A trip to the Berry (part 1)

Although the emphasis of this blog lies on Burgundy, every so often I deviate a little from this area. When we were planning a trip into the Berry region, I had asked my walking encyclopedia on Romanesque churches for some advice concerning this area.

Source: Gouvernements généraux du Berry, du Nivernois, et du Bourbonois, Robert de Vaugondy, 1753

We went there to meet up with my son, who was going to spend a day with some local guitar restorers, and decided to do some sightseeing as well since we were there. Berry is a former Duchy and it was until 1790 a province of France with as a capital Bourges. Both departments Indre (36) and Cher (18) in the Centre region form more or less the old Berry.

Saint-Désiré (03)

We stayed in the Southern part of Indre, near La Châtre, famous because George Sand lived around there.
It was a totally unknown area for me. The only thing I knew had something to do with the Berry were the “passages berrichons”, narrow wall openings on both side of the choir in a church, giving access to the transept from the nave. These wall openings one finds sporadically in some Romanesque churches in Burgundy.

Crossing - Saint-Désiré (03)

And further I had heard and seen something of the “Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry”, and everyone who has ever done some calligraphy will admit that this is a jewel of illumination.
On our way to the Berry we drove through Allier (03) and halfway Montluçon and our destination we saw a sign “Saint-Désiré Eglise Romane”. Since we were a trifle on the early side we decided to pay a quick visit to this church.

Crypt - Saint-Désiré (03)

The church had once been part of a priory, and it had an 11th century crypt built around the grave of a former bishop of Bourges, Saint-Désiré. The church had been shortened in the 19th century and partially heavily restored (see “Wikipedia - Église Saint-Désiré de Saint-Désiré”), but what is left over is still quite interesting.
And this church was not even on my list!

The link to the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle can be found here.

The deep South

Sometimes one is forced to stay somewhere, and sometimes one finds without really looking for it something that appears to be worth the detour, as the Michelin green guide says.

Saint John's cathedral - 's-Hertogenbosch

That happened when we had to stay in the Southern (Roman Catholic) part of Netherlands for a couple of days in order to acquire a new passport. The Romanesque churches of Maastricht as well as the one in Roermond I only knew from the pictures on “L'Europe Romane”, and both towns are located less than an hour drive from Den Bosch, where we were staying.

Basilica of our Lady - Maastricht

In Maastricht we could park the car in a parking garage next to the Basilica of our Lady, which was open to the public, and which turned out to be a revelation. The capitals in the apse, where it is too dark to see anything properly, can be lit after inserting a € 0.50 coin in a switch box, an investment more than worth it. The outside of the church, in Mosan and Rhineland style is very impressive. The architecture is completely different from the one we know in Burgundy. Only when we left the church I saw the notice “No photographing”; too late, fortunately!

Basilica of our Lady - Maastricht

The Saint Servatius basilica I found, at least from the inside, less interesting. However, I must add that the Emperor’s hall (certainly worth a visit) is closed for visitors during winter, and in summer can only be visited during guided tours. However, the treasury with among other things the reliquary of Saint-Servatius made up for what we missed.

Basilica of Saint Servatius - Maastricht

On our way back we made a stop in Roermond, where we found (with difficulty) the Minster of our Lady. This church however was closed, and in winter only open on Saturdays during 2 hours, and in summer on weekdays during 3 hours. Although we managed to peer inside through a glass door, I would have preferred to walk around at my own leasure.

Minster of our Lady - Roermond

Having been born and bred in the Calvinistic Western part of the Netherlands, the almost Burgundian atmosphere in the Southern part of the country was a pleasant surprise to me, even on a cold, windy day in winter. I will certainly go back to Maastricht if we ever happen to be in the vicinity on a warm, sunny summer’s day!

The link to the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle can be found here.

Closed for renovations

We have seen almost all churches in the vicinity, inside and outside. However, there are still two churches on our list of buildings of which the inside could do with some proper photographs.

2014 Interior - Buffières

A group of people have been busy for a couple of years now, during the summer, with the restauration of a ceiling painting in the apse of the church of Buffières. During winter there is no work done, but the scaffolding is still there, which makes it impossible to take some proper pictures of the apse. An article in a local paper suggested that the works would be finished in August 2014, but a visual inspection in September denied that, and a phone call to the organisation that finances the restoration learned that the work will continue in 2015.

