Saint-Germain d'Auxerre
The former Saint-Germain d'Auxerre Abbey is located north of Auxerre city center . It was founded by Bishop Germanus von Auxerre , who provided his family's land outside the city walls of the time for the plant and also furnished them with land to ensure their existence.
Building history
The first building of the monastery was a simple chapel, which was intended to house the relics of the martyr Mauritius and his companions from the Thebaic Legion and was also dedicated to him. Germanus himself was buried there on October 1, 448.
At the beginning of the 6th century, the Merovingian Queen Chrodechild , the wife of King Clovis I , had the chapel expanded into a basilica . During the Carolingian era , the grave basilica of Germanus was expanded to become an abbey under royal protection. The healing of Count Konrad from the family of the Burgundian Guelphs , brother-in-law of Ludwig the Pious , from an eye disease in 840 prompted him to commission a new building for the basilica: construction began in 841, in 857 the crypt was largely finished, and in 860 Germanus' bones, which had been relocated twenty years earlier, were transferred to the new building. In 865 the new church was completed with the consecration of first the cryptae inferiores , then the cryptae superiores with a length of now more than 100 meters.
Fires in the 11th and 12th centuries required extensive renovation work on the nave in the second half of the 12th century; only the southern tower of the Romanesque double tower facade has been preserved. In 1277 the abbot Jean de Joceval (1241–1277) commissioned a new Gothic building, which was worked on until 1398 without being completed.
Current condition
The monastery was partially destroyed by Huguenots in 1567 , secularized in 1810 and partially demolished the following year. The nave was reduced to its Gothic parts, to which a neo-Gothic facade was added in 1817 : As a result of this measure, the south tower that has been preserved now has no connection to the basilica.
The Musée-Abbaye Saint-Germain is now on the site of the abbey . The Musée d'Art et d'Histoire d'Auxerre , which had almost 41,000 visitors in 2015. It was one of the ten most visited tourist destinations in the Yonne department .
In the extensive multi-storey crypt complex you can see the oldest known wall paintings in France - from around 850. They were only discovered in 1927. They show u. a. the capture of St. Stephanus in clearly primeval-archaic forms.
Because of the sloping terrain, the church is equipped in the east with several crypts one above the other, which represent the most important complex of Carolingian architecture in France. This church lives from the history of the various previous buildings, the meaning and appearance of which, apart from the crypts, is controversial.
Abbots
- Hugo Abbas († 886), abbot since 853
- Lothar († 865), son of Charles the Bald ( Carolingian )
- Richard the judge († 921), lay abbot , Duke of Burgundy
- Guillaume de Grimoard, 1352ff., From 1362 Pope Urban V.
- Louis I. de Lorraine-Guise
literature
- Otto Demus: Romanesque wall painting . Recordings by Max Hirmer . Munich 1968.
Web links
- Official website of the Abbey of Saint-Germain d'Auxerre (French)
- Musée Saint-Germain website (French)
- Saint-Germain d'Auxerre Abbey. In: arch INFORM . (description of art history)
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Agence de Developpement Touristique de l'Yonne in Bourgogne: Les site et monuments de l'Yonne. Self-published, Auxerre 2016, p. 2 ( PDF ; 772 kB).
Coordinates: 47 ° 48 ′ 1.6 ″ N , 3 ° 34 ′ 23 ″ E