St-Nazaire (Corme-Royal)
St-Nazaire de Corme-Royal is a church building in the municipality of Corme-Royal in the Charente-Maritime department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region , about 15 km west of Saintes . In the middle of the village one comes across a gem of Romanesque art of Saintonge, the parish church of Saint-Nazaire and its Romanesque facade.
history
The area around Corme-Royal was already settled in prehistory and early history and in Gallo-Roman times.
The origin of the name Corme-Royal comes from the dependence of Cormes on the Abbaye aux Dames Saintes ( quartier du Roy = quarter of the king). The village was in the great forest of Vidre , which stretched as far as Pont-l'Abbé , and much of which belonged to Corme.
The Corme-Royal Priory is a foundation that subordinated it to the Benedictine Sisters of the Abbaye-des-Dames of Saintes as a subsidiary monastery. This priory was called "Maison des Champs" = "House of Fields" and was at the same time a hospice for the convalescence of sick monastery residents of Saintes. His chapel became the priory church and today's parish church of Saint-Nazaire. The eight-part ribbed vaults in the building section between the Romanesque east wing and the tower are a testimony to the Gothic and thus obviously to the 13th century. There are no known indications as to whether this is a replacement or the conversion of a predecessor. Corme-Royal had to endure the terrible attacks of the Hundred Years' War and the Wars of Religion , the violence and pillage of which destroyed values that could never be restored. The riots of the French Revolution also affected Corme, especially members of the monastery and the noble families. In the writing of a consultation from year 4 of the République , the place "Corme La Forest" = "Corme, in the forest" was named, in which the sale of buildings or their ruins as a national property for demolition is documented.
What remains of the former priory is a portal away from the church, the end of which is decorated with a coat of arms of the Abbess of Saintes, indicating its historical traces. The church from the 12th century had to endure many changes over the years. The facade is notable for the abundance and quality of its sculptures. It is considered to be one of the most beautiful in the Saintonge and was placed under monument protection in 1907.
Parish Church of Saint-Nazaire
The church belonged to the daughter priory of the Benedictine Sisters of Saintes. This fact gave those responsible enough funds to equip the facade with the most elaborate sculptures by the best stonemasons of the time.
Interior
Today's nave consists of a main nave and a north aisle. The total length is divided into seven yokes . There is neither a transept nor a choir with a recognizable change in spatial dimensions.
An offset in the floor plan and a change in the vault structures and their heights reveal a turning point in the style directions and in the chronological order of execution. The eastern construction section from yokes 4 to 7 can be classified towards the end of the Romanesque period. The main nave is vaulted by a tapered barrel, and apart from the walls, it is supported by profiled belt arches . The side aisle is covered by a simple four-part ribbed vault. The separation between the two naves consists of a thick partition wall with sharpened, profiled partition arches supported on the solid round supports.
The series of the aforementioned supports continues over yokes 3 to 1, with the partition wall and its pointed partition arches, at a slightly greater height and support width, up to the tower. This wider construction section is assigned to the early Gothic. The vaulting of both naves takes place at a greater height with eight-part cross rib vaults on rectangular floor plans, without any belt arch.
All structural elements, walls, vaults, belt arches and ribs are made of light-colored natural stone masonry. All window openings have smooth, slightly sloping reveals and pointed arches , except for the two round arched windows in the south wall of the Romanesque building section.
The stone baptismal font, created in the 18th century, and the corresponding copper lid with a cross have been classified as a monument historique since 1981. It has a three-tiered base on which a column carries the basin with a protruding edge and a relief as decoration.
Outer shape
In keeping with the simple, barely differentiated floor plan, the nave has a gently sloping gable roof that covers all the components. The huge tower with the famous facade stands in the southeast corner of the square of the acacias, which is enclosed on three sides by closed buildings. From there you can only see him and a small corner of the north aisle of the church.
The tower, which is square in plan, is centered on the width of the main nave. At the height of the two storeys of its façade, it has been "artificially" widened towards the south in order to accommodate the façade extension and structure that is customary in the Romanesque Saintonge. However, this means that in the overall view the upper floors of the tower are not arranged centrally above the facade.
