How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth CenturiesO'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
History
How France Built Her Cathedrals: A Study in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
O'Reilly, Elizabeth Boyle
Architecture, Gothic; Cathedrals -- France
In 1106, Paschal II approved the Order and in Blessed Robert's lifetime
some five thousand gathered at Fontevrault. Abbot Suger, who was a young
student at that time near the new abbey, testified to the edification it
gave. A sermon by the Blessed Robert converted the fair Bertrada de
Montfort, who had quitted her ignoble husband, Fulk IV of Anjou, to
marry Philip I, king of France, which illegal union kept churchmen busy
during sixteen years; she callously brought her second master to visit
her first. The fight which Rome waged to preserve monogamy in western
Christendom deserves the highest praise. Bertrada died the second abbess
of Fontevrault. The historic names of France compose the list of
abbesses. The young widow of the only son of Henry I of England retired
here, after the loss of the White Ship, and her father, Fulk V of Anjou,
came to visit her as he quitted his career in Europe to take up his new
role as king of Jerusalem. Margaret of Burgundy, the builder of
Tonnerre's hospital hall, and second wife of Charles d'Anjou, St. Louis'
brother, was educated at Fontevrault by her aunt the abbess. About 1500
Abbess Renée de Bourbon built the Renaissance cloister. To-day the
famous house serves as a state prison.
Fontevrault church played a part in the Gothic story. Its earliest
cupola, over the transept-crossing, differs from those over the nave in
that its base is not distinct from its dome. Angers copied it in its
churches of St. Nicholas and St. Martin, and so did Saumur in St.
Pierre. When in 1119 Calixtus II dedicated Fontevrault, the church
consisted of the present choir and the transept. During the first
quarter of the XII century the aisleless nave was spanned by four
cupolas on clearly defined pedestals. Perhaps from Angoulême Cathedral
came the fashion of domes on pendentives, after some Fontevrault monks
had gone on legal business, in 1117, to the capital of Angoumois.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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