Normandie romane: l’abbaye royale de Cerisy-la-Forêt
Today we continue our visit of the richest and most powerful Benedictine abbey of the Cotentin peninsula: Saint Vigor of Cerisy-la-Forêt.
The year is 510 AD in what would one day be known as Normandy. The Gallo-Roman Antiquity ended a few decades ago under the brutal assaults of the invaders from the East and the Western World has been plunged into what some will call the Dark Ages. Among the ruins and the waste, beacons of Christian light endure here and there, one of them being a holy man named Vigor. An early disseminator of the Christian faith in Normandy, he now lives a hermit’s life, until a local lord named Volusien pulls him out of his spiritual retreat to “slay a horrible serpent that slaughtered man and beast alike” —probably an image for some local Gaulish Pagan idol involving animal and human sacrifices. Vigor having accomplished the mission (read: converted the concerned Pagans to Christianity), Volusien gave him a tract of land with 25 villages in the area.
Thus endowed, Vigor founded an abbey dedicated to the saints Peter and Paul. We know very little about it, except that it was destroyed by the Vikings during the 9th century.
Indeed, after Emperor Charlemagne’s passing in 814, the region became more and more frequently the object of Viking raids. The men from the North, however, soon settled in Neustria (of which Normandy was a part), and over the following 200 years, converted massively to Christianity and became fierce defenders and proponents of that faith. In 1032, Duke Robert of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror, was about to leave on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Before his departure, he raised the ruins of the old abbey of Cerisy, founding a new one to be dedicated to Vigor, and upon his return in 1034, he gave the budding abbey the relics he had bought in the Holy Land from the Patriarch of Jerusalem. An arm bone of Saint Vigor was added in 1042, and that same year, Duke William bestowed even more endowment on the abbey.
According to some scholars, construction of the vast abbey church wouldn’t have begun before 1068, which seems a bit late to me. It did begin with the famous, unique three-level apse lit by no less than fifteen (!) large windows, certainly a most notable architectural feat for the day. The floor plan was the traditional Benedictine one, just like the two large abbeys in the city of Caen, which we have already visited, and the material was the equally famous pierre de Caen. The church was completed around 1090, and the next century saw the abbey at the apex of its influence and power, counting up to eight priories, two of them in England. At that time, a common faith and staunch defense of the Roman Catholic Church united the Normans of England, France, southern Italy (including Sicily) and Greece.
As centuries rolled by, the abbey of Cerisy suffered the same fate as all other monasteries in France, falling under the in commendam régime in the 1500s before being shut down by the French Revolution with the few remaining monks being sent away. In 1811, further to a thunder strike, it was decided to knock down the four westernmost rows of the nave and the façade, which were too damaged to be rebuilt without substantial funds, which were not available.
What remained of the abbey church, then the parochial church, was listed in 1840 of the very first list of Historic Landmarks. Restoration works were carried out in the 1880s, and again in 1964.
The last three remaining rows of the nave (out of the original seven, not counting the westwerk) and the enormous transept arm that eats up part of the lower modénature (relief decoration on a wall) of the bell tower. Notice when you zoom in that the transept arm elevation is almost entirely appareled in opus spicatum, which is one of the reasons why 1068 to begin construction (with the apse, then moving westward) seems too late to me.
I would vouch that this part was not built after 1050, and probably earlier, which would be congruent with the 1032 time marker mentioned above. As a future upload will show, this old way of appareling a wall during the pre-Romanesque and Romanesque periods will also appear on the nave walls, which themselves were built after the transept, as the construction works moved westward.
It is always wonderful to me how the stones can be “read”, and how they manage to silently tell the story and history of a monument... That is why I am so irate whenever I see venerable walls all plastered over and therefore silenced! For God’s sake, let the age old stones tell their tale and sing their song!
From a more down-to-earth, technical standpoint, this photo is a three-exposure vertical panorama stitched in Photoshop. I had to resort to that technique to include all of the monument while keeping the camera in the relative shadow of the bell tower —otherwise, the photo would have been barely readable because of the strong backlighting from the morning Sun.
