St-Trinit
St-Trinit is a former priory church on the outskirts of the small French community of Saint-Trinit , on the Plateau-d'Albion , between Sault and Revest-du-Bion in the Vaucluse department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region . The simple, stylish Romanesque church stands in a wide clearing that was reclaimed in the Middle Ages by the rulers of the d'Agoult family and the Benedictines of the Abbey of Saint-André de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon .
The church and the village were both named Sainte-Trinité in the first known documents of 1082 and 1118 . When and why the name was changed to Saint-Trinit , the sources give no information.
history
St-Trinit first appears in written sources in 1082. In that year the former Simonist Bishop of Gap , Ripert de Mévouillon , from one of the most powerful families of the Dauphiné , donated to Cluny Abbey all the lands inherited from his mother Percipia in the “Mountains of Albion, in the diocese of Sisteron, namely the lands of Labourette and von Vorze bounded by those of Barret, Ferrassières, Sainte-Trintè, Villesèche, Pierousse, Pétit and Redortiers ” Labouret and Vorze now make up the commune of Revest-du-Bion. In 1118 a bull from Pope Gelasius II confirmed the possession of the “ecclesia Trinitatis cum ipsa villa” , “the church and the village of Sainte-Trinité ”, of the Abbey of Saint-André de Villeneuve-lès-Avignon , which this priory up to Retained at the end of the 18th century. It should therefore be certain that the construction of today's church was initiated by the Benedictines of Mont Andaon , before 1118. Apparently it was never looked after by more than one monk, namely the prior himself. Sources give information about the location and extent of the convent buildings no Information. But they were probably on the south side of the church.
The completion of the oldest part of the Church of St-Trinit , the choir bay with the choir apse , is based on comparisons with other Romanesque buildings in the region, dated to the second quarter, at the latest to the mid-12th century, the nave in its earliest two-bay state only a few decades later, in the second half of the same century. A clear separating joint remained between the two construction phases inside and outside, which indicates a longer interruption of the construction work.
The ship once carried a carefully bricked barrel vault , of which the first layers on the north side are still preserved. The vault stood on relief arches of the blind arcades of the longitudinal walls and was supported by yoke-dividing belt arches that merged into wall pillars . Its beginnings were marked by ribbon friezes .
Towards the end of the 16th century, during the Huguenot Wars , the church was used as a fortress . The unpaved village ( villa ) Saint-Trinit was then subjected to marauding hordes that roamed the Albion plateau . It was decided in 1580 because of the "constant raids of the heretics of Montbrun and La Gabelle" to fortify the church so that it could serve as a refuge for the inhabitants. The transfer of the work to a bricklayer from Sablet at that time is known . He had to "put a high, strong parapet wall on the roof of the nave and two sentry boxes ..." . These facilities put so excessive strain on the affected parts of the building and were to prove disastrous to them a few decades later.
Before the middle of the 17th century, the vault and parts of the north wall apparently collapsed.
The current pointed arched barrel vault is a complete renovation from 1652. With the new vault, the outer buttresses of the south and north walls were also required. On the north wall, the bracing extends the entire length of the wall of the old ship.
In the same century, large parts of the south wall were raised, the window on the south side of the eastern yoke was repaired and the door in the western yoke was opened.
The clear inclination of the south wall, the younger buttresses and the cracks in the vault of the choir bay are still evidence of the rigors to which the monument was exposed. At that time, the original western gable wall had the openings of a central main portal and a window above it. The latter fell away with the later addition of another yoke and the demolition of the former west wall in the 18th or 19th century.
The church was listed as a Monument Historique on March 24, 1915 .
St-Trinit was extensively restored at the beginning of the eighties of the twentieth century.
