The inspiration for Cluny III

 

The other week I shared the link to a video about the great third abbey church at Cluny - known today for convenience as Cluny III - in my post Cluny

Medievalists.net has a short note which summarises research which discusses the origins of the architectural scheme as a heavenly revelation to the elderly Gunzo, who had retired to the abbey from being abbot of his own community, and who was formerly believed, due to a misreading of the source text, to be the architect of Cluny III. That honour now appears to belong to the Abbot, St Hugh the Great, who presided over the community from 1049 until his death in 1109.

The article, with a link to the more detailed article upon which it is based, can be seen at A Vision from Heaven: The Dream That Inspired Cluny’s Great Church

Cluny

 

A while back I posted Cluny Re-envisioned about the great Burgundian monastic church.

Now I have found a longer and more detailed video account from Easy Documentary about the building of Cluny III that is exceptionally interesting.

It looks in particular at the technology involved and developed by the community at Cluny to create this spectacular, and innovative  monastic church.in the late eleventh and early twelfth century.

The video, which utilises digital imagery interspersed with interviews with academics can be seen at Cluny Abbey: Building the Largest Church of the Middle Age - Full Documentary

My visit in 2014 was one of most memorable of my life, my interest originating in the fact that my home town had a Cluniac priory founded in 1090. Alas there is even less above ground - there than there is at Cluny, but I could recognise a number of distinct similarities at Cluny and at Paray. This is indicative of Cluniac style and shared design - the monks there anticipated group branding. My post about that visit can be seen at Cluny

I have also posted about the great Abbots who established the monastery at The Holy Abbots of Cluny and about the destruction of the church in A crime against Humanity

Unfortunately in these older posts the photographs have not downloaded, but I think the text is still of sufficient interest without the illustrations.

Cluny Re-envisioned

The other day the Internet presented me with a video which reconstructs Cluny III, the great eleventh century church that was the ultimate expression of the great Burgundian abbey. It was, of course, largely destroyed following the suppression of the Abbey during the French Revolution. If the creation of the great church at Cluny represent one of the apogees of French life and culture, then its destruction represents the nadir that was the Revolution.

The video uses excellent graphics and AI to present the awesome scale and grandeur of what was the largest church in Western Christendom until the rebuilding of Saint Peter’s in Rome in the sixteenth century. Watching it you feel that all that is now needed is the willpower to rebuild the Abbey as an act of reparation.

The video can be seen at Reconstitution de la maior ecclesia de Cluny, la plus grande église du Moyen-âge

Coming as I do from a town that had a Cluniac priory I have always been intrigued by the Cluniacs as a community and as a liturgical and cultural influence. In 2014 I had the good fortune, indeed privilege, of visiting Cluny. If the scale of its destruction appals, then the beauty of what remains confirms not just the wickedness of its demolition, but also the holiness of its creation.

The sound of medieval Cluny and Santiago

The excellent Danish based Medieval Histories site has an interesting piece about liturgical music at Cluny and at the Cluniac influenced cathedral and shrine at Santiago de Compostela which can be accessed at the following two links:

The Sound of the Maior Ecclesia of Cluny In 2010 a group of digital wizards recreated the Maior Ecclesia of Cluny. Now, another team has worked to reconstruct the soundscape. Read more.

Medieval Soundscape in Santiago de Compostela Can you recreate the medieval soundscape of cathedrals? An ingenious reconstruction of the acoustics in the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela shows the way   Read more.

St Maiolus of Cluny

John Dillon posted on the Medieval Religion discussion group the following piece about one of the Holy Abbots of Cluny - a monastic tradition which has always held a great interest for me, coming as I do from a town which once had a Cluniac priory:

Maiolus (in modern French: Maïeul, Mayeul) was the fourth abbot of Cluny.  Previously archdeacon of Mâcon, from 954 he was the coadjutor of Cluny's by then blind abbot Aymard, whom he succeeded in perhaps 963.  Both the abbey and its larger community flourished under his rule.  Maiolus traveled widely, reforming Benedictine houses in today's France, Germany, and Italy.  In 972 he was seized by Muslims from Africa who had settled in Provence, was wounded while defending one of his traveling companions, and was briefly held until he was ransomed at great expense (a letter from Maiolus appealing to Cluny for his ransom and describing his captors survives).  Maiolus died on this day in 994 at Cluny's priory in Souvigny (Allier) and was laid to rest in its church, now the église prieurale Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul.  His cult was immediate.  Maiolus' tomb at Souvigny quickly became a pilgrimage destination.  One of its earliest recorded visitors is St. Fulcramnus / Fulcrannus (d. 1006).  The first of Maiolus' numerous Vitae (BHL 5177-5185) was written by Cluniac monks by the end of the tenth century and went through several revisions.  Another was written in 1033 by Maiolus' immediate successor, St. Odilo of Cluny (d. 1049).


