L’abbaye de Fleury à Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire
We are currently visiting the Benedictine abbey of Fleury in the small town of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, not far from the city of Orléans. There are at least two reasons why this abbey is famous worldwide among Mediævalists and beyond: an architectural reason, and a historical one.
The architectural reason is the presence of the enormous and splendid tower-porch built under Abbot Gauzlin, whose abbacy ran from 1004 to 1030. It is a wonder of Romanesque architecture and art.
The historical reason, which makes this abbey even more unique, is that it houses the bones of saint Benoît, Saint Benedict in English, the founder and father of all monasticism in the Western World. Benoît, born Benedetto around 480 in Umbria, founded the Monte Cassino monastery in 529 and died there in 547. His Rule remains to this day the governing law of all Benedictine monasteries worldwide.
Around 580, the monastery on Monte Cassino was destroyed by a Lombard raid. The place was left deserted and utterly unoccupied for more than a century. In the late 600s, the abbot of Fleury, who had heard about the desertion and the fact that neither the remains of Saint Benedict, nor those of Saint Scholastica, his sister who had been buried with him, were properly honored, sent out a search-and-rescue party of monks led by Aygulf. They went to Cassino, discovered the resting place of the saints among the ruins of the abandoned monastery, and brought them back to France in 703. The bones of saint Benoît remained to this day in Fleury, while those of Scholastica went to the cathedral in Le Mans.
Some Italians, of course, disagree and claim that the bones of the saint never left Cassino. You will even find some modern-day internet websites that claim it! Having researched the question quite extensively, and read in particular a comprehensive (150 pages!) memoir published in 1882 by R.P. Dom François Chamard, osb, a brother of the abbey of Ligugé, my opinion is that the bones of saint Benoît were indeed transported to France (19th-century forensic examination of the bones goes in the same direction), even though a few of them may have inadvertently been left in the tomb at Cassino because they were not properly identified as human bones. Some of them were also given back to the Monte Cassino monks who had come to Fleury around 750 to ask for them once the decision had been made to rebuild the monastery there.
The abbey is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
In the Middle Ages, people from the outside, whether they be parishioners from the village or visitors of the abbey, gained entrance into the church via the northern portal, which was on the side of the hostelry. The monastic enclosure with the cloister was on the southern side.
The northern portal is dominated by a splendid tympanum, amazingly sculpted probably during the 1100s. Traces of old polychromy are very visible. I will show several closeup views of details of that portal over the coming days, as they are worth examining.
L’abbaye de Fleury à Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire
We are currently visiting the Benedictine abbey of Fleury in the small town of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, not far from the city of Orléans. There are at least two reasons why this abbey is famous worldwide among Mediævalists and beyond: an architectural reason, and a historical one.
The architectural reason is the presence of the enormous and splendid tower-porch built under Abbot Gauzlin, whose abbacy ran from 1004 to 1030. It is a wonder of Romanesque architecture and art.
The historical reason, which makes this abbey even more unique, is that it houses the bones of saint Benoît, Saint Benedict in English, the founder and father of all monasticism in the Western World. Benoît, born Benedetto around 480 in Umbria, founded the Monte Cassino monastery in 529 and died there in 547. His Rule remains to this day the governing law of all Benedictine monasteries worldwide.
Around 580, the monastery on Monte Cassino was destroyed by a Lombard raid. The place was left deserted and utterly unoccupied for more than a century. In the late 600s, the abbot of Fleury, who had heard about the desertion and the fact that neither the remains of Saint Benedict, nor those of Saint Scholastica, his sister who had been buried with him, were properly honored, sent out a search-and-rescue party of monks led by Aygulf. They went to Cassino, discovered the resting place of the saints among the ruins of the abandoned monastery, and brought them back to France in 703. The bones of saint Benoît remained to this day in Fleury, while those of Scholastica went to the cathedral in Le Mans.
Some Italians, of course, disagree and claim that the bones of the saint never left Cassino. You will even find some modern-day internet websites that claim it! Having researched the question quite extensively, and read in particular a comprehensive (150 pages!) memoir published in 1882 by R.P. Dom François Chamard, osb, a brother of the abbey of Ligugé, my opinion is that the bones of saint Benoît were indeed transported to France (19th-century forensic examination of the bones goes in the same direction), even though a few of them may have inadvertently been left in the tomb at Cassino because they were not properly identified as human bones. Some of them were also given back to the Monte Cassino monks who had come to Fleury around 750 to ask for them once the decision had been made to rebuild the monastery there.
The abbey is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
In the Middle Ages, people from the outside, whether they be parishioners from the village or visitors of the abbey, gained entrance into the church via the northern portal, which was on the side of the hostelry. The monastic enclosure with the cloister was on the southern side.
The northern portal is dominated by a splendid tympanum, amazingly sculpted probably during the 1100s. Traces of old polychromy are very visible. I will show several closeup views of details of that portal over the coming days, as they are worth examining.