Dauphiné roman: l’abbatiale Saint Theudère de Saint-Chef
Built in the 1000s on the foundations of an earlier church, listed as a Historic Landmark on Prosper Mérimée’s very first list in 1840, the abbey church of Saint Theudère stands in the village of Saint-Chef in the French département of Isère, east of Lyon, towards the Alps.
When I say “earlier church”, I mean the one built in the 500s (of which nothing visible remains) when Theudère of Dauphiné, a local Benedictine monk who had been a trained disciple of Saint Césaire in Arles, returned to bis birthplace to found an abbey. The village of Saint-Chef grew around it during the Middle Ages, while the abbey itself reached its apogee around 1200, at the end of the Romanesque age, when it ruled over a dozen priories and about 80 churches in the environs. Decline came shortly after 1300, when the monks, profoundly divided in two factions, could not elect a new abbot. Pope John XII, then residing in Avignon, issued a bull in 1320 whereby the archbishop of Vienne would become the abbot of Saint-Chef, which forever lost its independence as of that fateful day.
The last remnants of the Benedictine communal life were washed away in the 1530s when the remaining “monks” (but could they still be called that?) were authorized by King Francis Ist and Pope Paul III to abandon their religious status and their vows (including that of poverty!), thus turning them into secular canons. The canons then went on living what was probably a much more comfortable (in all material respects!) life, until that wasn’t even good enough: in 1774, they requested and obtained (claiming isolation and the insalubrious nature of the area, poor dears) to abandon the village of Saint-Chef and be transferred to the abbey of Saint-André-le-Bas in the city of Vienne.
It should come as no surprise that, when the French Revolution erupted a few years later, not many voices were raised to defend and protect the abbey’s buildings, which were sold, destroyed and their stones used for construction works in the village and surrounding area.
The church itself, turned into a parish church, remained as the only legacy of what the powerful abbey had once been.
This rather sad story of downfall, lack of resolve and backbone, and probably outright lack of faith, outweighed by an appetite for creature comforts and personal wealth by those who had vowed to forsake them, has fortunately not contaminated the church itself, which remains as it ever was, one of the most striking examples of Romanesque architecture in the Dauphiné province. Even more importantly, the Saint Theudère former abbey church houses one of the finest (in all of France!) sets of Romanesque alfresco paintings from the 1100s, located in places not normally open to the public, but to which I managed to secure access. I hope you will enjoy them.
Back down at nave level, this shows the chancel and apse. The capitals around the chancel are the only sculpted ones in the church, and the leafy motifs remain very simple, almost at the level of a rough outline, a preliminary study. The stained glass is 19th century, as are the ugly paintings on the cul-de-four vault of the apse —or at least, what’s still visible of them, as they have been deteriorated by humidity seeping through.
Dauphiné roman: l’abbatiale Saint Theudère de Saint-Chef
Built in the 1000s on the foundations of an earlier church, listed as a Historic Landmark on Prosper Mérimée’s very first list in 1840, the abbey church of Saint Theudère stands in the village of Saint-Chef in the French département of Isère, east of Lyon, towards the Alps.
When I say “earlier church”, I mean the one built in the 500s (of which nothing visible remains) when Theudère of Dauphiné, a local Benedictine monk who had been a trained disciple of Saint Césaire in Arles, returned to bis birthplace to found an abbey. The village of Saint-Chef grew around it during the Middle Ages, while the abbey itself reached its apogee around 1200, at the end of the Romanesque age, when it ruled over a dozen priories and about 80 churches in the environs. Decline came shortly after 1300, when the monks, profoundly divided in two factions, could not elect a new abbot. Pope John XII, then residing in Avignon, issued a bull in 1320 whereby the archbishop of Vienne would become the abbot of Saint-Chef, which forever lost its independence as of that fateful day.
The last remnants of the Benedictine communal life were washed away in the 1530s when the remaining “monks” (but could they still be called that?) were authorized by King Francis Ist and Pope Paul III to abandon their religious status and their vows (including that of poverty!), thus turning them into secular canons. The canons then went on living what was probably a much more comfortable (in all material respects!) life, until that wasn’t even good enough: in 1774, they requested and obtained (claiming isolation and the insalubrious nature of the area, poor dears) to abandon the village of Saint-Chef and be transferred to the abbey of Saint-André-le-Bas in the city of Vienne.
It should come as no surprise that, when the French Revolution erupted a few years later, not many voices were raised to defend and protect the abbey’s buildings, which were sold, destroyed and their stones used for construction works in the village and surrounding area.
The church itself, turned into a parish church, remained as the only legacy of what the powerful abbey had once been.
This rather sad story of downfall, lack of resolve and backbone, and probably outright lack of faith, outweighed by an appetite for creature comforts and personal wealth by those who had vowed to forsake them, has fortunately not contaminated the church itself, which remains as it ever was, one of the most striking examples of Romanesque architecture in the Dauphiné province. Even more importantly, the Saint Theudère former abbey church houses one of the finest (in all of France!) sets of Romanesque alfresco paintings from the 1100s, located in places not normally open to the public, but to which I managed to secure access. I hope you will enjoy them.
Back down at nave level, this shows the chancel and apse. The capitals around the chancel are the only sculpted ones in the church, and the leafy motifs remain very simple, almost at the level of a rough outline, a preliminary study. The stained glass is 19th century, as are the ugly paintings on the cul-de-four vault of the apse —or at least, what’s still visible of them, as they have been deteriorated by humidity seeping through.