Some period-pertinent images of Maiolus of Cluny (or at least [item a] reasonably supposed to be of him):

a) as probably depicted in one of a pair of twelfth-century frescoes of sainted abbots in the chapelle des Moines at Berzé-la-Ville (Saône-et-Loire), a former dependency of Cluny:

 

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7340/9905525633_391874959e_b.jpg

 
The corresponding fresco is thought probably to depict St. Odilo:

 https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5529/9905518653_ace2929edf_b.jpg

b) as portrayed in one of two thirteenth-century gisants on his and St. Odilo's double tomb in the église prieurale Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul in Souvigny, shattered during the Revolution and recently reconstructed from surviving fragments (one doesn't know which figure represented Maiolus):

 

http://www.moulins-tourisme.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/stmayeulodilon3.jpg
 
That photo seems to be from the early 2000s.  As the reconstruction progressed the figures were filled in.  Some more recent views:

 

http://tinyurl.com/zeyvpnj
 
http://www.panoramio.com/photo/102473571

http://www.ipernity.com/doc/philippe_28/34920861

Two informative French-language articles on the double tomb and its reconstruction:
1) Pascale Chevalier, "Les Gisants des saints Abbés Mayeul et Odilon découverts à Souvigny", in Annie Regond et Pascale Chevalier, eds., Sculptures médiévales en Auvergne: création, disparition et réapparition (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaires Blaise Pascal, 2008, pp. 63-71):
http://tinyurl.com/zs6w7ua   [Google Books preview; scroll down to p. 63]
2) Pascale Chevalier et Arlette Maquet, "La fouille des tombeaux des saints abbés de Cluny, Mayeul et Odilon et les pèlerinages à Souvigny", Bulletin Monumental 162 (2004), 87-100:
http://www.persee.fr/doc/bulmo_0007-473x_2004_num_162_2_1601

c) as depicted in a mid-fifteenth-century painting (c.1440-1450) on a door of the monumental cabinet for his relics and those of St. Odilo in the église prieurale Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul in Souvigny:

http://tinyurl.com/zpol2gp
 
Distance view (Maiolus at left, Odilo at right):
http://www.veveri.it/img/maiolo/1.jpg
The reliquary as a whole:
http://www.ville-souvigny.com/Tourisme/Eglises_Retable_Armoire_Anglais.html

d) as depicted in two illuminations in a later fifteenth-century  Libellus missarum sancti Maioli (1465-1466; Chambéry, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 7, fols. 1r and 15r):
http://tinyurl.com/27ags4d
http://tinyurl.com/26vzv8g

e) as portrayed in a later fifteenth-century limestone reliquary bust (c. 1480; from the former priory of Souvigny dedicated to him in Veurdre [Allier]) in the Musée Anne de Beaujeu in Moulins:

http://tinyurl.com/gnnwnug

f) as depicted (scenes) in a set of eight early sixteenth-century frescoes (c. 1515; attributed to Bernardino Lanzani) in Pavia's formerly Cluniac basilica di San Salvatore:
http://tinyurl.com/oucxge
http://tinyurl.com/q7stnf
http://tinyurl.com/or58yv
http://tinyurl.com/r2vhlu

It is good to see the saint's tomb being reconstructed.

St Majolus of Cluny

Today is, I learn from the Medieval Religion discussion group, the feast day assigned to St Majolus (Mayeul) of Cluny, on eof the four great early abbots of that great and influential house. There is a good and detailed online life of him, including details of incidents that indicated his saintliness, here.

Cluny

From Paray we travelled back in the direction of Ars to visit Cluny and the remains of the abbey. When we were planning this pilgrimage I put in a plea that we should visit Cluny, and I think that was fully justified, and appreciated by the other members of the group.

I have long wanted to visit Cluny, as the medieval priory in my home town of Pontefract was a Cluniac foundation and I was also fascinated by the thought of the great church at Cluny - Cluny III as historians refer to it - built in the late eleventh and early twelfth century, and until St Peter's in Rome was rebuilt in the sixteenth century, the largest church in Christendom. A seminal building in terms of Cluniac art and of the art of the western church nine tenths of it was destroyed in the years from the 1790s until 1821, and only in the twentieth century was it been excavated and conserved. Rebuilding it might be an act of reparation by the French for the impieties (to put it mildly) and vandalism of the revolution.

