For a variety of reasons, legal and technical, I have yet to scan-in and establish links to any of the illustrative material. Thus so far I have focused on making sections of my thesis available which have few or no illustrations.
The history of the monastic life at Paray begins with the foundation of a monastery there by Count Lambert in the 970s.(Note 5) The document recording the event is not a foundation charter in the proper sense of the term. Since the document summarizes the Count's acts in favor of the new monastery, it was clearly written at some point after the fact, perhaps late in the eleventh century when the cartulary itself was drawn up under prior Hugh.(Note 6) The monastery was founded in 973 under the guidance of Saint Mayeul, abbot of Cluny, at a site known as Aurea Vallis or the Golden Valley. The church dedicated to the Virgin and Saint John the Baptist was supposedly dedicated in 977.(Note 7) At this time, Lambert richly endowed the establishment with holdings in the immediate area. In addition, he provided the monks with the relics of Saint Grat, a seventh-century bishop of Chalon. After Lambert's death, the complex was passed on to his son Hugh. Although a cleric, Hugh nonetheless became Count of Chalon. As both the Count of Chalon and a canon of the cathedral of Autun, Hugh confirmed the land grants that his father had made to the new monastic establishment and with his mother made additional donations. In May 999, soon after he became Bishop of Auxerre, Hugh gave the complex to the abbey of Cluny.(Note 8) The donation document suggests that the community had already degenerated spiritually by that date. To insure that Paray remained uncorrupted, Hugh granted the monastery, which originally had been independent and simply under the watchful eye of Saint Mayeul, to the great abbey outright.
As we saw in the previous chapter, many authors claim that important transformations took place after the change in the monastery's status and believe that at this time, the complex was moved from a hill outside of town down to the current site on the banks of the Bourbince. The cartulary, however, does not mention any such move. The eighteenth-century historian of Burgundy, Claude Courtépée, is mainly responsible for the confusion as to where Lambert's monastery was originally located.
Courtépée cited, without providing his source, a text stating that the monastery was located "juxta templum antiquissmum."(Note 9) The word templum in the text cited by Courtépée probably did not refer to an ancient temple, but rather a Christian church. Courtépée believed that this reference meant that the new foundation stood outside of the pre-existing town near an old church. Therefore, he located Lambert's monastery on the hill and the town in the valley.
As pointed out above when discussing the Perrecy charter, one of the two early references to Paray implies that the church existing at Paray at that time owned land that ran some distance down to the Bourbince, strongly suggesting that the river was some distance away from the church and hence the town. Assuming that Courtépée's source was reliable, and that the word templum does refer to a church, and not the remains of an ancient Roman temple, it seems likely that the templum of this text is the church of the Perrecy charter, and that both this church and the town were probably some distance from the Bourbince.
It was Courtépée who first published the idea that the monastery founded by Lambert was moved from an earlier site elsewhere to its present one after the establishment's donation to Cluny in 999. Courtépée himself seems to have had doubts concerning this tradition, as he carefully phrased his statement about this idea. About it, he wrote, "on croit que le comte Hughes fit transporter et rebatir à neuf le monastère aux portes de la ville."(Note 10) Moreover, he does not offer any indication as to where he came across this belief. In fact, there is no surviving earlier mention of it, and there is no extant documentary evidence from the eleventh or twelfth centuries to support the notion.
The name of Count Lambert's foundation, Aurea Vallis, as well as the description of its location as "in valle illa dumosa" clearly indicate that the monastery was located in a valley and not on a hill.(Note 11) In all the earliest documents, the place name for the location of the count's foundation of 973, Vallis Aurea, is often qualified by "apud Paredam." Such an appellation may indicate that the new monastery was not at or in, but rather somewhere near Paray; in other words, the monastery and the settlement, though near each other, did not share the same exact location.(Note 12)
We know that the remains of a church which now serves as the chapel for the municipal cemetery, located on a hill to the northeast of the modern town, was the parish church throughout the Middle Ages.(Note 13) What remains today indicates that this chapel belonged to an eleventh-century structure which was probably a rebuilding of the church mentioned in the Perrecy charter. If so, this church may indicate the location of the early settlement of Paray. Most likely, the new foundation of Lambert stood in the valley below.
The reference in the early charters to a source of building stone which had not been discovered previously suggests that the site of the new monastery lay in a relatively unexplored area.(Note 14) Décréau suggests that the stone found at Lambert's site corresponds to the outcrop of limestone farther south towards Romay, which was used for the eleventh- and twelfth-century construction of the present church and was exploited well into the nineteenth century.(Note 15) It could also be the case that the limestone outcrop upon which the present church stands is what remains of the stone source found in the tenth century near the original site.