Building
Dimensions, approximately, measured from the floor plan and extrapolated
Outside:
- Length over all: 21.70 m
- Length of the Romanesque section: 17.60 m
- Length × width choir bay: 6.80 × 7.70 m
- Length × width ship: 11.90 × 7.70 m
Inside:
- Total length: 1 length Schff 9.60 m
- Length of the Romanesque section: 15.70 m
- Length of ship: 11.30 m
- Width of the ship, without piers: 5.40 m
- Long × width choir bay: 4.70 × 4.70 m
- Width opening in Aposis: 3.40 m
- Depth choir apse: 2.40 m
Interior
The nave consists of two Romanesque yokes 2 and 3 in the east and a laterally added yoke 1 in the south, which has roughly the same shape and dimensions as the Romanesque yokes, but is slightly longer. Today all yokes are covered by pointed barrel vaults, which are slightly higher at the top than those of the original barrels.
The yokes are subdivided by right-angled, pointed belt arches that stand on pillars with almost the same cross-section. In the Romanesque yokes, the vaults and arches are marked by a cantilever cornice with the cross-section of a square rod that rests on a quarter-round rod. In the modern yoke, this is done by a cantilever profile, the visible edge of which is sloped downwards towards the wall and profiled several times. In the Romanesque part, the pillars are crowned by simple, capital-like stones, the smooth sides of which taper somewhat conically towards the bottom. In the western yoke, the capital-like stones simply protrude. The cantilevered cornices are led around these "capitals".
Large round arched blind arcade niches are embedded in the side walls of all yokes, the apex of which remains about half a meter below the cantilever cornices. Their depth corresponds roughly to the projection of the wall pillars. Their arch approaches are marked with fighter profiles. A round-arched arcade niche is sunk into the west wall, the arches of which are at the height of the cantilever cornices and are marked with transom profiles. This means that the apex of the round arch remains well below that of the pointed arch of the vault.
The ship is naturally lit through three windows. A small, slender, arched window is cut out in the south wall of the yoke 3 and extends just below the apex of the blind arcade. Its robes are widened inwards. In the south wall of yoke 2, the opening of the two-winged main portal is cut out, through which the believing lay people found entrance. The outer, narrower reveals surround a round-arched opening, the inner clearly wider ones surround a wider and higher segment-arched opening. In the axis of the west wall of the yoke 1, a large window with a flat segment arc and inwardly widened walls is cut out high above . Its parting does not reach all the way below the vertex of the blind arcade. A good distance below, almost at eye level, is a smaller window with sharp-edged reveals and a segmented arch.
A slightly sharpened triumphal arch separates the ship from the choir bay. Its arch approaches are about half a meter below the corbels of the ship, so that a good part of the arch field under the shield arch is still preserved. The arches are only marked on the reveal sides with classic transom profiles.
St-Trinit, nave, south wall, yokes 2 + 3
St-Trinit, nave, north wall, yokes 2 + 3
St-Trinit, nave, south wall, yokes 3-1
St-Trinit, choir from ship
The square choir yoke, the best preserved part of the church building, is covered by a monastery vault that rises on four straight cornices protruding far, the height of which is just above the apex of the triumphal arch. The edge of this arch on the choir side is profiled several times. On the other three sides of the choir bay, pointed, sharp-edged blind arches are arranged on the walls, in the same height and shape as the triumphal arch, which taper into the corners of the room and stand on carved capitals. The choir-side blind arch has a slender keystone at the apex, which protrudes over the upper and lower sides of the neighboring wedge stones.
In the south wall of the choir bay, near the south-western corner of the room, a rectangular portal is cut out, which was used solely as an entrance for the prior or spiritual guests. The inner reveal encloses a slightly larger opening than the outer one. Two round arched window openings recessed in the south wall illuminate the choir bay. The upper, smaller and slimmer one has inwardly widened walls, opens in the wall axis and is enclosed by a significantly larger blind arcade. Its sharp-edged, surface-flush, slightly profiled and semicircular wedge arch extends with its outer apex almost to below the large blind arcade. This stands freely on columns in wide setbacks from the wall, which are equipped with carved capitals, profiled fighters, bases and angular plinths. These lie on wall plinths that flank the steeply sloping window sill. A little below and offset slightly to the east from the wall axis is the second window opening, which is significantly larger than the first, the walls of which are slightly widened inwards.
