Vivarais roman: la priorale bénédictine Notre-Dame de Veyrines
[I am leaving early Thursday morning for a two-day trip to the département of Drôme, a one to two-hour drive from my home near Lyon. In addition to a personal visit to the Romanesque church of Saint-Restitut, I will photograph two monuments that were aided financially by the Fondation du Patrimoine, one of the non-profit organizations for which I work as a pro bono photographer. Those photos will appear in a commemorative book that we at the Fondation are working on to celebrate 25 years of activity in the Rhône-Alpes region. Therefore, I will not be able to upload anything until Saturday morning and I apologize for that to those of you kind enough to follow my stream. As usual, however, I will take an iPad with me and will therefore be able to check up on some of the Flickr activity while away.]
Nested very far away from the touristic thoroughfares, in a hamlet of half a dozen houses in the middle of nowhere in the mountainous part (660 meters of altitude) of the département of Ardèche (southeastern France), the former Benedictine priory church of Veyrines, dedicated to Saint Mary, is one of those historical and architectural jewels that I so love to discover.
In the Middle Ages, paradoxically, the isolation of the locale was less: mule tracks coming from the towns of Tournon and Annonay down in the plains, and going to Le Puy and the Massif Central mountains, snaked through here. Veyrines was the perfect stopover between the Rhône Valley and the Velay mountains and benefited from quite some human and merchandise traffic. A subsidiary of the abbey of Saint-Chaffre, the priory of Veyrines was protected by the Pagan family of local lords, whose ancestor Aymon originally (i.e., during the late 1000s) donated a first church and the land around it to Saint-Chaffre to build a priory. Even though the Pagan family became extinct in 1326, the priory apparently went through the Hundred Years War unscathed, but suffered during the Wars of Religion and the nave had to be at least partly rebuilt in the 17th century, obviously (from what I have seen) using a lot of the remaining Mediæval stones that must have been scattered and left lying around. Robert Saint-Jean, in his Zodiaque book Vivarais et Gévaudan romans, hesitates to say whether those walls were actually rebuilt or not, and to which extent, as the stonework really looks identical to the Romanesque one. Modern scientific methods of dating would have to be used on the mortar to know for sure.
As is often the case, the best part of that small mountain church is the transept, choir and apse. Among the sculpted capitals, two historied ones are particularly noteworthy: one depicting the Original Sin in several phases, and one showing the Descent of Christ in Limbo. Both are executed in a naive, primitive manner, but a very powerful, meaningful and evocative one as well, as we will see in detail.
The very simple and charming nave, which was rebuilt, at least in part, during the 1600s, as mentioned above (the wayside cross mentioned in my first photo was probably erected at the same time). However, whatever work that took place was carried out with old Romanesque stones and masonry techniques so similar that it is virtually impossible to say for certain which part was redone, and which dates back from the 1100s, when the priory church was built.
The two largely splayed windows (including one in the northern wall, a rare occurrence for a church located where Winters were long and cold, and weather generally not very clement) are indisputably authentic. No part of them was ever rebuilt.
The framework roofing we see now is, obviously, modern. However, the thin walls and the absence of any reinforcements, be they support arches or buttresses, tells us that this church was never meant to be vaulted.
Vivarais roman: la priorale bénédictine Notre-Dame de Veyrines
[I am leaving early Thursday morning for a two-day trip to the département of Drôme, a one to two-hour drive from my home near Lyon. In addition to a personal visit to the Romanesque church of Saint-Restitut, I will photograph two monuments that were aided financially by the Fondation du Patrimoine, one of the non-profit organizations for which I work as a pro bono photographer. Those photos will appear in a commemorative book that we at the Fondation are working on to celebrate 25 years of activity in the Rhône-Alpes region. Therefore, I will not be able to upload anything until Saturday morning and I apologize for that to those of you kind enough to follow my stream. As usual, however, I will take an iPad with me and will therefore be able to check up on some of the Flickr activity while away.]
Nested very far away from the touristic thoroughfares, in a hamlet of half a dozen houses in the middle of nowhere in the mountainous part (660 meters of altitude) of the département of Ardèche (southeastern France), the former Benedictine priory church of Veyrines, dedicated to Saint Mary, is one of those historical and architectural jewels that I so love to discover.
In the Middle Ages, paradoxically, the isolation of the locale was less: mule tracks coming from the towns of Tournon and Annonay down in the plains, and going to Le Puy and the Massif Central mountains, snaked through here. Veyrines was the perfect stopover between the Rhône Valley and the Velay mountains and benefited from quite some human and merchandise traffic. A subsidiary of the abbey of Saint-Chaffre, the priory of Veyrines was protected by the Pagan family of local lords, whose ancestor Aymon originally (i.e., during the late 1000s) donated a first church and the land around it to Saint-Chaffre to build a priory. Even though the Pagan family became extinct in 1326, the priory apparently went through the Hundred Years War unscathed, but suffered during the Wars of Religion and the nave had to be at least partly rebuilt in the 17th century, obviously (from what I have seen) using a lot of the remaining Mediæval stones that must have been scattered and left lying around. Robert Saint-Jean, in his Zodiaque book Vivarais et Gévaudan romans, hesitates to say whether those walls were actually rebuilt or not, and to which extent, as the stonework really looks identical to the Romanesque one. Modern scientific methods of dating would have to be used on the mortar to know for sure.
As is often the case, the best part of that small mountain church is the transept, choir and apse. Among the sculpted capitals, two historied ones are particularly noteworthy: one depicting the Original Sin in several phases, and one showing the Descent of Christ in Limbo. Both are executed in a naive, primitive manner, but a very powerful, meaningful and evocative one as well, as we will see in detail.
The very simple and charming nave, which was rebuilt, at least in part, during the 1600s, as mentioned above (the wayside cross mentioned in my first photo was probably erected at the same time). However, whatever work that took place was carried out with old Romanesque stones and masonry techniques so similar that it is virtually impossible to say for certain which part was redone, and which dates back from the 1100s, when the priory church was built.
The two largely splayed windows (including one in the northern wall, a rare occurrence for a church located where Winters were long and cold, and weather generally not very clement) are indisputably authentic. No part of them was ever rebuilt.
The framework roofing we see now is, obviously, modern. However, the thin walls and the absence of any reinforcements, be they support arches or buttresses, tells us that this church was never meant to be vaulted.