Poitou roman: Sainte-Radegonde à Poitiers
[This photograph is part of the black-and-white re-processings I have been recently uploading to Flickr, because I do not have any new content to show, owing to the fact that I am presently only shooting for a photo-book that will be published by the Fondation du Patrimoine towards the end of 2023. I cannot show any of those photos, obviously, as I do not know yet which ones will be in the book. Thank you for your understanding and I hope you enjoy revisiting some older photos in their new, black-and-white look!
I also reproduce below the caption I wrote when I first uploaded the concerned photo, sometimes with slight adaptations.]
Poitiers, capital city of the old province of Poitou in western central France.
In this area of the city, the first church was built in the 500s by Radegonde, queen of the Franks, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was renamed in honor of Radegonde herself in 587 after she was sanctified. She had been interred within and, in 1012, after her sanctification, her bones were exhumed on order from Abbess Béliarde and placed in a stone sarcophagus that to this day lies in the crypt, as we will see. The church also served as a burial place for the nuns of the Holy Cross Abbey, the first abbey for women ever created in Gaul, which had been founded by the same Radegonde and which Béliarde headed.
During the early Middle Ages, churches and other buildings often perished by fire: candles and oil lamps were the only way to light buildings that were often quite dark, therefore a number of them were needed —and of course, the opus Dei went on after sunset and before sunrise, and candles were needed for that, too. So, at any time, a number of open flame devices were live, and there were many wood items inside. Also, most churches were then timber-roofed... You can imagine the rest. The Sainte-Radegonde church fell victime to such a fire and was rebuilt in the late 1000s, having been consecrated in 1099. It was then a collegiate church, the prior being appointed by the abbess of Holy Cross Abbey.
From that old Romanesque church, the lower part of the bell tower, as well as the whole eastern end (choir and apse) have survived. The nave is 13th century Romanesque, and was re-vaulted in Gothic style in the 1300s.
The three-sided choir is tall and quite narrow, and bears many traces of its very old age. I did the best I could with the wide-angle tilt-shift lens, without being totally able to respect the perspectives... Look how narrow the arches are, and how thick the columns...! They opened large windows in the upper part of the walls but the massive and closely grouped columns tell us how scared they were for the solidity of the whole edifice...
The paintings are all 19th century, supposed to imitate what existed in the Middle Ages, even though in this case, no one knows about that...
Poitou roman: Sainte-Radegonde à Poitiers
[This photograph is part of the black-and-white re-processings I have been recently uploading to Flickr, because I do not have any new content to show, owing to the fact that I am presently only shooting for a photo-book that will be published by the Fondation du Patrimoine towards the end of 2023. I cannot show any of those photos, obviously, as I do not know yet which ones will be in the book. Thank you for your understanding and I hope you enjoy revisiting some older photos in their new, black-and-white look!
I also reproduce below the caption I wrote when I first uploaded the concerned photo, sometimes with slight adaptations.]
Poitiers, capital city of the old province of Poitou in western central France.
In this area of the city, the first church was built in the 500s by Radegonde, queen of the Franks, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary. It was renamed in honor of Radegonde herself in 587 after she was sanctified. She had been interred within and, in 1012, after her sanctification, her bones were exhumed on order from Abbess Béliarde and placed in a stone sarcophagus that to this day lies in the crypt, as we will see. The church also served as a burial place for the nuns of the Holy Cross Abbey, the first abbey for women ever created in Gaul, which had been founded by the same Radegonde and which Béliarde headed.
During the early Middle Ages, churches and other buildings often perished by fire: candles and oil lamps were the only way to light buildings that were often quite dark, therefore a number of them were needed —and of course, the opus Dei went on after sunset and before sunrise, and candles were needed for that, too. So, at any time, a number of open flame devices were live, and there were many wood items inside. Also, most churches were then timber-roofed... You can imagine the rest. The Sainte-Radegonde church fell victime to such a fire and was rebuilt in the late 1000s, having been consecrated in 1099. It was then a collegiate church, the prior being appointed by the abbess of Holy Cross Abbey.
From that old Romanesque church, the lower part of the bell tower, as well as the whole eastern end (choir and apse) have survived. The nave is 13th century Romanesque, and was re-vaulted in Gothic style in the 1300s.
The three-sided choir is tall and quite narrow, and bears many traces of its very old age. I did the best I could with the wide-angle tilt-shift lens, without being totally able to respect the perspectives... Look how narrow the arches are, and how thick the columns...! They opened large windows in the upper part of the walls but the massive and closely grouped columns tell us how scared they were for the solidity of the whole edifice...
The paintings are all 19th century, supposed to imitate what existed in the Middle Ages, even though in this case, no one knows about that...