St-Trinit, choir apse
St-Trinit, blind arcade in choir apse
St-Trinit, altar table
St-Trinit, window in the choir bay
The choir bay opens into the choir apse with a double, round-arched, sharp-edged arcade with a powerful circumferential wall offset. The wedge stones of the outer arch just touch the capitals under the pointed blind arcade arches. As with the triumphal arch, a crescent-shaped arch field is created, flush with the surface of the outer arcade. The arch approaches are marked on the soffits of the arcades by transom profiles. The inner arcade consists of rectangular pillars and a corresponding arch. Behind it begins the choir apse with the floor plan in the form of a half decagon, which is covered by a calotte in the form of a half dome , with the floor plan of a semicircle, at the level of the transom profiles of the entrance arcade. The dome rests on a low-bulk arcature made up of five narrow semicircular blind arches that stand on four sharp-edged pilasters that reach down to the floor, precisely axially in front of the edges of the half decagon. The two outer arches meet the inner entrance arcade. The pilasters are each crowned by a slightly protruding vegetable carved capital.
The choir apse, which is also the chancel, is illuminated by a slender, arched window that opens into the central arcade, the walls of which are widened inward, with a steeply sloping window sill. The inner edge of the window opening almost fills the upper half of the arcade.
Last but not least, the St-Trinit church is impressed by the perfection of its masonry. Outside and inside, it consists of medium-sized, finely grooved ashlar work of stone. Only the parts from the 17th to 19th centuries and the inner wall surfaces within the blind arcades are made of roughly hewn stones and not so carefully built. The same material was used for the smooth walls as well as for the sculptures, a soft limestone from the area. This makes the structure look very uniform. Here and there scratches appear and inside some stonemason's marks : on the north piers of the ship a “P” and a “V”; on the north pillar of the triumphal arch and on the outside of the eastern reveal of the portal into the choir bay an "A"; on the south wall of the choir bay a “P” and above the portal a roughly hewn wolf or fox; on the north wall of the same yoke an "M" on a sandstone block; finally in the choir apse in the first blind arcade on the north side, also on a sandstone block, the engraving of a strange monogram that cannot be interpreted with certainty, for example (M ... fecit?). On the outside of the choir apse, a stone at the level of the foundation carries a flat Latin cross in the axis of the apse window, which could be a consecration cross, if not the first stone consecrated when the foundation stone was laid.
Exterior
The exterior construction is particularly impressive because of the balance of its volumes, despite the more recent additions that unfortunately disfigure the ship.
It is dominated by the large cube of the choir bay, together with the choir bay the oldest part of the building. Even if its inner floor plan is square, the outer one is a rectangle that is just under a meter wider in north-south direction than in east-west direction. The eaves height is about 1.5 times the width of the south wall. It is about two meters above that of today's ship and about three meters above that of the original. The choir yoke is thus reminiscent of a somewhat squat tower. The high cloister vault is still housed here.
It is covered by a pyramid roof with an incline of about 20 degrees. The expansive eaves cornice consists of a wide profile, the visible edge of which is bevelled and decorated with a groove. Another, somewhat narrower, semicircular profile protrudes above it. The roof surfaces are covered with limestone slabs, as they were already known from the original building. The bottom rows lie on the edge of the eaves and protrude a little over it.
The top of the roof is crowned by a bell tower with a square floor plan, the base of which protrudes only briefly from the roof surfaces and presumably rises on the inside of the roof on the construction of the monastery vault above the choir bay. The base is completed by a simple, narrow cantilever profile. On top of it stand the four slightly rectangular walls of the turret, each pierced by a round arched sound arcade. In the south, east and north openings there is a bell that swings inwards and outwards. The bell in the western arcade is obviously missing. The tower is closed on the top by a simple cantilever profile, on which there is a smooth stone pyramid roof with a slope of about 30 degrees.
