Languedoc roman: l’église ronde de Rieux-Minervois
When one is in Caunes-Minervois, as we were yesterday, it is but a short drive to the next village of Rieux-Minervois, and the drive is indeed worth it, as this last village features not only an interesting Romanesque church, but a very rare one at that: a round church!
Round churches, as we know, were modeled after that of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem —and if we visit that one one day, we shall explain why it was made round. In spite of the famousness of the model, round churches are a rarity: almost all churches were built on the basis of the Roman “basilical” floor plan, i.e., a rectangle with one of more naves and a semi-circular niche at one end. Circular churches were more difficult to build and much less practical for distributing groups of people for the liturgical purposes: basically, one large group (the congregation) needed to be able to visually follow what a very small group (the celebrant[s]) was doing. I know of less than half a dozen such churches in the whole Western world.
In Rieux-Minervoix, the parish church dedicated to the Assumption was built between 1000 and 1050 and donated in 1096 by the archbishop of Narbonne to the chapter of canons of his cathedral. “Donating” a church, may I remind my readers, meant donating all the clerical revenue that came from the parish, in exchange for maintaining the church building and ensuring continuity of the opus Dei in that church.
Being circular makes the church of Rieux-Minervois one of very few, but the thing that makes it absolutely unique in the whole Christendom is that it is not truly circular, but made of a heptagonal (in reference to the Seven Pillars of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs) rotunda, with a (pardon the mouthful) tetradecagonal ambulatory —meaning with 14 sides— around it. This unique general floor plan has been preserved, but unfortunately, and as is often the case, centuries did not pass without the church being otherwise severely altered, with added chapels, doors relocated, and so on.
The church was on the very first list of Historic Landmarks drawn up by Prosper Mérimée in 1840.
Some of those remarkable capitals only bear Corinthian-inspired, floral motifs. Doesn’t it feel to you like this one is unfinished, as there should be something in those small niches underneath the top leaves? I don’t think this piece was meant to have flat surfaces without any carving on them... God only knows what may have happened to cause this one to remain so!
Languedoc roman: l’église ronde de Rieux-Minervois
When one is in Caunes-Minervois, as we were yesterday, it is but a short drive to the next village of Rieux-Minervois, and the drive is indeed worth it, as this last village features not only an interesting Romanesque church, but a very rare one at that: a round church!
Round churches, as we know, were modeled after that of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem —and if we visit that one one day, we shall explain why it was made round. In spite of the famousness of the model, round churches are a rarity: almost all churches were built on the basis of the Roman “basilical” floor plan, i.e., a rectangle with one of more naves and a semi-circular niche at one end. Circular churches were more difficult to build and much less practical for distributing groups of people for the liturgical purposes: basically, one large group (the congregation) needed to be able to visually follow what a very small group (the celebrant[s]) was doing. I know of less than half a dozen such churches in the whole Western world.
In Rieux-Minervoix, the parish church dedicated to the Assumption was built between 1000 and 1050 and donated in 1096 by the archbishop of Narbonne to the chapter of canons of his cathedral. “Donating” a church, may I remind my readers, meant donating all the clerical revenue that came from the parish, in exchange for maintaining the church building and ensuring continuity of the opus Dei in that church.
Being circular makes the church of Rieux-Minervois one of very few, but the thing that makes it absolutely unique in the whole Christendom is that it is not truly circular, but made of a heptagonal (in reference to the Seven Pillars of Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs) rotunda, with a (pardon the mouthful) tetradecagonal ambulatory —meaning with 14 sides— around it. This unique general floor plan has been preserved, but unfortunately, and as is often the case, centuries did not pass without the church being otherwise severely altered, with added chapels, doors relocated, and so on.
The church was on the very first list of Historic Landmarks drawn up by Prosper Mérimée in 1840.
Some of those remarkable capitals only bear Corinthian-inspired, floral motifs. Doesn’t it feel to you like this one is unfinished, as there should be something in those small niches underneath the top leaves? I don’t think this piece was meant to have flat surfaces without any carving on them... God only knows what may have happened to cause this one to remain so!