2014 Interior - Milly-Lamartine

The church in Milly-Lamartine has been closed for a couple of years due to danger of falling debris. When we decided to check again on a day the town hall would be open, we noticed that some restauration work had started. The roofers that were occupied with it had left the side portal of the church open, which enabled me to have a quick snoop inside. The renovations should be finished before May 2015, according to a sign outside. The falling debris sign however is still nailed to the door.

2014 Bell tower - Ougy

Ougy has a church which has been amply covered by me. When we passed by there for a completely different reason, we noticed scaffolding and a notice board about the restauration of the church. Hopefully they will be able to do something about the moisture ingress, a problem of which a lot of old Romanesque churches are suffering.

The link to the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle can be found here.

Five and a half years

When we got acquainted a bit with the Romanesque churches in this area I stumbled upon an article in the local newspaper about the church in Perrecy-les-Forges.

Perrecy-les-Forges

That is a good three quarters of an hour drive from here, hence we saved this for a later occasion. But never put off until tomorrow …
A couple of years later, we still had not seen the church, we read in the same paper that from April 2009 the church had been closed for security reasons. Hence we had been too late!
Later again we found out that one of the highlights of that particular church, the narthex with a beautiful tympanum and lovely carved capitals was open to the public.

During the restaration

In September 2013 we finally made a trip to Perrecy and found out that the narthex was indeed more than worth it. We could look inside the nave through the big doors, but we were not allowed to enter. All we could see were ladders and scaffolding.
After almost a year, around August 2014, we decided to send an email to the association involved in the restauration of the church. I had read in July 2014 on their website that the church was about to be re-opened to the public.

After the restaration

However, this sort of “news” is not always reliable, and the internet version of the local newspaper had not yet mentioned the festive opening of the church. That was enough reason to ask for a written confirmation of this news.
French in general are not terribly keen when it comes to answering emails from “strangers” (i.e. people they do not know the name of), so we were pleasantly surprised to receive an answer: indeed the church was open as of 8 July 2014!
The trip proved to be more than worth it. The church did not just boast an impressive collection of differently decorated and shaped imposts; the crossing in its own right was very impressive, if only for its dimensions. The five and a half years had been well used by those responsible for the restauration of the church!

The crossing

For an album on the subject, click here.

More Romanesque churches galore can be found in the immediate vicitiy of La Tuilerie de Chazelle.

Byzantine churches

When I was more or less finished with the map of Romanesque churches outside Burgundy and within Europe, I got the bright idea to incorporate one of the remaining pages of van Boxtel’s website, the one about "Byzantine churches", on this map as well. That was a bit more work than anticipated, and the result was a bit disappointing, partially caused by the fact that standard software utensils I had used so far all of a sudden were no longer available.

The "old" map of  Europe

To figure out how on earth to work with the revised software I decided to produce a separate map for the Byzantine churches. That turned out to be quite successful, were it not that I could only see the map on my screen when I was logged in as the owner of the map; if I was not logged in I could not view the map. After a lot of trying, cursing and swearing (I was on the verge of throwing my PC through the window) I finally found, hidden deep inside the software, an option to make the map publicly accessible. The next step, but I will wait a while with that one, is to remove the Byzantine churches from the Romanesque map. Here follows a very concise introduction to this new map.

Byzantine churches in Europe and the Middel East

Other than the Burgundian pages, this page did not claim any form of completeness. It really was a subjective choice of the maker of this site, and not a choice based on the "best", the "best preserved" the "historically most interesting buildings in an area".

Colours per country, towns alphabetically ordered

1. The pins have the same colour per country , hence green is Italy, red is Turkey, etc.



2. The place names are alphabetically ordered per country.

A typical entry

Typical entry
3. Each entry (hence each church or building) has at least one picture, in most cases copied from van Boxtels website, where possible however taken from my own stock in various Picasa Albums. If the latter is the case a link to the appropriate album is included. Also the accuracy of the location on the map is given : 100% is spot on, 50% means in the right town,


but exact location unknown to me.


The link to the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle can be found here.