The massive structure of the choir bay only has openings on the south side, a door opening and two window openings. A good half a meter from the southwest corner is the entrance portal for the prior and occasionally for his spiritual brothers. A fairly wide, flush- fitting blind arcade surrounds the slender, rectangular portal opening with a semicircular wedge- shaped arch that stands on cantilevered, simple transom plates that lie on both sides of the wall ends, which, like the arch, end with strong setbacks. The transom plates are guided around the Keilstein arch as a cantilever profile. The setbacks are followed on the reverse side by a strip of brickwork that forms the actual reveal of the door opening. At the top it is made of wedge stones. The width of the inner wedge arch is slightly smaller than that of the outer. This and the two upper stones of the vertical reveal enclose a smooth tympanum that gently recedes .
In the axis of the upper half of the wall an almost slit-like arched window opening is cut out, which is surrounded at a generous distance by a blind arcade, which is decorated according to an ancient model. It consists of a wedge stone arch flush with the surface, which stands on two pillars in strong setbacks. The inside of the sharp-edged wedge arch is enclosed on the outside by a cantilevered frieze that is deeply decorated. The freestanding columns consist of fluted shafts, the one on the left is twisted in a spiral, of artfully carved capitals with fighter plates, the profiles of which are briefly drawn onto the wall surfaces, and of multi-profiled bases on angular plinths.
The second arched window is more simply decorated. Its opening area is significantly larger and slightly shifted from the axis to the east. Its vertex is about halfway up the wall. Its not particularly deep cladding is strongly flared outwards and rounded like a fillet.
In the wall surface immediately below this window there is a slit in the masonry running at an angle of about 20 degrees, which indicates that a roof was added here, possibly a protective roof over the entrance or one of the convent buildings.
The north face of the Chorjoch is completely closed. Its ashlar stones show strong, dark traces of weathering.
On the east wall of the choir bay, the five-sided choir apse is built on the plan of half a decagon. It also belongs to the oldest first phase of construction of the church. The width of the apse is a good meter smaller than that of the choir bay. Your eaves height is about two thirds that of the yoke. The four corners of the apse are emphasized by clearly protruding bare pilasters that extend from the base of the foundation to below the eaves. The upper area is soberly decorated with geometric motifs, such as fluting and tooth cuts. The rather far overhanging eaves cornice consists of a wide profile sloping on the underside with a full-width hollow. A row of stone slabs cantilever over it. Immediately under the cornice, the spaces between the pilasters protrude about 30 centimeters high, so that they are flush with the surface of the pilasters.
Half of the conical roof of the choir apse, with a slope of around 20 degrees, is covered with the same limestone slabs as the roof of the choir bay. The bottom row of the roof shingles protrudes slightly over the eaves. On the east wall of the choir bay you can see an incised contour above the current roof connection of the apse, which indicates that the roof of the apse once had a significantly steeper slope and thus a different course of the roof connection. But that doesn't have to mean that this was the original one.
The current nave is significantly larger than the original. Its south side gives an idea of the construction phases. The original nave was only added to the choir bay a few decades after the completion of the choir bay, but also in the 12th century, without external buttresses. A fairly wide joint can be seen above the fourth buttress. It indicates the long-term interruption of the work between the 1st and 2nd construction phase. The Romanesque nave reached from the significantly higher choir bay to roughly the western edge of the first belt arch of the vault. The stone material of the Romanesque section differs considerably from that of the addition of the first yoke from the 18th or 19th century.
On the south wall of yoke 3, a carved capital marks the original height of the eaves. Immediately above you can see a row of walled-in and chipped hollow bricks, almost the length of the Romanesque ship. That could be the remains of the former overhanging eaves, which were often made of such roof tiles, layered one on top of the other in several rows, each protruding from one another, with plenty of mortar. However, according to one source, the eaves cornice is said to have resembled that of the choir apse. Then, however, the walled-in hollow bricks cannot be explained. The roof of the Romanesque nave is said to have originally been covered with limestone shingles like those of the choir bay. The second and fourth buttresses of the Romanesque nave, both expansive, with a full-height rectangular cross-section, reach up to around two meters below today's eaves. Their outwardly sloping upper sides are covered with red hollow bricks. Its creation coincided with the renewal of the collapsed barrel vault with a sharpened barrel vault.
