© 1996 Minott Kerr. All rights reserved.
This afternoon I will address three issues concerning the former Cluniac priory church at Paray-le-Monial. First, I'll start at the west, and by comparing the sculpted imposts in the upper story of the porch at Paray to the remains of a previously unpublished building and by using Paray's cartulary to date this little known structure, I'll suggest that the porch at Paray was built sometime in the late 1080s or early 1090s. Secondly, I'll discuss the plan of the church proper, and point out that the three bay length of the nave, which has disturbed a number of modern scholars, is not as odd as has been suggested, and show that it is part of a trend of the second quarter of the twelfth century towards erecting smaller monastic churches. Finally I'll turn to the east end of the priory church and discuss it in light of Cluny III, and speculate as to how it might relate to the liturgical practices of the mother abbey as we can reconstruct them from the surviving Cluniac customaries and the monastery's statutes established by Peter the Venerable. (Slides Left and Right)
All modern scholars agree that Paray's two story porch belonged to a no longer extant structure that existed before the present church east of the porch, since the porch is set out on a different axis from the main church to the east and its masonry does not bond with this later structure. Nothing else is known about the earlier church to which the porch originally belonged. Excavation in the western bays of the present nave and north aisle might reveal some information about this earlier structure.
Some authors connect this earlier church to a dedication of a church at Paray by abbot Odilo of Cluny that supposedly occurred in 1004. However, the earliest extant reference to this purported dedication is made by the late eighteenth-century historian Claude Courtépée, whose hesitant wording in the passage which mentions this event suggests that Courtépée himself questioned the veracity of his source, which he unfortunately does not cite and that he seriously doubted that the dedication had actually occurred. Whatever was the date of the building to which the porch originally belonged, the design, masonry and ornament of the porch all indicate that this surviving part is related to churches in the Brionnais datable to the fourth quarter of the eleventh century. (Slide Right)
The ground floor of the porch was damaged by fire in the sixteenth century and was extensively restored in the nineteenth. In spite the great amount of restoration, the original eleventh-century masonry is easily distinguished from the restored work. The surface treatment of the original ashlars throughout the porch at Paray is similar to that on the larger ashlar blocks at Anzy-le-Duc (Slide Left), Montceaux-l'Etoile, Iguerande and what remains of the nave at Charlieu. The springer blocks set immediately over the imposts, that are almost square in shape and which give the arches a slightly stilted appearance, are typical of these Brionnais buildings such as we see here at Anzy at the left.
The porch at Paray is not lavishly decorated with sculpture. The quadrilobed piers of the ground floor though nineteenth-century replacements reportedly copy the originals. The restored bases are very close to some in the nave at Anzy-le-Duc and Charlieu. As Raymond and Anne-Marie Oursel have pointed out, the nineteenth-century capitals of these piers somewhat resemble certain capitals at Anzy, again as we can see here on the left. Thus the porch at Paray seems to fit nicely into the Brionnais context of the late eleventh century. If we examine the second floor of the porch, we can establish a much more precise date for this structure. (Slides Left and Right)
More of the original masonry is preserved at this upper level, which I show you now on the right. Note that the voussoirs of the arches do not continue across the full breadth of the soffit. Rather rough almost rubble fill is used between the smoothly finished voussoirs. This treatment of the soffits is particularly close to that in the east end of Anzy.
The piers and responds of the upper story carry a series of carved impost blocks, none of which seem to have been restored. Most of the blocks are rather simple moldings which are types used through out the later eleventh and early twelfth centuries, (SLIDES LEFT AND RIGHT) but a few are more elaborate with foliate decoration or animal heads and these can be dated more precisely. The small head on the impost, now shown on the screen, is almost identical with one still in situ among the ruins of a small church at La Motte-Saint-Jean about 10 kilometers west of Paray. (Slide Left) Details of the two heads shows how close the sculpture at the two buildings is. Near enough in my opinion to suggest that they were carved by the same hand and relatively close to each other in time.