Above the two storeys of the façade, which looks even wider thanks to the supporting struts, there is a storey without any internal structure in smooth, unstructured natural stone block masonry. Above that, the square floor plan tapers off considerably, due to a setback with a cover that is strongly inclined towards the outside. The uppermost section of the tower, which then begins, is equipped with two pillar templates on each corner, which are then twisted upwards and dissolved into thinner, pointed turrets, which are crowned with sculptures and finials . In this last masonry section there is also a horizontal, narrow cornice that runs around all components , on which there are two slender sound hatches with round arches and profiled walls on each side. At the very top, with a little distance, sits a flat, baroque curved spire , which is covered with gray shingles .
West facade
Saint-Nazaire owes its art-historical status to its Romanesque facade.
structure
The rough structure corresponds to the scheme of two floors, which is in turn divided vertically into three sections in the Romanesque architecture of the Saintonge. The ground floor is slightly higher than the upper floor. The middle vertical section is significantly wider than the flanking sections, roughly in a 2: 1 ratio. The level of the church floor is hardly higher than a step above the square.
The horizontal subdivision of the floors is marked by a narrow strip of cornice. The upper end of the upper floor has in the side panels a strongly projecting cornice on corbels , with which the capitals of the columns are more than covered. The middle field is spanned by a large archivolt across the entire width of the field. The vertical division is carried out on both sides of the portal on the ground floor by powerful round columns protruding more than half the cross-section and rectangular pillar templates in front of the facade corner. On the upper floor, considerably narrower pairs of round columns divide the facade fields.
The center of the ground floor is a four-step archivolt portal, without an arched bend and without a tympanum , which completely fills the width between the columns. The outer fields are filled in by blind portals with single-level archivolts with pointed arches.
The two-tier, slender archivolt window with round arches extends almost to below the large archivolt arch of the central field and fills the field to about a third of the width of the field. The one-step archivolt blind windows completely fill the side fields.
Fine structure
Only the remaining gussets and remaining fields, which are not archivolt portals and windows and their blind variants, are made of smooth natural stone surfaces in block formation. The inner surfaces of the blind windows are also not structured, with the exception of the tympana on the ground floor, the two thick column shafts next to the main portal and the outer pillars.
The rest of the facade is ornamentally structured, but essentially sculpted figuratively. In terms of the scope and quality of the sculpture, there was no differentiation between the ground floor and the upper floor, which is close to the view, as usual. The archivolts or cornices on the upper floor are just as rich and delicate as those just above eye level on the first floor. At the top, the highlights of the facade are just as represented as below.
The column shafts of the double supports on the upper floor are overgrown with spiral ribbons, cross ribbons , elaborate leaf motifs, rosettes , tooth cuts and wider and very narrow fluting . Each of the eight supports and six archivolt supports on the upper floor has a different structure.
The "simpler" motifs include the plastic processing of the visible surfaces of the cornices or similar components made of strips with plant structures. They are so deep and sculptural that one suspects there are cavities behind the tendrils.
The corbels under the cornices are designed as three-dimensional sculptures of animals, mythical creatures and caricatures , for example the bodies of birds with a human face and a crown on their heads. The crowning glory under the cornices is that above the main portal with reclining human figures, although they are depicted standing, similar to the archivolt arches with a tangential arrangement. The bodies are excessively elongated and so fit onto the cornice. In the Gothic there are similar elongations, for example in portal sculptures.
The main portal has four archivolts on the front. The inner archivolt is adorned with eleven reliefs in the shape of a circular ring , each with an angel with outstretched wings and raised hands in a radial arrangement.
The following archivolt, designed as a relief, shows six people in a tangential arrangement. The two lower ones can be identified as monks, immediately recognizable by their tonsure. They hold sticks in their hands with the ends bent by 180 degrees, reaching from the floor to about chest height. The next two sculptures are probably bishops, recognizable by their representative crooks, reaching well above shoulder height. The top two people are badly weathered and cannot be classified. With one hand, both of them grasp a book that Christ (upper body) hands them with outstretched arms. The scene could perhaps mean: Christ hands over the doctrine (books, Old and New Testaments) to their mediators on earth, the priests of the clergy.
The third archivolt is adorned with fine leaf ornamentation. On the last archivolt you can see climbing plants, tendrils that curl up in pairs in a spiral, the gussets close leaves with jagged edges.
