St-Nicolas (Maillezais)
The parish church of Saint-Nicolas is a Romanesque monument in the middle of the village of Maillezais ( Département Vendée , Région Pays de la Loire , on the banks of the Jeune Autise ). In the course of the decline of church buildings, it suffered badly, but escaped major demolition efforts, such as those at Maillezais Abbey .
Extensive renovation and restoration took place towards the end of the 19th century.
Outer shape
The original cell and the oldest component is obviously the square crossing tower , with the character of a defensive tower , the side walls of which, due to the lack of a transept , are exposed and visible from the terrain level to the wall crowns, and which clearly tower above the ship (French: La nef) . Reaching around the corners of the tower, not to scale, thick supporting pillars are built, which reach almost to the height of the tower. On the outside in front of it there are still bundles of 4 to 6 round pillars attached, which should perhaps dampen the weight of the pillars a little. The crowns of the walls are finished with cantilevered cornices , above which the red “Roman” tiles of the gently sloping conical roof protrude a little and thus form a real eaves . This type of roofing and eaves formation are also used on the other roofs of the building. On both sides of the crossing there is a Romanesque window in the same shape, size and height as in the side aisles.
The choir extension is enclosed by two straight sides and the semicircular apse . Bundles of round pillars divide the outer wall of the choir into five almost equally wide sections, with three real windows and two blind windows on the sides. The fittings of the windows correspond to those of the facade . The roof shape consists of a combination of a piece of gable roof and half a conical roof, both of which are flat.
On the side walls of the nave you can recognize the pillars and the windows in between, the inner structure in five bays . After the third yoke there is an offset of the outer wall and the roof, outwards and upwards. This results in a widening of the aisles in yokes 4 and 5. The window fittings are again as in the facade. The roof shape is a gently sloping gable roof, from the facade to the crossing.
The square bell tower stands over the first yoke and is just as wide. It is divided in height into a basement level near the roof and an upper level with the bell room. Each side has three slender arcades , of which only the middle one is open as a sound hatch. Half-columns and cornices structure the four sides of the tower. The roof shape of the bell tower corresponds to that of the four tower, a flat inclined pyramid.
The glossy side of the church building is the facade (see next section)
facade
The facade looks largely the same today as it did when it was built. Their structures correspond to the Poitevinian tradition. About halfway up the facade, it divides a sweeping cornice that runs through everything , supported by carved corbels , into two storeys.
The five-step archivolt portal dominates the bottom center, flanked on both sides by smaller false portals with two archivolts each. The basement is divided vertically between and on the outside next to the portals by round columns and bordered, reaching from the column base to the capital under the cornice, but not in one piece. The columns are divided by their own fighter at the height of the fighters of the archivolt capitals . The upper section of the column tapers a little upwards. The arches of the archivolt portal are barely noticeably sharpened (French arcs brisées = broken arches) , somewhat clearer on the false portals.
On the upper floor there is a similar structure, a central slender arched window with two archivolts, supported on both sides by two round supports. It is accompanied on each side, but at a distance, by smaller false windows with a semicircular single archivolt. The remaining space up to the outer edge of the facade is filled by an “ ox eye ”, framed by smooth wedge stones, surrounded on the outside by a narrow, circular, slightly protruding edging profile.
Above this, the smooth facade tapers through the roof aisles to merge into the facade- flush structures of blind arcades of the square bell tower.
The extent of the figural decoration of the archivolts and robes is limited. Of the five archivolts only the inner one is figuratively fully sculpted and worked out with the highest quality. It's about the stringing together of birds of prey ( phoenix ?), In the claws oversized heads of people whose bodies bend and twist on the inside of the archivolt. Are the souls of people raised up? Each character is different from everyone else. The next four archivolts are only designed on the fronts and only very simply, with lengthwise round bars, recurring leaf motifs and simple geometric shapes such as waffle patterns.
The capitals on which the archivolts rest are again elaborately figured, with animal and human plastic, in extremely fine structures. The pillars of the vestments are simply smooth or spirally wound. On each side there is a “column made of human bodies”. Six acrobats in knee-length trousers pile up on top of each other on the shoulders of the lower one. You think you can see the tension on their faces.
The figurative decoration of the false portals is limited to a heavily weathered figure of a saint (halo) in a single blind arcade with a round arch, on the smooth background of the arched field. There are also figurative sculptures on the capitals and on the horizontal bands at warrior height, here there are people and birds, wrapped in plant tendrils. The parapets of the false portals are covered with square stone slabs in a diagonal cross connection .
The corbels under the cornice that divides the facade horizontally are all shaped differently. Mostly human and animal heads are shown, with grim or funny faces, in the middle a couple of people embracing.
Interior
The church of Saint-Nicolas still has a completely Romanesque interior, without any reconstruction in the Gothic period. The nave has three aisles, with lowered aisles and five bays. The barrel vault and the arches are slightly sharpened, namely with the belts, yokes and the crossing, also with the triumphal arch to the choir. Only the windows are covered by round arches without kinks. The belt arches in the central nave have high and stepped cross-sections and make them appear very bulky. The stones of the arches alternate in the color nuances light with dark. The supports of the ship are rectangular and wide according to the wall thickness, and reinforced on the inside with bundles of three round pillars, on which the strong belt arches carry their loads. The archaic capitals can be classified as early Romanesque. There is no transept. The crossing is exposed directly through the side windows of the crossing outer wall. Further up above the triumphal arch there is a very tiny window and a dome with fanned trumpets. The choir is closed off in a semicircle and covered with a ribbed vault, the ribs of which, however, are of a heavy Romanesque style.
literature
- Thorsten Droste : Poitou. Western France between Poitiers and Angoulème - the Atlantic coast from the Loire to Gironde , pp. 139–142, Dumont Buchverlag, Cologne 1999, ISBN 3-7701-4456-2
Web links
Coordinates: 46 ° 22 ′ 16.3 " N , 0 ° 44 ′ 20.3" W.