Army talk

The Reference Book for the Soldier

When we had a look around the church in Jambles at one stage of our visit a long forgotten sentence I learned in the army popped up in my brain. When I was called up for duty in the sixties, every recruit was issued with a copy of the “Reference Book for the Soldier”. I am not suggesting for one second that that was good reading material, but some of the entries were quite comical in their stupidity. The one I liked best was (this is not a literary quote) : “a soldier should only be reported as fallen in battle when the head is visually separated from the body”. Specialist subject - the bleeding obvious? Another one I liked was : “Argus listens in” (similar to “a slip of the lip can sink a ship”), referring to thousands of Russian spies that were out to destroy the Dutch army. Those were the days that the Russians were our sworn enemy. Another one I quite liked was “Observing is seeing without being seen” about artillery scouts or observers. I imagine a retired field Marshall brooding on that slogan for months on end. And still it was that one that popped up in my anti-military brain. Now what does this have to do with Romanesque churches? Not much, though…

The altar seen from the chapel - Jambles

The church in Jambles has a separate chapel for the Seigneur (Lord of the manor), and that chapel is separated from the space for the altar by a wall. In that wall an opening has been made, not perpendicular to the wall, but at an angle, in such a way that one can see the altar from the chapel, but the church goers cannot see what is going on in the chapel. That way the Lord of the manor can watch the show at the altar without being seen by the bourgois. QED: “Observing without being seen”.

The chapel seen from the altar - Jambles

I had seen similar holes in chapel walls (amongst others in Cruzille, at least something that strongly resembled this one), without knowing why it was there. Well, at least I know now!

A similar wall opening - Cruzille

The link to the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle can be found here.

The world is bigger than just Burgundy!

Some people are not very broadminded when it comes to their judgement of architecture, music, art, etc. In itself there is not much wrong with that stand point; it only becomes a bit of a menace when people try to inflict their taste on others.

Interesting in its own right!

I hope I am not so narrow minded when it comes to appreciating art. A good way to check that statement presented itself when I started digitalising my old slides. Over the years I had built up a collection of a good 10600 of those now almost obsolete pictures, taken in Europe, Asia and North-America. Whilst scanning however, I came across a far bigger number of Romanesque churches than I remembered having ever seen. And since it is nicer to share something than to keep it for oneself, I send a list of all my slides to the creator of "Bourgogne Romane”,who turned out to be interested in a number of my old slides. And again several of my pictures appeared on the webpage “L'Europe Romane”, a collection of more or less randomly chosen churches for which pictures were available.

Map of Europe

Other than the Burgundian pages, this page did not claim any form of completeness. It really was a subjective choice of the maker of this site, and not a choice based on the "best", the "best preserved" the "historically most interesting buildings in an area".

Colours per country

And since I am really keen on knowing where to find something (be it a town or a building) I decided to create still another map. In the mean time this map, which started off as just another thing to keep myself busy, has grown more than I thought it would. And even though there are still buildings being added, the map is roughly ready for use. And of course that requires a concise instruction for use. Well, here we go!

1. The pins have the same colour per country , hence lightblue is France, purple is Great Britain, etc.

Place names alphabetically

2. The place names are alphabetically ordered per country.

Typical entry

3. Each entry (hence each church or building) has at least one picture (the baptistère in Firenze e.g. has 3 pictures attached), in most cases copied from van Boxtels website, where possible however taken from my own stock in various Picasa Albums. If the latter is the case a link to the appropriate album is included. Also the accuracy of the location on the map is given : 100% is spot on, 50% means in the right town, but exact location unknown to me.

Two types of pins

4. On the maps I have used pins with a black spot for churches of which only van Boxtel possessed pictures, and pins without a black dot for buildings we both had pictures of.

Roma

5. To more or less complete the references to "Bourgogne Romane" a link has been provided to van Boxtel's separate pages "The ancient churches of Rome", "Pisan Romanesque Art" and "The ancient churches of Ravenna".

The region of Burgundy

6. In the centre of the 4 departments that make up the region of Burgundy the coat of arms of each deparrtment is displayed with reference to the detailed page of Bourgogne Romane and my detailed map of that department.







The link to the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle can be found here.

Poetic license

Altaar - Avenas (69)

During our many visits to Romanesque churches I usually pay a lot of attention to the architectural details (columns, capitals, arches), but relatively little to religious paraphernalia in that church (altars, baptismal fonts, statues of saints).

