Where is fontevrault abbey

Founded in the early 12th century the abbey is set within a perimeter wall which was unfortunately not secure enough to withstand desecration by the Huguenots in the 16th century or partial destruction by the Revolutionaries in the 18th.

Napoleon had it converted into a state prison in and it remained so until -its most famous inmate being the writer Jean Genet. Since then it has seen a constant period of restoration removing the damage time had inflicted on it. Its history began with the formation of an unusual collection of monks, nuns and lay brothers who chose the location to form a community to care for the sick as well as worship.

It's founder Robert d' Arbrissel decreed that the order should be governed by an abbess and it stayed that way right up to the revolution. This holy alliance was given greater credence when its abbesses were appointed from noble families voluntarily or otherwise who gave the order great patronage and protection. The most famous of these being the Plantagenets and it is here they chose to be buried -- you will find the effigies of Henry II king of England and count of Anjou, his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine along with their son King Richard the Lionheart in the naive of the pristine abbey church.

There is an impressive visitors centre on the site and much to see including what is apparently the last remaining example of a Romanesque kitchen in France as well as the vast church, the chapter house and cloisters.

Over the years, portraits of nuns and abbesses have incongruously been added to these, creating a strange dimension to these sacred works. The byzantine kitchens are the particularity of the Royal Abbey.

This building differs from the others in its facades typical of the Poitou region, built in Charente stone. The octagonal form of this building and its roof prickling with pointy chimneys and fish-scale slating, have been a subject of much reflection for historians. Fontevraud smoked salmon, a feast for those women living in abstinence!

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It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website. Visit Fontevraud. Others commemorated members of the local nobility, or ladies of noble or royal rank who had been inmates of the House.

The Abbesses, it is said, were buried in a crypt under the choir which probably still exists; but several had rich tombs in the choir itself. Effigies on the English royal tombs at Fontevrault. Over the six royal bodies, at any rate, there were splendid tombs with effigies. Fortunately the effigies of Henry II. After being moved about many times since the Great Revolution—once even to Paris—and after repeated fruitless negotiations on the part of England for their transference to Westminster Abbey, they were at last allowed to rest in the apsidal chapel of the south transept, where they lie behind an iron grille with their feet toward the west.

One that of Isabella is of wood, the rest are of stone; and all are life-size and coloured. The four sovereigns are represented as lying in state on draped biers, and as wearing royal robes and crowns. King Henry has a sword by his side, and both kings now carry sceptres. These latter, indeed, are of modern workmanship, but Henry at least had carried one before. Though their present position is not that for which they were intended, they form, in their secluded apse, a most picturesque group, and, with their overwhelming historical interest, are well worth a far longer pilgrimage than that from Saumur or Chinon to Fontevrault.

Through the nave, which is by far the most interesting part of the Abbey from an architectural point of view, has long been inaccessible to visitors, it has fortunately been described with great care by M. How difficult his task must have been may be imagined from the fact that he found this part of the building divided into three storeys, the first of which was a refectory, the second a range of cells, and the third a dormitory.

To the first and third he was admitted, but not to the second, as it was occupied at the time by some political prisoners. Consequently he was compelled to complete his description from particulars supplied by two other antiquaries.

The nave of Fontevrault is, or was, most curiously roofed by a series of domes of distinctly Byzantine character; and for the convenience of those who are less acquainted with this than with other styles of architecture it will be well to describe that form of dome which is most properly termed Byzantine, and of which the church of St.

Sophia at Byzantium, built in the sixth century, offers the principal and perhaps the earliest example. The plan of such a dome shows a circle inscribed in a square, the former representing the actual cupola, and the latter representing four supporting arches, while the spaces left at the corners are the pendentives, which, rising from the pier-capitals to the crowns of the arches, connect the square substructure with the circular cupola, whose base they curve over to support.

To speak geometrically, they are portions of a hemisphere whose diameter in the diagonal of the above-mentioned square. The four domes over the nave of Fontevrault answer to this description—or rather answered to it once, for, with extraordinary vandalism, the actual cupolas have been destroyed in making a range of attics over the above-mentioned dormitory.

The height of the supporting arches from the pavement which has been slightly raised in modern times is a little over 12 metres. They are so slightly pointed as to be almost round, and are of two orders, the lower of which is carried by two engaged shafts upon the face of the square pier, which thus has upon its three faces six shafts altogether.

The bases and capitals are of a type which M. The broad buttresses of the exterior are of course placed at the back of these piers. Each bay of the walls is relieved in the lower part by an arcading of four round arches of two orders, the upper of which is enriched with a band of ornament, and is carried on an engaged shaft upon the front of a square pier, whose capital, including that of the shaft, is adorned with elegant foliage. This beautiful arcading which M.

