A doyenné

Since I have discovered that our village Chazelle once was a doyenné belonging to Cluny I have been trying to figure out what exectly a doyonné is. The dictionary simply gives the word "deanery". Wikipedia is a bit clearer.

The tower and deanery of the doyenné in Bezornay

A deanery (or decanate) is an ecclesiastical entity in both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England. A deanery is either the jurisdiction or residence of a Dean. It appears that a doyenné consists of a number of parishes.
I also found out that around Cluny there had been a disproportional number of deaneries. To mention a few : Saint-Hippolyte, Bezornay, Jalogny, Chazelle, Mazille... They are all within a circle with a radius of 15 km.
Of course Wikipedia is not the only source of knowledge, and reading a book about Cluny, I stumbled upon a different and more logical definition of a doyenné: a doyenné is an agricultural unit, providing an abbey with agricultural products. According to this definition the big number of deaneries around Cluny seems all of a sudden very plausible and logical.
In the hamlet of Bezornay, near Saint-Vincent-des-Prés, is such a doyenné. We had visited the building in the past, but we had not found much more than a piece of defence wall with a tower and a gate, and at the gate a sign "No entry, work in progress". From the entrance the recesses for a drawbridge were clearly visible.

the crenellated wall

When we came here for the second time there was nobody around, so I peeked in through the gate. I noticed a crenellated wall, and within the walls stood a house. In order to have a look at the house itself I did not have trespass or to break any laws; when I walked down the path along the property I had a clear view of the house and former chapel. The chapel had on the outside a rather strange extension; an apse in the shape of a "demi-cône renversée" (reversed semi-cone).
This type of construction had been employed in the past inside Cluny III, and in the church of Semur-en-Brionnais something similar can still be seen. I do not make this up; my knowledge comes straight away from Le site sur l'Art Roman en Bourgogne. This site, by the way, also has a very handy glossary of terms used in Romanesque architecture, of which I have made an illustrated English translation.

The apse of the chapel with two storeys

With some pride I can announce, that not only my pictures have been added to the aforementioned site, but also that the definition of doyenné has been slightly changed to reflect the agricultural meaning of the word.

Practical information (courtesy of Eduard van Boxtel) :
Former chapel (habitat) Saint-Pierre in Bezornay (Saint-Vincent-des-Prés), 11th century, 3*

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