This then was a particular treat for me, but no amount of anticipation or reading prepared for the scale of what Cluny once was, or indeed of the scale of systematic destruction of so great a building. You realise the scale when you stand in the remians of the narthex and look at the jambs of the west door.

The west end of the abbey 

The stone buildings on either side are the bases of the western towers of the narthex

The lefy jamb of the west door can be seen, and in the middle distance the surviving south transept

Image: panoramio


 

The fourteenth century rebuilding of the palace of Pope Gelasius II, who died at Cluny in 1119

This is the entrance to the site. The remains of the south wall of the narthex are on the left.

Image:guideoftravels.com

Today it is administered and cared for by the state and done so very well, with an excellent guide book shop ( not as common in France as England), an excellent 3D introductory film, displays of surviving sculpture, the actual remains - essentially the south transept - and the eighteenth century rebuilding of the conventual buildings, and the remains of the medieval Chapter House, plus more sculpture and the slab of the high altar in one of the former granaries of the abbey. modern tecnology is skillfully used to evoke the vanished building.

Cluny itself has streets of fine medieval houses, but we did not have time to explore these, or the medieval parish church. The last museum display we visited concentrates on the sculpture recovered from the excavations and is housed in lodgings built by one of the later medieval abbots. 

The interior of the south transept

Image:france-travel-info.com

The  scale of what survives is an indicator not only of the sheer size of the building, but also of its beauty and the skills involved in creating it, and the marvellous inventiveness of the design and the delight in God's creation which the monks celebrated in prayer and liturgy, in art and music.

The transept from the south east 

Image:france-travel-info.com

I think we all felt we needed longer to appreciate the place, and I would certainly hope to return on another occasion, and allow more time. Whilst raiding the bookshop - the euros were finally burning their way out of my pocket - I was delighted to find in a book on Cluniac houses across Europe ( a theme that is emphasised at Cluny and through associations and websites ) a page, and indeed a photograph, on the site of the priory at Pontefract, complete with the a contact address of a friend there.

A card model of Cluny you can buy to make up at the abbey - or via the Internet.

I did not get one, although I was tempted, but maybe a way of whiling away the winter evenings....

Image:shafe.co.uk

Unfortuntely we did not have time to stop to look at the abbey's Chapelle des Moines at Berzé-la-Ville, a few miles away - I did spot the building from the road as we drove past - which has wonderful examples of wall paintings from the time of St Hugh the Great, for whom it was a retreat from the life of the abbey. Another reason for returning to the area another year. There are expandable pictures of the Berzé paintings here.

Back at Ars we were entertained after dinner by some of our fellow guests at La Providence. They are from Tahiti and arrived yesterday; with their French priest they are on an extended pilgrimage that includes Rome, Fatima and Lourdes as well as Ars. They are easily distinguished by their  tee-shirts in flourescent orange or green. The young men and boys gave us a haka, being in the same tradition as the New Zealand Maoris, and one of the women, complete with a wreath of flowers in her hair, performed a traditional dance. This was followed by two of the sisters from La providence performing a traditional Vietnamese dance. Fortunaely we were not called upon to give a traditional English dance - our Morris dancing is simply not up to it.

Afterwards we walked down towards to watch a Rosary procession of Roma gipsies from the Monument de la Rencentre to the Basilica. With them were the sisters and assistants from the shrine, carrying loud speakers on the shoulder holders usually reserved for statues, and also the Bishop of Bellay-Ars. Afterwards we walked up to the monument for a final visit.

So here we were with Tahitians and Roma, not to mention Vietnamese, Germans and Americans in the heart of France - a very real reminder of the universality of the Church and of the appeal of St Jaen-Marie.

Paray-le-Monial

Today we visited Paray-le-Monial and Cluny, and I think they each deserve a post of their own.

We had heavy rain, or at least heard it beating on the roof of the basilicawhilst we were at Mass, and the morning was somehat damp, but still dry as we drove north-west to Paray.

The wonderful Cluniac priory church - now the Basilica of the Sacred Heart - dates, with the exception of the slightly earlier narthex left from the previous church and a fourteenth century rebuilding of the south transept chapel, dates from 1090-1110, the last years of St Hugh the Great as abbot of the mother house at Cluny, and when the great church there, Cluny III, was still under construction.