Paray's cartulary establishes relatively secure dates for the structure at La Motte-Saint-Jean. La Motte was a small holding given to Paray by the lords of Bourbon-Lancy. The particular individuals involved in making the donation and those who witnessed the document, indicate that La Motte was given to Paray sometime in the 1080s. Most importantly, the donation charter relates that the land came to Paray with a stipulation that a church be built there. The church itself is mentioned in another somewhat later charter, which can be fairly reliably dated to the early 1090s, again on the basis of the individuals involved and those who witnessed the charter. The impost shown on the right belongs to the church mentioned in this slightly later charter. The general affinities outlined by earlier scholars between the porch at Paray and Brionnais buildings, and the similarity shared by the impost at La Motte-Saint-Jean with the one in the upper story at Paray allow us to date porch to the fourth quarter of the eleventh century, probably in the late 1080s or the early 1090s. The cartulary itself seems to have been drawn up in the 1080s, perhaps to reorganize the priory's lands in order to finance this construction. (Slides Left and Right)
The cartulary was again brought up to date in the late teens or early twenties of the twelfth century probably when the new structure to the east of the porch was being planned. I would now like to turn to this part of the building. The church east of the porch at Paray was constructed in two phases. The earliest phase of the church proper is closely related to the later construction phases of Cluny III indicating that the new project at Paray was most probably begun around 1120. The early phase at Paray laid out the entire plan of the new structure, established the elevation, and appears to have continued into the early 1130s, when it came to a halt. A second phase completed the church using the original elevation. Crocket capitals and masonry finished with a multi-toothed axe or bretture link this later phase to projects of the last quarter of the twelfth century and the early years of the thirteenth, such as the choir of Vézelay, the collegiate church at Montréale, and the Gothic phases of the collegiate church of Notre-Dame in Beaune.
The nave of the church proper is only three bays long. Believing the nave too short in relation to the elaborate east end, many authors have suggested that the new church was originally planned to be at least two bays longer. These critics of Paray's plan view the present combination of the three-bay nave with the older porch as a compromise to this hypothetical larger project. This grander project is usually associated with Saint Hugh, Abbot of Cluny, whose death in 1109 is believed to have brought construction to an abrubt end, resulting in the building we see today. The connection with St. Hugh is unlikely as the church wasn't begun until sometime late in the decade after his death. Moreover, the cartulary doesn't indicate any interest on his part in terms of donations to the priory. Furthermore, close examination of the plan and the fabric indicate that there is no physical evidence for such an alteration. If the porch were to have been destroyed and the nave continued two bays further west (Slide Left), the western limit of the nave would have been close to the irregular east bank of the Bourbince River, as shown in the 19th-century lithograph now on the left, as teh site was before the channelization projects of this century. Such a long nave, placing the west end of the church so close to the river, probably would have also precluded constructing a western porch complex, which seems to have been required for the more important Cluniac establishments in the region.(SLIDE LEFT)
Paray's short nave indeed starkly contrasts with the thirteen bays of Cluny III, which I now show on the left, or the intended ten bays of La Charité-sur-Loire. Paray, however, was neither the head of an order like Cluny, nor a major gathering point for pilgrimages like La Charité. Surely, it did not need a large nave for the elaborate processional liturgy or large crowds that would have gathered at the mother abbey or at Paray's larger sibling. Paray's cartulary indicates that Paray never had more than thirty monks. In addition, the priory was never the goal of an important pilgrimage, and the priory church did not serve a parish, as the town had its own parish church. Paray's short, three-bay nave is appropriate for a priory without special liturgical demands. Triple-aisled churches with three bay naves are, in fact, relatively common. In Burgundy itself, examples are the collegiate church at Montréal, Châteauneuf, Le Puley, Saint-Martin-de-Laives, Saint-Vincent-des-Près, Jailly, Mars-sur-Allier, Rouy, Iguerande, Malay, Saint-Point, and Varenne-l'Arconce, with the last seven being Cluniac.
During the 1120s when Paray was under construction large monastic churches were coming under criticism. In particular, Saint Bernard in his "Apologia" looked askance on large churches. Conrad Rudolph's work stresses that the section of the "Apologia" addressing churches and their ornament was not a criticism of Cluny III or even Cluniac monasticism in particular, but rather a critique of art as a possible spiritual distraction within the monastic context in general. While some Cistercian churches roughly contemporary with Paray, such as Fontenay have longer naves, churches with three-bay naves are found at a number of Cistercian sites such as Le Thoronet, Flaran and Silvacane. As these Cistercian and many of the Burgundian churches are later than Paray, Paray may, in fact, be an early example of a trend in monastic building towards shorter naves. As is typical of many aspects of Paray's design, the priory church represents a compromise between the larger projects of the region and the more typical smaller ones that dominated the Burgundian countryside.
Given all this, the question, for me, is not why Paray is not any larger than it is, as has often been asked or implied by most earlier scholars of the church, but why the priory church at Paray is in fact as large as it is. I cannot answer my question fully, but I think one way to approach it is to view the entire structure to the east of the porch at Paray as a reduction of the east end of Cluny III. That is, I would suggest that the entire church east of the porch at Paray is a reduced version, not of the entire church at Cluny as many of the critics of Paray's plan seem to want to view it, but rather a reduced version of the working part of the abbey church, which is here stripped down at Paray to serve the mere 30 monks of priory rather than the 300 of the mother abbey. Thus at Paray I think we might view the entire structure east of the porch as a sort of eastwork. (pause) Given this view I think one way that we might consider it is in terms of its liturgical function.