Such a location for Lambert's foundation down near the Bourbince and not up on the hills to the northeast both makes sense of the distinction articulated in the early documents between Pareda and Vallis Aureae and has the virtue of siting the monastery in a valley where its place name indicates it belongs. It would seem that, as the monastery, which later became a priory of Cluny, gained in importance, the old distinction between Pareda and Vallis Aureae broke down, and the monastery in fact came to usurp the place name of the nearby settlement. This appropriation of the old name of the town for the later site of the monastery would explain Paray's rather unusual ecclesiastical topography in which the the parish church stood some distance from the town.
As Michel Bouillot has pointed out, the orientation of the present town is determined by the priory, and not the other way around, indicating that the priory existed before the town, which grew in a radiating pattern out from the priory to the north and east.(Note 16) If Bouillot's interpretation is correct, this observation would support the idea that Lambert's donation was from its origins located on the banks of the Bourbince at the site of the present church, and not in the hills outside of the modern town.
Two events in the eleventh century have been singled out by scholars as being particularly important for the history of the priory and especially for the architectural history of Paray. The first of these two events is the purported dedication of a church on 9 December 1004 by Abbot Odilo of Cluny. Scholars throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have cited this date.(Note 17) Cucherat, Chevalier, and Lefèvre-Pontalis, in his earlier article on Paray, have connected it to the surviving porch.(Note 18) Although a dedication on the Feast of the Conception of the Virgin would be appropriate for the priory church which was dedicated to her, there is no record of this act in the original sources.(Note 19) The earliest reference is by Courtépée. Again the wording he uses to relay this information, "on croit que le comte Hughes fit ... construire une belle basilique consacrée l'an 1004, le 9 décembre," strongly suggests that Courtépée himself was not entirely convinced that it was true. He may not have been citing an early source, but rather was merely recording this information, perhaps garnered from a secondary or other unreliable source, simply for the sake of completeness for posterity.(Note 20)
The second event that has been singled out by previous historians of Paray concerns Saint Hugh, the abbot of Cluny between 1049 and 1109. Many authors have closely linked Hugh to the priory at Paray and have suggested that he was responsible for the construction of both the porch and the main church.(Note 21) A member of the family of the Lords of Semur and the namesake of Hugh, bishop of Auxerre and Count of Chalon, Saint Hugh has often been seen as a local boy who made good. He supposedly considered Paray as his patrimony, making it only natural that he construct a church there that emulated the mother abbey. This close connection between Saint Hugh and the priory at Paray is not supported by the surviving documentary evidence. Indeed, Hugh took an active interest in monastic establishments in the Brionnais; however, his attention was not focused on Paray, but rather on the convent at Marcigny, which he and his family founded in 1064. A comparison between the cartularies of the two foundations makes this clear; time and again Hugh and his family concentrated their attention and financial support not on Paray but on Marcigny located further south and not far from Semur.(Note 22) Moreover, after King Philip I's division of the county of Chalon into two parts in 1083, Paray was located in the barony of the Charollais under the jurisdiction of the northern branch of descendents of the original counts that still resided in Chalon and not the southern branch located in Semur.
The authors who make Saint Hugh responsible for the eleventh- and twelfth-century construction at Paray cite an incident reported in Hugh's "Vita" to support their claim.(Note 23) According to the most reliable source, during a visit of Saint Hugh to Paray, a monk performing the office in the choir was rendered unconscious by a piece of wood that had fallen from a tower. Hugh, who was praying at another church at Paray, was called for, and was able to revive him.(Note 24) None of the versions of the incident indicate when it took place. The exact period of Hugh's life is not even certain. Hildebert refers to Hugh rather vaguely as "Christi veteranus."(Note 25) For someone who had been a monk since ca 1040 and abbot since 1049, the miracle need not have occurred when he was old and gray, let alone near the end of his life in 1109, as many authors have assumed.(Note 26) Many of these same authors thought that the piece of wood which struck the poor monk fell from scaffolding and therefore believe that the incident indicates that the church was under construction at the time.(Note 27) Again, no version makes such an explicit reference.(Note 28)
If the story is true, it provides additional evidence that there were two churches dedicated to the Virgin at Paray,(Note 29) and that at Paray a tower rose over the monks' choir.(Note 30) As we shall see in the chapters below, Hugh could not have been associated with the construction of the main church at Paray, because the present structure appears to have only been begun towards the end of the decade following his death. So we have to assume that the incident --assuming as well that it actually did take place and that the details reported in the various versions of Hugh's "Vita" are accurate-- occurred in a church earlier than the one now standing on the site.(Note 311)
A close reading of the preserved charters of Paray shows that the predominant patrons of Paray from the mid-eleventh century onwards were not Abbot Hugh and his immediate family, the lords of Semur, but rather the sires of Bourbon-Lancy, along with the local factions of that family the lords of Digoine.(Note 32) We must assume that it was the land donations from the minor nobility in the immediate region around Paray and not the more distant clan of Semur that made the construction of the new church possible.