Madonna met kind -
Saint-Huruge

Of course there are some exceptions, such as churches with an extremely beautiful altar (e.g. in Avenas, 69) or with a statue of a saint which is dating back a thousand years or so (such as in Saint-Huruge, 71).
However, it pays off to keep your eyes open also when the paraphernalia are not that old. And I am not referring to the aesthetic value of some statues, but to deviations from the “norm”.
I had never realised that there was such a norm where statues of saints are involved, but thinking about it it seems logical. Church goers were, certainly in a distant past, illiterate, and no matter how often you scribble St-Peter under a statue, the fact that this guy carries one or more keys identifies him better than words could do.

Sint-Agathe (Wikipedia)

Hence each saint has his or her own protocol: Saint-James the Greater always carries some pilgrim’s scallops with him, Saint-Denis of Paris walks around with his head in his hands, Saint-Agatha carries her cut-off breasts around on a platter at the same time holding an olive branch, Saint-Fiacre has a spade in his hands, etc. Every saint has his own image, and whether you order a statue from Paris, Lyon or Marseille, it will always look roughly the same.

Sint-Agatha - Jambles

But not each statue comes from a factory. Some are produced by the local sculptor, wood cutter or artisan, and they can allow themselves some poetic licences.
In the church in Jambles we encountered a statue of Saint-Agatha, still in the possession of both her breasts and carrying a cross instead of an olive branch.






In the same church we found a rather plastic depiction of the Holy Trinity….

Heilige Drie-eenheid - Jambles

Saint-Fiacre
(foto Christophe
Finot - Wikipedia)

In Sassangy we bumped into Saint-Fiacre. The guy looked relatively modern, and was not only carrying his spade but also a watering can. Not being very well versed in recognising Roman-Catholic saints, I thought they had accidentally purchased a statue of Alan Titmarsh instead of one of the patron saint of gardeners…

Saint-Fiacre - Sassangy

The link to the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle can be found here.

Break your head over this

Recently we attended a lecture with the subject “le culte celte des têtes coupées” with as a starting point a few sculpted heads embedded in the walls of the Romanesque church of Santilly.

Santilly

The origins of these sort of sculptures is obscure, and is often attributed to the Celts during the Gallo-Roman period. The lecture was trying to establish a link between these heads and head hunters or “simple” beheadings, from the head hunters in Papua New-Guinea via Indian tribes in South America to Greek and Roman human sacrifices. The whole story had “Chariots of the Gods” by von Däniken written all over it.

Modillons - Saint-Laurent-en-Brionnais

The lecture still left me with the question what is the background of these sort of sculptures. And here I am not talking of the sculpted modillons acting as consoles at the edge of a church roof (e.g. Saint-Laurent-en-Brionnais). They sometimes show different, often grotesque heads, but also depict animals, geometric patterns, etc. These sort of decorations do not seem to be illogical when a sculptor wants to decorate relatively small pieces of stone.
Another example is the tympanum of the church in Ormes. That is, again according certain sources, a remnant of Gallo-Roman (in origin Celtic) devotion, which existed for quite some time parallel to Christianity, certainly in the French country side.

Sucellus - Ormes

This head is supposed to be the god Sucellus, the god with the mallet. And for an agnostic contemplator there is not much difference between a Majestas Domini on a tympanum and a God with a mallet.
I am actually more intrigued by the solitary heads, seemingly without any logic attached to the walls of churches or bell towers. An interesting example can be seen on the bell tower of the church in Saint-Gengoux-le-National.
One can find them on a relatively big number of Romanesque churches in Saône-et-Loire. He who can explain their origin and background, let him speak up….

Saint-Gengoux-le-National

The link to the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle can be found here.

Could you open that door, please?

In the past we have had our share (as described in a number of previous blogs) of problems with accessing a church. However, once we had the name of the person holding the key (the mairie, the sexton, someone living next to the church) we usually obtained the key without any problems. On the other hand, there must be people randomly ringing someone’s doorbell near the church asking them whether they have the key. And that not everybody is happy with these unsolicited visits is clearly shown on the picture below.

