medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
You might not be interested in this, but it has to do with that big ruin we
saw outside Tours, that I said was the major monastery of St. Martin. This
guy is sort of an expert on the whole thing.
:)
-----Original Message-----
From: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
[mailto:[log in to unmask]]On Behalf Of Christopher
Crockett
Sent: Friday, December 7, 2001 1:49 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [M-R] Marmoutier [<saints of the day 7. December]
medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
"John B. Wickstrom" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>I happened on the ruins of Marmoutier recently,
Dang!
yet another place i always intended to visit.
>....lots of "huge" ruins out back; they were very interesting and seemed to
be in a state of ongoing reconstruction though without a lot of activity.
well, the place *is* in France, after all.
Standard Operating Proceedure for the M.H., sounds like to me.
>Anyone know anything about this?
i hope so.
*very* important place, esp. for that region --there were a dozen or so MM
priories in the diocese of Chartres alone, some of which survive, some not.
St. Martin (now, i meant to mention, St. Brice) of Chartres is a *very* big
building and, i've always suspected --on no evidence whatever-- that it was
reflective of the Mother Abbey, with curious double columns in the hemicycle
(decorated with what i take to be "typically" Marmoutier sculptures), a
"Benedictine Plan" of radiating chapels off of a rather broad ambulatory,
blind arcading in the second storey of the choir, but only the remains of
some
kind of work at that level in the vast nave --plenty of wall space for
painting all around the place.
quite a number of the 11th c. (from the 1020's on) charters of the MM
priories
have survived in the A.D. in Chartres (they actually survived, in apparently
massive numbers, at MM itself and were transferred to Chartres --and the
other
chef-lieux-- after the revolution, when the departemental archives system
was
set up).
i found them to have a quite remarkable uniformity to them, their
"manufacture" --parchment preparation, ink, palaeography-- and their format
--almost all of them were originally folded into little "packets" of 3-5
inches square or oblong, usually with the "endorsement" on one of the
exposed
faces of the verso.
this "endorsement" (that *is* the right word, i believe?) almost always took
the form of having not just the "title" of the charter --what it dealt with
("Of Harduin Caput Ferri's gift of his woods at Nottonvilla")
--but also notice of to which "province" (don't know what else to call it)
the
priory belonged: "CARNOT" for Chartres, "BLES" for Blois, "CASTRODUN" [or
something like that] for Chateaudun, etc. these geographic titles were
frequently written in a quite beautiful, consistent, script, combining
majescules and abbreviations, with an almost epigraphic quality.
this latter, "geographic" part of the endorsement was, i assume, added to
facilitate the filing of the charters in the motherhouse's muniments armoire
(which, at the time of the dispersal of them, was said to contain
*thousands*
of charters).
and it was, very frequently, beautifully written under and within a more or
less elaborate single "arcade," made up of two columns --complete with bases
and foliate capitals-- supporting a single arch, frequently decorated with
some kind of rinceau motif. i don't know much about it at all, but these
decorations owed much to the Carolingian manuscript traditions of the
Touraine, i would suspect.
decoration, of any kind, is a great rarity amongst fiercely utilitarian
objects like charters, and these ones certainly stood out, modest though
theirs was.
one of the surviving (partially) priories is that of St.
Martin-de-Brethencourt, just outside the diocese/county of Chartres, not too
far from Dourdan.
a beautiful little church with a surviving nave and a very modest, but, in
its
own way, quite eloquent, little western portal, the latter sporting two
capitals decorated with more or less foliate motifs which are very
reminiscent
of the decorations to be found amongst the charter endorsements --or at
least,
so i thought at the time, having spent *hours* looking at them in the
archives....
all of which is to say, in an untypically round about way, that it seemed to
me that Marmoutier ran a pretty tight ship, and i'm sure that the the Mother
house had a tremendous influence in spreading her particular strains of
culture (of all sorts) throughout whatever regions her spawn could be found
--certainly in the Chartrain.
architecturally, i would suppose that there was always something of a
balance
struck in the construction of the priory buildings between the forms to be
seen at Mom's house and whatever Local traditions there might have been.
(of
course, in the early/mid 11th c., in that region, there weren't very much in
the way of local traditions, outside of the larger centers.)
we could do a *lot* worse than have some kind of more or less detailed
knowledge of *any*thing about that important place. and, it may be that
*some* of that knowledge might be carefully gleaned from a study of the
details of the surviving priories as much as in the excavation of the Mother
house her self.
i believe that this might be called, for lack of a better term, "The
Cistercian Method" of architectural reconstruction.
best from here,
christopher
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
**********************************************************************
To join the list, send the message: join medieval-religion YOUR NAME
to: [log in to unmask]
To send a message to the list, address it to:
[log in to unmask]
To leave the list, send the message: leave medieval-religion
to: [log in to unmask]
In order to report problems or to contact the list's owners, write to:
[log in to unmask]
For further information, visit our web site:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/medieval-religion.html
|