In addition to suggesting who were the major patrons of the priory, the extant charters also indicate who was responsible for the priory's administration. Paray's cartulary furnishes the names of twelve of the priors who ruled the priory from its foundation down to the end of the twelfth century.(Note 33) The list is clearly incomplete. One of the cartulary's documents, drawn up towards the end of the eleventh century names five of the priors down to that time.(Note 34) This list begins with Andraldus, who is mentioned in two charters along with Cluny's abbot Odilo and Hugh Bishop of Auxerre and Count of Chalon.(Note 35) By around 1036 Gonterius had replaced him.(Note 36) The document listing the priors notes that Gonterius was responsible for some construction without providing any specific details.(Note 37) Following him was Segualdus, who may have subsequently served as great prior at Cluny in 1049. The document informs us that Girbertus served as prior after Segualdus, though it is not certain that Girbertus was Segualdus' immediate successor.(Note 38)
Following the discussion of Segualdus, the text apparently skips a number of priors and focuses on Prior Hugh, the prior who commissioned the document. According to both this document and the other charters, we know that Hugh was one of the most active priors at Paray. During Hugh's tenure, Paray received a number of major donations which made the priory much wealthier than it had been previously.(Note 39) His exact dates are not certain, but they seem to extend from the 1080s into the teens of the twelfth century. Thus his priorship may overlap both the construction of the porch and the commencement of the construction of the church proper. If this is indeed the case, perhaps we can see his collecting documents for the cartulary and the large number of donations occurring during his tenure as attempts to organize the priory's economic resources in order to pay for these construction projects.(Note 40)
From about 1125 to 1180, the counts of Chalon attempted, sometimes by violent means, to regain Paray as a personal holding. Their claims were without legal basis, since their predecessor Hugh, Bishop of Auxerre, had renounced all rights to the priory and its goods in 999. The counts' renewed interest at this time in the monastic establishment on the Bourbince must reflect its growing wealth and importance, perhaps the results of greater organization of the priory's extant holdings and of donations to aid the construction of the new church underway during this period. The acts against Paray were part of the counts' attacks against Cluniac holdings in their territory and an attempt to regain control of the southern half of the county which had been granted to the family branch centered at Semur at the time of the division by Philip I in 1083. In 1125, William I pillaged Marcigny and was able to temporarily impose his will upon the community at Paray. We know that the priory was in financial trouble during the middle of the century, perhaps as a result of the incursions of the counts of Chalon. A charter from 1151 relates that the bishop of Autun not only confirmed the half of the revenues from the church at Rigny-sur-Arroux, which the priory already held, but also on account of the poverty of the monks at Paray, gave the priory the other half of the revenues as well.(Note 41)
Renewed attacks by his son William II in the northern half of the county forced the abbot of Cluny to call for help from the King of France, Louis VII. After Louis' death, William again created havoc in the area forcing Philip Augustus to extract a treaty from him in 1180 guaranteeing the rights of a number of Cluniac establishments in the region, among them Paray. In the treaty of Loudon, as it is known, the counts of Chalon renounced any claims to taxation in kind from the residents of Paray. The treaty was confirmed again by the comtal family in 1205 and 1238.(Note 42)
As we shall see, the first incursions of the counts of Chalon occur just at the moment when the first construction phase of the priory church came to halt. Perhaps the economic distress, reported in the charter of 1151, was caused by the counts' raiding and led to the end of construction in the 1130s. Equally as important, the peace with the counts of Chalon occurs at the moment when construction of the church recommences in the fourth quarter of the century, suggesting that only when the counts' raids had come to an end was the priory in a financial state to recommence the construction of its church.
Send any comments or suggestions to Minott Kerr at:
mkerr@reed.eduLast Modified: 3 March 1997