Opposite the church - Chazelle

Chazelle church is normally open, although Mme S. who keeps the key and usually opens the church door in the morning, sometimes forgets or might be a bit on the late side. And although Chazelle church is a very charming one, to say that hundreds of tourists are flocking in day in day out to visit the church is a bit of an exaggeration.
However, the person living opposite the church must have regular callers, and that must aggravate this person so much that he or she has put the following notice on his or her door:
"- I do not hold the key to the church
- I am not the caretaker of the church yard
- Please contact the mayor of the commune (with full name and address)
- Thank you"

Gate and door, both open

The second sentence is a bit odd. The church yard has two gates, but neither gate has a lock. And what sort of people, other than the one and a half tourist per month, would be ringing the door bell opposite the church regularly? The only people I can think of are Taizé goers. Despite the fact that they have two churches in Taizé at their disposal one regularly encounters some kids, often but not always rather unworldly and zombie-like, in the churches, of Ameugny, Chazelle, Bray and even in Cormatin. They take possession of those churches as meditation centres. And there are far more of those kids around than the aforementioned one and a half tourist per month!

Interior Notre-Dame - Chazelle

The link to the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle can be found here.

It is finished

It must have been in July 2012 when I tried to get in touch with Eduard van Boxtel about his site “Bourgogne Romane”.

Orangerie - Cluny

Ever since that day a steady stream of emails went up and down between Chazelle and Rotterdam at first, Amsterdam later, with questions, answers, remarks, but mainly with pictures of Romanesque buildings in (for the biggest part) Saône-et-Loire. It started off with transferring pictures which I had in stock for possible future use on our own website. After I started studying van Boxtel’s website in greater detail I came across a number of buildings I did not know yet, but which seemed worth a visit.

Former church, now habitat - Ciergues

This soon lead to an interesting day out looking for a specific church, a quest for remains of Romanesque houses in Cluny, a long and tiring search for former churches almost unrecognisable due to renovations into a habitat, several expeditions in search of a chapel which was mentioned somewhere, but which could not be traced on any map (nor in real life after inquiring with the locals, I might add).
In the meantime, after having gotten the hang of it, I started to plot out all churches mentioned on “Bourgogne Romane” in Google Maps, which gave me even more inspiration for even more search actions…

Romanesque churches in 71

In short, the contact I built up with van Boxtel kept me until a few weeks ago off the streets (as it did van Boxtel, because he meticulously studied the pictures I sent him and put them on his site when appropriate), and it gave me and my better half, despite a bit of aggravation every so often with local authorities who did not want to play ball, two years of pleasure and satisfaction. But all good things come to an end, and even though a very small number of items on “Bourgogne Romane” still has not been solved by us (due to a combination of not interesting enough, not findable, too far away, and/or not accessible), I dare say that Romanesque Saône-et-Loire has been almost completely covered by us on the map as well as in real life with pictures.

That's all that rests in 71, folks...

That does not mean that there is nothing more to be visited; revisits sometimes bring unexpected surprises, but the big bulk of work has been done. A comparison between the number of 6, 5, 4 and 3-star churches which are covered with a separate page by van Boxtel in Saône-et-Loire, Côte-d’Or, Nièvre en Yonne speaks volumes. I really do like statistics, and that results in the following percentages (the percentage of churches with a link to one of van Boxtel's web pages related to the number of churches on his overall list):

Saône-et-Loire : 68% (281 of 411 churches) Bourgogne Romane resp. Google Maps.

Côte d’Or : 25% (76 of 306 churches) Bourgogne Romane resp. Google Maps.

Yonne : 21% (49 of 228 churches) Bourgogne Romane resp. Google Maps.

Nièvre : 16% (30 of 185 churches) Bourgogne Romane resp. Google Maps.

The 68% for S&L is rather conservative. In the category 1 or 2 star churches van Boxtel possesses pictures of the majority of those churches, but this material has not (yet) been translated into a web page. When I consider all placenames of which I am sure van Boxtel has pictures, the percentage all of a sudden goes up to 97% (400 of 411 churches).

Somewhere here lies a motte féodale - Loisy

How many churches in Saône-et-Loire already had their own web page before I started my contributions I cannot (unfortunately) retrieve. A cautious estimate is between 25 and 50%.
This however does not mean the end of this blog; during my trips I have stumbled upon sufficient interesting material to keep me going for a while. Hence: will be continued!

Revisit : capitals - Saint-Bonnet-de-Cray

The link to the website of La Tuilerie de Chazelle can be found here.