The elevation of the south wall of the Romanesque section of the nave consists of the same masonry as the walls of the first yoke, namely small-format, roughly hewn quarry and field stones with plaster removed over the protruding stones. One must conclude from this that the walling was also carried out in the 18th or 19th century. The first and third buttresses were raised along with the first yoke of the ship. They have significantly smaller cross-sections and heights than their neighbors and their projections taper from the bottom to the top and taper to zero.
There are two openings in the south wall, one of which is the arched, double-winged main portal with sharp-edged reveals, just next to the second buttress. The second belongs to the small, arched window with widened walls that is cut out just next to the fourth pillar.
The western gable wall is roughly plastered all over. Two windows arranged one above the other are cut out in its axis. The upper, larger one is covered by a flat segment arch. The lower one, which is much smaller, is almost rectangular. Both openings have sharp-edged reveals.
The north wall of the ship is completely closed again. The small-format broken and field stone masonry shows strong, dark traces of weathering here too. The reinforcement of the north wall of the Romanesque section with a buttress extending over the entire length, plus about half a meter, was also created with the renewal of the collapsed vault. This doubled the thickness of the north wall. At both ends of the reinforcement wall, wall pillars step forward a bit. The height of the reinforcement corresponds roughly to the height of the original north wall of the Romanesque nave. The outward sloping upper side is covered with red hollow bricks at the depth of the largest projection. Above that, the wall of the ship, which was built up afterwards, rises almost half a meter, which corresponds to the one on the south wall. On the north wall of the first yoke is the same buttress as on the opposite side of the ship.
The whole nave is now covered with a gently sloping gable roof, which is covered with red hollow tiles in Roman format, also known as monk-nun tiles. On the north side, the lower row of bricks only protrudes slightly and the rainwater drips off freely. On the south side there is an eaves overhang of almost half a meter, which is hidden on the underside by two rows of cantilevered inverted hollow bricks in the mortar bed. The rainwater is collected here in a semicircular rain gutter made of copper sheet to protect the masonry and drained off in a controlled manner.
decor
The sober architectural decor of St-Trinit , simple and dignified, is probably also due to the limited funds that were available to the priory. Nevertheless, that brought happy solutions. Today the modest jewelry is limited to the choir, the choir head and the choir yoke. Columns on bases with double covings flank the windows, those on the east side have smooth shafts, those on the south side with vertical and one with spirally twisted fluting. All have small Corinthian capitals with beautiful acanthus leaves grouped around rosettes with stone drill holes emphasizing the shadows.
The high pilasters of the choir apse have flat carved capitals, which generally occupy the lower and upper sections of the Corinthian Romanesque capital. Obviously, the sculptor used templates from classical Corinthian capitals and omitted the central register for reasons of space.
In the choir bay, only two of the four pointed arches of the blind arcades on the north and east sides are decorated with an antique frieze. You can see here that this jewelry has been arranged on the brighter illuminated sides. Here the deliberate thrift becomes clear. The arches rest on vividly decorated consoles. The northeastern one shows an atlas , a small crouched person with a fat head and bent knees. She bears the weight of the vault with her arms and head. The northwest is a badly weathered eagle with outspread wings. In the southeast you can see the front body of a bull and in the southwest - in the darkest section - a simple corbel is enough to carry the load. Undoubtedly, these are supposed to be the evangelist symbols, of which Mark's lion is missing.
The crescent-shaped tympanum over the entrance arches to the chancel is certainly a place of honor for the rectangular marble medallion , with the popular in high Provence motif of Agnus Dei , which holds with his right front paw a rod with a cross on the back, which to the Tatzenkreuz the Templars remind. His head is backed with a nimbus . Unfortunately, it is too high to be able to see it clearly without optical aid.
Other carved stones are distributed in various places in the building, for example in the choir apse, where a sketchy drawing of an inverted palmette can be seen, or on the north wall of the nave, where an archer and a small decorative frieze can be found in one Technique whose effect is emphasized by stone drill holes.