On the very outside and protruding over the fourth archivolt there is a narrow band depicting people striving upwards towards the center, accompanied by fine tendrils. The four lower figures stand on the shoulders of those who follow them. At the top of the head, next to the heads of the first persons, there is a small single head on the same scale.
The archivolt capitals are decorated with scenes from the animal world, especially with birds. The striker plates are exceptionally thick and their visible sides, like the cornices, are plant-based. Edged supporting bars with plant ornaments are set between the smooth round columns.
The two mock portals are very similar to one another. The front of the archivolt, the battlements, capitals and the ribbon under the tympanum all have floral ornaments, in delicate execution of the highest quality. Only one capital each, on the right, shows small groups of people. The two tympana each contain sculptures of a human couple. The figures are badly weathered and have no heads. The pair in the left tympanum is interpreted as a group of visits . The pair on the right cannot yet be interpreted.
The middle window has two archivolts and an additional outer cantilevered narrow band. All front sides, transoms and capitals have vegetable ornamentation. The same applies to the companions of the thin pairs of supports.
The large archivolt covers the entire middle field at a distance from the archivolt window. Here the theme of the "parable of the wise and foolish virgins" is presented, one of the most common in the Romanesque architecture of the Saintonge.
At the top of the arch the upper body of Christ, with outstretched arms pointing to the doors of heaven, the one on the right is open, the one on the left is closed. On his right side, four “wise virgins” with upright heads strive towards the open door. In one hand you carry a goblet-like vessel, an oil lamp in function, the other is raised as if in greeting. The top one has a circular nimbus .
On his left side are four "foolish virgins", their heads sorrowfully bowed and supported with one hand, the same vessel in the other hand, but hanging far down, as an indication that they have wasted the lamp oil and the lamp is empty .
From the outside, the large archivolt includes an additional cantilevered band with sculptures of animal fantasy figures, accompanied by tendrils and leaves. The capitals, their warriors and the pillars, once again show animal and vegetable sculpture.
The left archivolt blind window shows four people in a tangential arrangement on its forehead archivolt. To the left of the middle stands (almost lying) a man, his sword raised in his right hand and leaning against his shoulder, the left hand is angled downwards. He wears a breastplate with a wrap and a skirt that reaches just above his knees. His hairstyle is shoulder length. To the right of the center is a woman, both hands raised in a defensive gesture. Her bell-shaped skirt is tied above knee height and no longer reaches to her feet. The two people above are missing a piece of their brainshell above their forehead, or a head cover. But they bump against each other with their head stumps. At the bottom left is a woman in foot-length clothing, in her right hand a heavy hand tool with a long handle, such as an ax or a large hammer. She raises her left hand. Below right is another woman in foot-length clothing with a wooden spoked wheel in her hands. Curved tips protrude from the wheel rim. All persons do not wear shoes. It is very likely that the portrayed are martyrs who use gestures and accessories to demonstrate their manner of death. The spoked wheel is probably a torture instrument that was common in the Middle Ages .
The front of the right archivolt blind window presents another of the most common themes in the Romanesque architecture of the Saintonge. The "virtues" and the "vices". The four “virtues” are depicted as noble, self-confident personalities, two of them with helmets and lances, the others with shield and sword. At their feet, the “vices”, hardly human-like, more “crippled” people, with grimacing faces, twist and turn.
The largest sculpture on the western front is arranged above the two-storey facade, in the center of a smooth, unstructured, otherwise empty area . It is an upright angel in a foot-length garment and only with one wing outstretched. With his left hand, which points vertically upwards at hip height, he is holding an object between thumb and fingers that is no longer completely intact. Presumably it is the base of a goblet that the right hand seems to be pointing to. The figure is erected on a console under which two dogs have fanned out tails.
Corme-Royal, capitals and warriors main portal
Corme-Royal, double supports to the right of the archivolt window
Corme-Royal, cantilevered cornice and capitals above the upper floor
Corme-Royal, cornice over main portal and pillars
literature
- Thorsten Droste : Poitou, western France between Poitiers and Angoulême - the Atlantic coast from the Loire to the Gironde. DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-7701-4456-2 .
Web links
Coordinates: 45 ° 44 ′ 44 " N , 0 ° 48 ′ 41.5" W.