The two windows in each bay seem too far apart, their spacing being determined by considerations of external rather than of internal effect, for it will be remembered that externally each bay is divided by a narrow buttress into two panels, and that it is in the middle of these panels that the windows are placed. It is curious that the jambs are not enriched with shafts internally. The pendentives of the four domes still remain, and spring from a point slightly above the pier-capitals. They are of wrought stone, and in construction are really of the nature of corbels; since their section, taken on the diagonal of the square plan, would show the beds of the courses to be horizontal such at least is implied in the general remarks of M.

Viollet-le-Duc on Coupoles. The pendentives of St. It has been already mentioned that the actual cupolas at Fontevrault have been demolished.

The old external roof, however, or at least its framework, remains, and its pitch shows that it must have completely covered the domes, their height thus accounting for the greater eminence of this roof externally, as compared with that of the transepts. The presence of Byzantine features in French architecture is sufficiently striking to justify some allusion to the channels by which this Oriental influence came into the west.

In the eighth century it appeared in the Rhine country through the intercourse of the east with Charlemagne, and, spreading southwards, was afterwards mingled, in the provinces of Champagne and Burgundy, with another stream of eastern influence, that had been introduced during the eleventh and twelfth centuries through the trade of the maritime towns about the mouth of the Rhone, and had travelled northwards along the course of that river.

But the churches which have the strongest claim to be called Byzantine, as possessing cupolas on pendentives, are almost exclusively to be found within the borders of the ancient Aquitaine, or, to speak roughly, between the Rhone, the Loire, and the Garonne. In each of these churches not only does the cupola rest on pendentives, but there is a series of such cupolas, this strange form of roof being clearly adopted from choice and determining the whole construction of the building.

It is because Fontevrault exhibits all these characteristics that M. Viollet-le-Duc, it is possible to assign to this Abbey Church a very definite place in the history of French architecture. By the end of the tenth century the Byzantine style had gained a footing in Italy, as the churches of St. Vitalis at Ravenna and St. Mark at Venice still testify, and its introduction into Aquitaine was largely due to the trading enterprise of the Venetians, who in the same century had founded settlements there, of which the most notable was at Limoges.

To the influence of these settlers, or at any rate to intercourse with Venice in some shape or another, must be ascribed the singular Cathedral church of St.

Front at Perigueux which, begun before , is almost a reproduction of St. Perigueux may be regarded as architecturally the parent, if not of all the churches showing Byzantine influence throughout Aquitaine, at least of those in the districts of Perigord and Angoumois and, it may be added, of Fontevrault.

Situated within the southern border of Anjou, Fontevrault is an isolated example of the style. Of all the old French churches possessing cupolas on pendentives it is the northernmost, and it is the only one which lies outside Aquitaine.

Its founder had preached in Perigord—it is said in St. Front that the Byzantine character of Fontevrault was immediately derived. Like the other derivatives of St. Front, Fontevrault is much less Byzantine than its prototype, its plan being the Latin and not the Greek cross, its masonry, if not its ornament, being Romanesque, and its domes never having been intended to appear externally.

This free adaptation of the uncompromising Byzantine of St. Front to western climate and custom and to the traditions of local architecture shows how strong a hold the foreign style had taken upon the land of its adoption. Nor was its popularity surprising. At the time of its introduction into France the only form of stone roofing in use was the barrel vault, which was unsuitable for covering large areas, and had moreover a strong outward pressure.

No such disadvantages, however, attached to the employment of a series of Byzantine domes. Such domes would cover a building of considerable width, and as each bay was square and bounded by four arches of equal width and pressure, those arches that spanned the building had their thrust counteracted by the pressure of those parallel with its axis—this latter pressure abutting at either end against the massiveness of the west front and of the apse respectively.

This system would probably have been adopted much more widely had it not encountered another which was equally stable and far more elegant and flexible, namely the Gothic groined vault on ribs, which appeared in the north of France in the twelfth century. The rival modes met in Anjou, and their amalgamation there produced that curious phase of early French Gothic which is sometimes denoted Angevin or Plantagenet, and in which the construction of the vaults is Gothic while their form is domical.

The first modification of the Byzantine dome consisted in allowing the hemisphere of which the pendentives are geometrically parts to complete itself, instead of interrupting it in order to erect the cupola proper upon its crown; or—to put the matter differently—in allowing the cupola and its pendentives to become amalgamated.

Instances of this occur in Angoumois and Saintonge, but they are of course too far south to have had any share in developing the Angevin vaulting. There is, however, an instance at Fontevrault, in the cupola already described under the central tower, and this cupola may be regarded perhaps as the actual link between the Byzantine and Angevin roofs, such a theory being borne out both by the presumable date of the building and by its geographical position.

The true Byzantine dome, says M. Laumer, but which is surely the Abbey Church of St. Under the influence of the groined vaulting introduced form the north the dome was further modified by the addition of diagonal ribs and sometimes of intermediate ribs as well, the former answering to the groin-ribs, the latter to the ridge-ribs; and these ribs gave the strengthening necessitated by the lower pitch and wider span by which the cupola was now characterised.

A good example of such a ribbed dome, dating perhaps from the latter half of the twelfth century, occurs over the crossing at the church of St. Pierre, Saumur.