St-Etienne (Vignory)
Saint-Étienne in Vignory in the Haute-Marne department is one of the most important Romanesque religious buildings of the 11th century in upper Champagne and a stop on the Camino de Santiago .
history
At the beginning of the 11th century, Guy I of Vignory founded a first church at the foot of his castle, to which he joined a collegial monastery in 1032. His son Roger I enlarged the church and donated it to the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Bénigne in Dijon before 1049 . The consecration of the new building is to be dated on May 25 between 1051 and 1057. In the 12th century the north tower was raised, in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries several small modifications and additions were made, through which the Romanesque character was only slightly changed. In the following centuries the church was only poorly maintained. The monastery was finally closed during the French Revolution. A first thorough restoration was carried out between 1874 and 1863 by Émile Boeswillwald , a pupil of Viollet-le-Duc .
Building
The church is an arched, transeptless, three-nave pillar basilica with ambulatory and chapel wreath, essentially from the first half of the 11th century. The central nave is divided into three parts in the high wall: above the arcades on pillars are false galleries (their arcades do not open to walk-in galleries , but to the side aisles) consisting of double arcades on columns with differently designed capitals and transom panels, above the upper aisles. This structure serves to "dismantle" the wall and is preformative for the French Gothic. Comparable are the abbey churches of Saint Rémi in Reims and Montier-en-Der , both in Champagne. The similarity to the later abbey church of Sant'Antimo in Tuscany is striking, affecting both the ground plan and the elevation as well as the exterior. Such false galleries are only known from the Church of Notre-Dame de Châtel-Montagne in the Auvergne region.
In the last yoke in front of the choir, the pillars in the side aisle arcades are round like those in the dummy galleries. The arched nave is not flat, but opens up to the roof structure. This seems to have been designed in this way already in the original building, as arcade windows open to the fore choir above the triumphal arch supported by pillars with half-columns, above which a double arcade lies at the height of the roof truss. The apse in the choir and the ambulatory with three radial chapels are vaulted, narrow arcades open up to the walkway over slim pillars alternating between square and round. In the vestibule (without false galleries), higher arcades on square pillars with columns open to the side aisles. Small pillars can also be found in the window openings of the ambulatory and the aisles in front of the choir. The walls below these windows are structured by blind arcades with free-standing columns. This, too, is preformative for the dissolution of the wall in the Gothic.
Elevation, graphic 1857, false galleries
Wall elevation, graphic 1857
Central nave from choir
Common choir
Renaissance chapel
Furnishing
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Of the furnishings, a number of late Gothic sculptures should be mentioned in particular, which can be assigned to a South Champagnesque, Burgundian-colored reredos workshop of the 2nd and 3rd decades of the 15th century.
Web links
Coordinates: 48 ° 16 ′ 39.5 ″ N , 5 ° 6 ′ 17.5 ″ E