Normandie romane: l’abbaye royale de Cerisy-la-Forêt
Today we continue our visit of the richest and most powerful Benedictine abbey of the Cotentin peninsula: Saint Vigor of Cerisy-la-Forêt.
The year is 510 AD in what would one day be known as Normandy. The Gallo-Roman Antiquity ended a few decades ago under the brutal assaults of the invaders from the East and the Western World has been plunged into what some will call the Dark Ages. Among the ruins and the waste, beacons of Christian light endure here and there, one of them being a holy man named Vigor. An early disseminator of the Christian faith in Normandy, he now lives a hermit’s life, until a local lord named Volusien pulls him out of his spiritual retreat to “slay a horrible serpent that slaughtered man and beast alike” —probably an image for some local Gaulish Pagan idol involving animal and human sacrifices. Vigor having accomplished the mission (read: converted the concerned Pagans to Christianity), Volusien gave him a tract of land with 25 villages in the area.
Thus endowed, Vigor founded an abbey dedicated to the saints Peter and Paul. We know very little about it, except that it was destroyed by the Vikings during the 9th century.
Indeed, after Emperor Charlemagne’s passing in 814, the region became more and more frequently the object of Viking raids. The men from the North, however, soon settled in Neustria (of which Normandy was a part), and over the following 200 years, converted massively to Christianity and became fierce defenders and proponents of that faith. In 1032, Duke Robert of Normandy, father of William the Conqueror, was about to leave on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Before his departure, he raised the ruins of the old abbey of Cerisy, founding a new one to be dedicated to Vigor, and upon his return in 1034, he gave the budding abbey the relics he had bought in the Holy Land from the Patriarch of Jerusalem. An arm bone of Saint Vigor was added in 1042, and that same year, Duke William bestowed even more endowment on the abbey.
According to some scholars, construction of the vast abbey church wouldn’t have begun before 1068, which seems a bit late to me. It did begin with the famous, unique three-level apse lit by no less than fifteen (!) large windows, certainly a most notable architectural feat for the day. The floor plan was the traditional Benedictine one, just like the two large abbeys in the city of Caen, which we have already visited, and the material was the equally famous pierre de Caen. The church was completed around 1090, and the next century saw the abbey at the apex of its influence and power, counting up to eight priories, two of them in England. At that time, a common faith and staunch defense of the Roman Catholic Church united the Normans of England, France, southern Italy (including Sicily) and Greece.
As centuries rolled by, the abbey of Cerisy suffered the same fate as all other monasteries in France, falling under the in commendam régime in the 1500s before being shut down by the French Revolution with the few remaining monks being sent away. In 1811, further to a thunder strike, it was decided to knock down the four westernmost rows of the nave and the façade, which were too damaged to be rebuilt without substantial funds, which were not available.
What remained of the abbey church, then the parochial church, was listed in 1840 of the very first list of Historic Landmarks. Restoration works were carried out in the 1880s, and again in 1964.
The last three remaining rows of the nave (out of the original seven, not counting the westwerk) and the enormous transept arm that eats up part of the lower modénature (relief decoration on a wall) of the bell tower. Notice when you zoom in that the transept arm elevation is almost entirely appareled in opus spicatum, which is one of the reasons why 1068 to begin construction (with the apse, then moving westward) seems too late to me.
I would vouch that this part was not built after 1050, and probably earlier, which would be congruent with the 1032 time marker mentioned above. As a future upload will show, this old way of appareling a wall during the pre-Romanesque and Romanesque periods will also appear on the nave walls, which themselves were built after the transept, as the construction works moved westward.
It is always wonderful to me how the stones can be “read”, and how they manage to silently tell the story and history of a monument... That is why I am so irate whenever I see venerable walls all plastered over and therefore silenced! For God’s sake, let the age old stones tell their tale and sing their song!
From a more down-to-earth, technical standpoint, this photo is a three-exposure vertical panorama stitched in Photoshop. I had to resort to that technique to include all of the monument while keeping the camera in the relative shadow of the bell tower —otherwise, the photo would have been barely readable because of the strong backlighting from the morning Sun.