St-Léon (Saint-Léon-sur-Vézère)
The parish church of Saint-Léon is located in the French village of Saint-Léon-sur-Vézère in the Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine , in the Dordogne department, about 20 km northwest of Sarlat , and 8 km southwest of the famous Lascaux cave , right on the banks of the Vézère . It is known as one of the most beautiful Romanesque churches in the Périgord .
history
Archaeological research in the church in the 1960s unearthed the foundations of Gallo-Roman buildings and pre-Christian burials. It was probably the remains of an ancient villa rustika .
In the early Romanesque era of the 10th century, the main nave was built without a stone vault.
The eastern assembly of the transept , the crossing tower , the apse and the two choir chapels date from the early Romanesque period of the 11th century.
In the 12th century a small priory was founded , the monks of which belonged to the Benedictine order , and which was documented in writing for the first time in 1153. The priory, the church of which became the priory church, was dependent on the diocese of Sarlat . One of its first bishops was the then prior of Saint-Léon, Guillaume de Sendreux. The former buildings of the monastery apparently did not survive the wars of religion in the 16th century and their devastation and were not rebuilt afterwards.
The church was badly damaged in a flood of the Vésère in 1961. The subsequent restorations restored the building in an exemplary manner in terms of monument preservation .
Building
Layout
Dimensions approx:
- Total length over all: 33.45 m
- Overall width overall (length of transept): 23.10 m
- Ship width: 13.60 m
- Ship length: 16.70 m
Outer shape
Main nave
The main nave from the pre-Romanesque period also indicates to the outside that it has no stone vaults and no subdivisions into yokes. There are no pillars on the rather high walls. Here, too, the only design elements are three windows with round arches on the long sides in the upper area, the main portal on the south side, and a smaller door on the north side. The west gable is pierced in the middle by a slightly larger window. Here the masonry extends a good two meters deeper, onto the embankment of the river bank, with a foundation that is stepped outwards.
The building corners of the ship, the immediate window environment and the lower area of the gable wall consist of large blocks that were precisely prepared by stonemasons and smoothed and neatly walled up on the visible sides. They reached into the wall surfaces, alternating in layers, sometimes more, sometimes less, so that a coherent bond could be created with the subsequent masonry. The precisely shaped and joined wedges of the doors and windows also testify to a high level of professionalism. The other wall surfaces are made of smaller rubble stones, mostly in continuous layers, but at varying heights. The stone formats have only been brought to the same height above and below with a simple cut, and the visible sides are roughly processed. On the gable wall facing the river you can see irregularities in the masonry structures or in the joint pattern, sometimes reaching very high. At one point, repairs to major damage caused by the collapse of parts of the wall, caused by floods or the effects of war, may have been necessary.
The gable roof of the ship is inclined relatively flat compared to the other roofs, and hipped on the gable side. This created an eaves on all sides, the roof overhang of which extends very far, with visible rafter heads. The roof of the ship is covered with red hollow tiles, in Roman format.
Transept, apses and crossing tower
The two transept arms and the choir are grouped around the square crossing, which rises up as a crossing tower in the same dimension, all of the same width. These four components meet on the two front corners on a vertical line. Since the eaves heights of the transept arms and the choir are the same, the eaves also meet on this line. The eaves heights also match that of the ship. They cover gable roofs, with hips over the gables. The choir and chapels have gable roofs with half-conical roof surfaces over the actual curves of the apse. The roof slopes are around 50 degrees.
The tower consists of a base whose narrow cantilevered cornice is surmounted by the roofs of the transept arms and the choir by around 50 cm. It is lengthened by two not very high storeys, which are divided from one another by a double-profiled cantilever cornice. The inside of the bell is in this area. On the lower storey, two slender, arched, covered window openings stand on the cornice on each side of the tower, with a three-sided edge offset and simply profiled transitions at the arch transition, which are similar to those within the crossing. On the same high floor above, the window openings stand up again on the cornice, but here there are three each, slightly smaller than the ones below. The three arches are lined up in an arcade shape and are separated from one another by slender cylindrical pairs of columns (one behind the other) with carved capitals. This shape indicates a later elevation of the tower by this floor. The spire is covered by a conical roof inclined at 50 degrees, the ridge of which is crowned by a stone Latin cross.
All roofs of this assembly are covered with heavy limestone slabs from the Périgord-Noir in a dark gray tint. The eaves formation initially consists of a layer of flat roof stone slabs that lie horizontally on the masonry crowns and protrude over the wall surface by around 15–20 cm. Above this, the sloping roof tiles of the roof cladding begin directly on the outer edges of the corbels.
The masonry of the walls is very similar to that of the ship. Here, too, the edges of the building and the window openings are bricked with large-format, smoothed blocks. There are also the rounded wall surfaces of the apses, which are made of masonry with large blocks of stone up to the windows. Above this, the layered masonry becomes smaller, as is the case on the flat surfaces of the transept. The walls of the tower show comparable masonry formants and associations.