St-Trinit, Chorjoch, Gewölbekapitell, Atlant
St-Trinit, Chorjoch, vaulted capital, eagle
St-Trinit, choir yoke, vaulted capital, bull
St-Trinit, Chorjoch, vaulted capital, corbel
Comparisons and dating
The church of St-Trinit is one of a series of little-known but characteristic buildings of the high Provence. In these rural churches of mostly modest dimensions and furnishings, a dominant choir bay is inserted between a three-bay nave and a semicircular apse - with or without flattened corners - a kind of false transept square. It has a dome or, as here, a monastery vault and above it a small bell tower with four sound hatches and a pyramid roof, similar to those of Sénanque, St-Marcel in the Ardèche and in the region of Bagnols-sur-Cèse, St-Pierre-de-Castres, St-Martin-de-Jussan, St-Étienne in Sorts, St-Pierre in Vénéjean . Notre-Dame du Groseau in Malaucène, St-Gens in Beaucet, St-Michel-de-Provence, Carluc in Céreste, Noves, Aurel in the Drôme and others, all buildings from the mid-12th century, have the floor plan . In some even simpler structures - such as St-Pantaléon near Gordes and St-Sixe in Aubignan - this yoke simply vaults a transverse barrel. In all of these examples, including St-Trinit , the massive wall of the Chorjoch towers far higher than the nave and choir apse. They are all miniatures of the classic plan of the Romanesque cathedrals of the lower Rhone valley, the buildings with one nave, without a transept, in which the chancel in front of the apse is vaulted over a dome, which generally crowns a bell tower or an openwork domed tower. In rural priories, this part of the building developed along with monastic customs. Between the actual chancel, in which the priest celebrated the service, and the nave for the lay people, the monks attended the service in this choir bay. However, this was rarely possible with a priory composed of a single person, the prior.
The choir yoke of St-Trinit , which is surrounded by mighty walls , is covered by a monastery vault, which is rarely used in Provence, which is less common than the hemispherical dome. Rather, they can be compared to the domes with flattened corners on trumpets of the central Rhone Valley, such as those of St-Michel de La Garde-Adhémar , St-Marcel-lès-Sauzet , Mélas and Donzère . Nonetheless, this progressive construction method was used in the church of St-Blaise , in Arles in the mid-12th century and in St-Croix de Montmajour a few decades later. The floor plan of this remarkable chapel shows only the “baroque” further development of the floor plan type described above with two further apses on the sides of the choir bay, which are surmounted by a tower.
The building decor is also similar to other buildings from the middle of the 12th century. The pilasters in the choir apse are reminiscent of the choir head of St Symphorien in Caumont . Its small bare pilasters and blind arches that decorate the interior of the apse are from the second half of the 11th century in St-Saturnin in Apt and then from the beginning of the 12th century in St-Thyrse in Robion at Castellane (although there are no frieze capitals in both of them), towards the middle of the 12th century in St-Blaise de Bauzon , in Bollène and a little later in the Notre-Dame du Val des Nymphes chapel in Tricastin , where the pilasters do the work take on real pillars.
These various observations make it possible to assume that the second quarter or the middle of the 12th century at the latest was the construction time for the oldest part of the church, the choir yoke with its apse, while the nave in its earliest state was probably built a few decades later.
literature
- Thorsten Droste : Dauphiné and Haute-Provence. Discovery trips between the Rhône and the Alps, from Lyon to the Verdon Gorge . In: DuMont art travel guide . DuMont, Cologne 1992, ISBN 3-7701-2408-1 , p. 252-253 .
- Guy Barruol: Romanesque High Provence . Echter Verlag , Würzburg 1984, ISBN 3-429-00878-6 , p. 303-327 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Guy Barruol: p. 303
- ↑ a b c Guy Barruol: p. 327
- ↑ Guy Barruol: pp. 305, 307
- ↑ Guy Barruol: p. 308
- ↑ Guy Barruol: pp. 307-308
- ↑ Guy Barruol: p. 305
- ↑ Guy Barruol: p. 309
Web links
- Eglise paroissiale de la Trinité in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
Coordinates: 44 ° 6 ′ 11.7 " N , 5 ° 27 ′ 56" E