It is simply stunning as a building, the best preserved Cluniac church of its era and region. It is well maintained, but has lost most of its historic furnishings. Nonetheless very well worth visting as a place of prayer and as an insight into the culture of the Cluniac world. Looking at the east end with its connected apses and chapels one of our party decided it fulfilled the ideal of "noble simplicity", and that is indeed an excellent summary of that Cluniac vision. We did however point out to the Brother that he would not be able to fit it into his back garden in Headington were he to attept to build it at home.

The basilica at Paray-le-Monial from the west
On the right are the rebuilt monastic buildings from the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries

Image:louerchezsoi.wordpress

 

The apse, tower and north transept
The tower was faithfully restored its original design in the nineteenth century
The north transept door has exquisite carving around itImage:cmapspublic.ihmc.us

Noble simplicity - the apse and chevet of Paray le Monial

Image:jamesburge.co.uk

There is a series of more pictures of the basilica on the Art-Roman website here.  

The current dedication of the basilica is because of the because of events of the late seventeenth century at the Visitationist convent nearby where St Margaret Mary Alacoque received, reflected upon and promoted devotion to the  Sacred Heart. In this she was supported by her Jesuit spiritual director St Claude de la Colombière who is also enshrined in the town.

St Margaret Mary Alacoque

Image:intodayscatholicworld.com

We visited the Chapelle des Apparitions attached to the convent of the Visitation Order, so here too was a link to our visit to Annecy yesterday. The chapel is now essentially nineteenth century, and not especially attractive, but it contains the chasse of St Margaret Mary and a striking modern tabernacle in the form of the Sacred Heart - a little difficult to see at first, but an eminently suitable design for the chapel and its dedication.

The church that holds the body of St Claude is round the corner, but unfortunately was closed; Fr Jerome considers it a good example of twentieth century French ecclesiastical decor.

Further along the way we looked at the remians of the old church of St Nicholas  and the very handsome Hotel  Jayet, dating from the 1530s and once decorated with polychrome.

The Hotel Jayet

Image: Wikimedia

Paray is a very attractive town, what onw expects an old french town to be, with picturesque buildings and small local businesses. The sort of town you could imagine living in.

Stocking up with baguettes and brie we lunched in the gardens outside the west end of the basilica, and facing a tributory of the Loire, before having acoffee and back on to the mini-bus for our next visit, which was to be Cluny.

Solemn Evensong with the Ordinariate

Yesterday evening I attended the second of the Solemn Evensongs held at Blackfriars by the Oxford Ordinariate group. As last time this was well attended, the congregation including Ordinariate members, other relatively recent converts like myself, cradle Catholics and some who are still within the Church of England.

The service was to celebrate the feast of St Fridewide, and the form of service now has the Vatican recognitio, rather than using the version from the US Book of Common Order - thus the suffrage for The Queen was in its proper place.

The music was provided by The Newman Consort, the officiant was Mgr. Andrew Burnham and the preacher Dom Aidan Bellenger OSB, Abbot of Downside.

The collect was translated from the Sarum Missal as published in Antwerp in 1527, just before all the trouble began, and a worthy reminder of patrimony:

Almighty and eternal God, source of truth and lover of virginity, grant us, we beseech thee, that the merits of St Frideswide, thy virgin so pleasing to thee, may be as a commendation of us to thess whose life by its chastity gave to thee such satisfaction. Through Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and regneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Afterwards there was Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament, and with those two superb twelfth century hymns indicative of thec Benedictine, indeed Cluniac, spirituality of the age - Peter Abelard's O what their joy and their glory must be and Bernard of Cluny's Jerusalem the golden - and both translated by the incomparable, and Anglican, J.M.Neale.

This was an opportunity for the Anglican patrimony in the use of traditional language and choral music to be made available to the wider Catholic Church.

I have to say that I genuinely prefer the structure of Vespers to Evensong, which of course merges Vespers and Compline, and miss the antiphons to the psalms and canticles, but the combined effect of words, music and ceremonial was very conducive to prayerful reflection.

I am in such matters inclined to the view that patrimony is more about the way things are done rather than the specific forms of Anglican liturgy - that has, after all, been debatable territory since very early in the Oxford Movement - but that is in no way to fault what was offered last night.

Afterwards there was a reception in the Aula at Blackfriars and an opportunity to catch up with friends old and new, and the prospect of another such Evensong next term.

Cluniac art at Berzé-la-Ville

Regular readers will know that one of my continuing interests is in the Cluniac tradition. Today I was pointed by a post on the Medieval Religion discussion group to some pieces about the Cluniac priory of Berzé-la-Ville, near to Cluny, and noted for its spectacular, well preserved Romanesque wall paintings. They were rediscovered under whitewash in 1887. They appear to have been the work of Abbot St. Hugh (d.1109).

