France romane: Saint-Pierre de Carennac
Before driving down south to Moissac, I stopped in the village of Carennac, where a priory was created by the abbey of Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, which we visited in photographs over the past few days.
The church was integrated into the Mediæval sheet wall that defended the village, therefore the main two-door portal opened to the South, on what used to be the village’s main street, even though it is quite narrow to our modern eyes.
That portal and the splendid tympanum above are almost the only parts that remain today for the aficionados of Romanesque. Construction began on the church we still see today in the late 1000s, but it replaced an earlier one, as there is at least one written mention of it in the cartulary of the abbey of Beaulieu in 932. The fact that the priory was donated to the powerful abbey of Cluny is recorded in 1047 and 48, and construction must have begun on the new church shortly thereafter. You need to understand that even though human life on average was much shorter than today, the conception of time was very different and “shortly thereafter” usually meant a decade or two...
The portal and its tympanum were probably not built before 1150 or so.
General view of the portal and tympanum. It is very large and part of the ornamentation is now gone. Parts of the voussures (the repeated arches around the tympanum) were obviously re-made much later and the sobriety of their bare stones does not seem in accordance with the rich, typically Cluniac decoration of the sculpted parts. I am personally quite sure that, like we will see in Moissac, the archivolt was adorned.
France romane: Saint-Pierre de Carennac
Before driving down south to Moissac, I stopped in the village of Carennac, where a priory was created by the abbey of Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne, which we visited in photographs over the past few days.
The church was integrated into the Mediæval sheet wall that defended the village, therefore the main two-door portal opened to the South, on what used to be the village’s main street, even though it is quite narrow to our modern eyes.
That portal and the splendid tympanum above are almost the only parts that remain today for the aficionados of Romanesque. Construction began on the church we still see today in the late 1000s, but it replaced an earlier one, as there is at least one written mention of it in the cartulary of the abbey of Beaulieu in 932. The fact that the priory was donated to the powerful abbey of Cluny is recorded in 1047 and 48, and construction must have begun on the new church shortly thereafter. You need to understand that even though human life on average was much shorter than today, the conception of time was very different and “shortly thereafter” usually meant a decade or two...
The portal and its tympanum were probably not built before 1150 or so.
General view of the portal and tympanum. It is very large and part of the ornamentation is now gone. Parts of the voussures (the repeated arches around the tympanum) were obviously re-made much later and the sobriety of their bare stones does not seem in accordance with the rich, typically Cluniac decoration of the sculpted parts. I am personally quite sure that, like we will see in Moissac, the archivolt was adorned.