The stone material for the whole structure probably comes from the same quarry. The colors of the red sandstone are predominantly light orange, but also nuances with beige and brownish tones.
Interior
Main nave
The main nave from the pre-Romanesque era impresses with its clear proportions of the simple hall without any division into naves and yokes . Its width is 12.85 meters, its length 15.20 meters and its clear height is a good 8.00 meters. The only accessories on the side walls are three windows with their round arches that almost hit the ceiling. Their garments are beveled on all sides. The main portal is on the south wall and a second but smaller door on the north wall. The western gable wall does not have a portal because the embankment of the bank of the Vésère connects there. This wall has only one window, somewhat larger and at the same height as the windows on the sides of the ship.
The masonry of the walls of the ship consists of rubble stones, prepared at right angles and roughly machined on the visible side, bricked up in layers of different heights, but which run through the walls at the same layer height. The window reveals and their flush wall edges are made of large natural stones, precisely trimmed and smoothed by the stonemason. The masonry surfaces have been coated with a translucent slurry in a light beige shade.
The ceiling of the ship consists of a horizontal layer of wooden beams placed on the side walls, on which a formwork made of wooden boards rests on the top. The wooden surfaces were glazed dark brown.
The floor is covered with red bricks, in the format of masonry bricks. The longitudinal axis of the ship is marked by an approximately 1.5 m wide strip of light gray, rectangular stones that extends to the front of the choir.
What the head of the ship looked like in the 10th century, neither the location nor the sources give any information. One could speculate that there was a choir apse in place of the later crossing.
The current structure of the front wall, the structural elements of which actually belong to the transept , looks a bit strange at first. The first thing that catches the eye are two massive pillar templates with a rectangular floor plan, which extend over the entire height of the room and are only a short distance from the walls of the ship, about the width of the pillar. A little narrower than the distance between the pillars is the arched, covered passage into the crossing , the apex of which extends almost a meter below the flat ceiling. The vertex height of the extremely slender passages from the ship to the transept arms, which are 70 cm wide, is much lower. The meaning of these strange slit-like openings is hard to explain.
Perhaps the builders of the 11th century, for whom the stone vaulting of church rooms was now standard, already thought that stone vaults would also be in prospect for the ship here one day. The relatively large span of the ship they found did not allow a barrel vault over the entire width. Again, it was too small to be divided into usable three ships. The builders therefore planned and implemented a transept with a total length and a crossing that would have made it possible to connect a new nave with a reasonable width of the central nave and two side aisles, all of which were vaulted with stone. The current slot diffusers are therefore probably temporary arrangements that would only have had to be expanded if a “more modern” nave was added. But that never happened.
Transept and apses
The ensemble of the eastern assembly, consisting of the transept, its three apses and the crossing tower, was created in the early Romanesque period and uses relatively few decorative elements.
The front wall and possibly the existing choir apse had to give way to the extension of the transept to the nave. The nave is 20.50 m long and 5.30 m wide. The crossing encloses a square measuring 5.70 × 5.70 m. Four massive pillars rise up in their corners, the cross-sections of which have rectangular cross-shaped shapes in the plan. Round arches stretch from pillar to pillar, on which the walls of the crossing tower rise. All transitions between wall pillars and the curves of the adjoining arches are only marked on the outside with slightly protruding, simply profiled transoms. This also applies to the arches of the chapels .
The transept arms are covered by barrel vaults in their longitudinal direction. The crossing is vaulted by a semi - dome with a diameter equal to the length of the inner square of the crossing. Four pendentives (hanging gussets) lead from the corners of the crossing to the higher circular edge of the dome. The nave is lit directly from a window in each of the gable walls of its arms.
The triumphal arch between the crossing and the choir has the same dimensions as the other crossing arches . The choir, including the semicircular apse, is 5.80 m wide and 7.90 m long. The first section is vaulted with a barrel, to which a vault in the form of a dome directly adjoins in the area of the apse curvature . The vault of the choir rises above a wreath of seven blind arches, which are supported on six slender cylindrical columns with carved capitals . These decorative elements could be a later ingredient. The only window in the center of the apse no longer has its originally smaller dimensions, but at least it is a round arch.
The chapels, which open towards the east in the transept arms, have a dimension of 3.80 × 4.50 m including their apses. They also have a barrel curvature and a spherical cap. However, there is no arcade decoration in it. Both chapels are connected to the choir by a doorway each. In the choir, as well as in the southern chapel, remains of Romanesque plaster paintings were uncovered, which are still brightly colored today.
literature
- DuMont art travel guide, Périgord and Atlantic coast, art and nature in the Dordogne valley and on the Côte d'Argent from Bordeaux to Biarritz, Thorsten Droste, 1989 edition, ISBN 3-7701-1197-4
- MICHELIN, The Green Guide, Périgord. Dordogne. Limousin, 2006
Web links
- photos
- Commune
- One of the most beautiful villages ... ( Memento from March 4, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
Coordinates: 45 ° 0 '35.3 " N , 1 ° 5' 17.3" E