The ambulatory and radiating chapels at Paray and Cluny III played a key role in the liturgy and reflect the growing desire to articulate architecturally the increasing number of altars necessary for monastic churches. The main focus at both Paray and Cluny III was, of course, the main altar in the sanctuary, and the nearby choir. Secondary altars were also important. They were an essential part of liturgical processions. Serving as stations for the processions, however, was not the main purpose for their existence. These ancillary altars were the foci of so-called private, or more properly, votive masses. I think we should view the highly developed east ends of Paray and Cluny III in light of these competing demands of these different liturgical practices. Votive masses and the accompanying multiplication of altars for celebrating them were nothing new during the late eleventh and early twelfth century. (pause) Nor were the problems associated with them. If we can believe the eleventh-century Cluniac customaries and the twelfth-century statutes, the growing number of votive masses celebrated by individual monks increasingly came into conflict with the masses and offices performed by the community as a whole, a conflict, which that was particularly acute at the mother abbey, especially in Cluny II,(Slide Right) which I now show you on the right.
The sound generated in reciting these masses were one particularly serious problem. As the number of votive masses increased over time, difficulties created by them must have become more acute. We can imagine the problem of noise in a small church such as Cluny II, where very little space separated the monks in the choir and sanctuary from their brethern performing masses at secondary altars in the flanking apsidioles. The Cluniac customaries strongly suggest that this problem exsted in Cluny II and that it was alleviated by having these secondary masses read rather than sung. Both Ulrich's and William of Hirsau's editions of Cluniac practices call for the quiet or even silent reading of private masses. The growing number of monks at Cluny, perhaps coupled with the growing amount of sound produced by the ever increasing number of votive masses must have been important factors contributing to the decision to build a new and much larger church with a more developed east end at the mother abbey. (Slide Right)
In Cluny III, the very size of the building effectively separated the choir and sanctuary from the subsidiary altars. Doubling the aisles pushed the transepts further away to the north and south. Locating the choir between the two transepts helped separate this space from the secondary altars further east. And the ambulatory pushed them even further from the center of liturgical activity while providing easy access to them. Despite all this effort to separate the choir from the secondary altars and their chapels, votive masses apparently continued to be a problem at Cluny, and to alleviate this annoyance, Peter the Venerable, in one of his statutes, permitted private masses only after the day's major mass. (SLIDE RIGHT)
A priory like Paray would have had acoustic problems similar to those at Cluny, though on a smaller scale. Being smaller in scale meant that Paray could not handle such problems in the same way. Unlike Cluny III, the priory church does not have large interior spaces between the choir and sanctuary and the secondary altars around the eastern periphery of the building. Given this the ambulatory at Paray is particularly important for separating the potentially disruptive eastern chapels from the sanctuary and the choir. The ambulatory rather nicely both separates the chapels from the the sanctuary and the choir while providing easy access. Furthermore at Paray, an additional rectangular bay was inserted between the ambulatory and the apsidiole of each radiating chapels. Adding the extra presbytery bay between ambulatory and apsidiole moves the apsidiole with its altar further away from the choir and sanctuary than it would have been if the chapels had been simple apses. The two-part plan of these radiating chapels is not found at Cluny III, probably because of the larger scale of the abbey church, and seems to have been used for the first time at Paray.(Slide Left)
Thus I would suggest that the elaborate east end at Paray, as at Cluny III, reflects in part an attempt to resolve problems that arose in earlier structures from the increasing numbers of votive masses. The transept, ambulatory and radiating chapels served as effective means to separate the choir from the necessary but noisy ancillary altars while providing easy access to them.
To sum up. At the west end of Paray, the close affinity between the sculpted imposts of the upper story of the porch and the one at La Motte-Saint-Jean when used in conjunction with Paray's cartulary strongly suggests a date of the late 1080s for the construction of Paray's porch. To the east: the plan of Paray is a simplified version of the east end or working part of the third abbey church at Cluny. Paray's plan provides for additional altar space and circulation to it without interfering with the main focus of the church, the choir and sanctuary. Paray's short nave, not found at the abbey church, is a feature shared with many of the smaller churches in the area, and prefigures a number of smaller Cistercian churches later in the twelfth century.
If I may end with a plea. We need more regional studies, that is studies that examine the entire architectural production of a region, not just the biggest or the best preserved, or those located in particularly pleasant places to live. I hope that I have shown today that to understand Paray, the priory church can be seen in relation not only to Cluny III, the largest and most complex structure in Burgundy, but also to Cistercian buildings, and more importantly to many very modest Burgundian churches. In plan, as in other aspects of its design, Paray incorporates features of both the largest structures of the region and the smallest, and therefore represents a compromise between the two. Thank you.
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Created: 21 May 1996 Last Modified: 9 December 1996 (with thanks to Judith Rosenberg for reminding me that La Motte is west of Paray not east!!!)