The chapel at Berzé-la-Ville

Image: vdbann'sphotostream on Flickr

There is an article about the paintings and their artistic inspiration here, and to mark the fact that today is the feast of St Lawrence here is the painting of his martyrdom from Berzé:

Image:www.artehistoria

Berzé gives us some idea of how the great church of Cluny and its daughter houses would have been decorated.

The Hand of St James

Today is the feast of St James the Great. In addition to the great pilgrimage centre of Santiago de Compostella there is also the English devotion to him centred on the Hand of St James from Reading Abbey.

The relic came to there from the Empress Matilda, daughter of the founder of the abbey, King Henry I. She had been married to the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V and following his death in 1125 Matilda returned to England bringing with her the relic of the hand, which hitherto had been part of the Imperial treasure.

Emperor Henry V and Matilda

Image: Wikipedia

The King had founded the abbey of the Virgin and St John in 1121 with Cluniac monks, and endowed it with a formidible collection of relics. The Empress presented the apostle's hand to Reading where it became the principal one, being that of an apostle, the brother of St John the co-patron and a link with the Cluniac inspired pilgrimage to Santiago. From the relic came the use of the shell as an heraldic symbol by the abbey and town of Reading.

The story of the relic and the unsuccessful attempts of the Emperor Frederick I to regain it from King Henry II are retold by the late Prof. Karl Leyser in a splendid essay reprinted in his Medieval Germany and her neighbours. For an excellent biography of the Empress I would recommend Marjorie Chibnell's 1991 Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English.

A reconstruction of Reading Abbey

Image:www.berkshirehistory.com/churches

The relic remained at Reading until the destruction of the abbey in 1539. There is more about the abbey on the website of the Friends of Reading Abbey. In 1786 workmen found what appears to be the holy hand in the ruins of the abbey - there is more about that here. The relic is now held at St Peter's Catholic church in Marlow.

The Holy Hand

Lewes Priory

Following on from my post referring to Lewes Priory in my piece about St Pancras Stephanie Mann of Supremacy and Survival has posted about the Priory, with links to the website of Lewes Priory Trust:


More on Lewes Priory

The post on St. Pancras led me to this site for the Lewes Priory Trust, which includes the illustration above (Illustration © Andy Gammon 2010) which depicts what it might have looked like. According to the site:

Lewes Priory was founded by William de Warenne and his wife Gundrada between 1078 and 1082 on the site of a Saxon church dedicated, like the Priory, to St Pancras. William was a leading Norman baron with extensive lands in Sussex and elsewhere in England. He also founded Castle Acre Priory in Norfolk. Lewes was the first Priory in England belonging to the reformed Benedictine Order of Cluny, based in France. It became one of the wealthiest monasteries in England. However, in spite of its wealth it played little role in national affairs, except at the time of the Battle of Lewes in 1264 when it was occupied by the troops of King Henry III.

The main buildings, including the great Priory church, were put up in Quarr limestone in the Romanesque style between c1082 to c1100 and in Caen limestone from c.1145 to the 13th century. Repairs and additions continued up to the monastery's dissolution in November 1537. At this time it owned over 20,000 acres in Sussex with other lands elsewhere, was the patron of 19 parish churches in the county and owned two houses for the poor in Lewes. A number of daughter priories were dependent on Lewes. There were only 24 monks at the time of its dissolution, compared with as many as 100 in the 12th and 13th centuries.

The site also includes links and information about Cluny and the religious houses that were dependent upon Lewes in England.

To Stephanie's post I would add I have always been fascinated by reconstructon drawings that evoke what was once in existence, and this is the first I have seen of the great church and priory at Lewes.

In the light of what the post says about there already being a church dedicated to St Pancras which was taken over to establish the priory might suggest I was going beyond the historical evidence in suggesting that William and Gundrada were referring to Harold Godwinson's oathbreaking in their foundation, but the possibility is intruiging. St Pancras may well have seemed a very suitable patron, and here was a church dedicated to him ready to be expanded into amonastic house

My interest in Lewes Priory comes from three things - as a Cluniac foundation it was of the same family as the priory in my home town of Pontefract, the Warrenne family held the neighbouring lordship of Wakefield (where I was born) from the Conquest until the mid-fourteenth century, and some of my ancestors lived near Lewes - although whether they were there when the priory was in existence I do not know.