damaged during the Revolution and in the 19th century. From the reconstructed window at the end of the staircase, the Pope gave his blessing to the faithful gathered in the courtyard.

Popes who resided in the palace

  1. Benedict XII. (1334–1342)
  2. Clement VI. (1342-1352)
  3. Innocent VI. (1352-1362)
  4. Urban V. , the lucky one (1362-1370)
  5. Gregory XI. (1370-1378)
  6. Clement VII (Pope of Avignon obedience, 1378-1394)
  7. Benedict XIII. , "Papa Luna" (Pope of Avignon obedience, in Avignon from 1394 to 1408)

Exhibitions in the Palais des papes

Since 1947 exhibitions can be seen regularly in the Papal Palace. The tradition was founded by the art critic Christian Zervos and the poet René Char , who organized an exhibition and exhibition in the Papal Palace in 1947. a. organized by Henri Matisse , Pablo Picasso , Georges Braque and Piet Mondrian . Since then, around two exhibitions by Picasso (1970 and 1973) or, more recently, the extensive exhibition “La beauté in fabula” (2000) and a solo exhibition by Miquel Barcelós (2010) have been shown. In 2014, Stefan Szczesny's retrospective was shown.

See also

literature

  • Georges Duby : The time of the cathedrals. Art and Society 980–1420. Frankfurt am Main 1992, 2nd edition 1994, p. 455 ff.
  • Anne-Marie Hayez: Avignon. IV. Papal Palace . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 1, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1980, ISBN 3-7608-8901-8 , Sp. 1303.
  • Gottfried Kerscher: Architecture as Representation. Late medieval palace architecture between splendor and ceremonial requirements. Avignon - Mallorca - Papal States . Tübingen, Berlin 2000 (a standard work on the history of architecture).
  • Dominique Vingtain: Le Palais des papes d'Avignon. Arles, Éditions Honoré Clair, 2015. ISBN 9782918371229 (also available in English)

Web links

Commons : Papal Palace (Avignon)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Bernhard Schimmelpfennig, Das Papsttum. Basics of its history from antiquity to the Renaissance (Grundzüge 6) Darmstadt 1984, pp. 223–224.
  2. ↑ See “Szczesny. Métamorphoses méditerranéennes ”, p. 7 (preface by Cécile Helle)
  3. ↑ http://www.cairn.info/resume.php?ID_ARTICLE=LPM_002_0112

Coordinates: 43 ° 57 ′ 2.9 "  N , 4 ° 48 ′ 27"  E