"The Former Cluniac Priory Church at Paray-le-Monial:
A Study of Its Eleventh- and Twelfth-century Architecture and Sculpture,"
(Ph. D. Dissertation, Yale University: 1994)
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.
Today, the former priory church of Paray-le-Monial stands picturesquely near the right bank of the river Bourbince at the southern edge of the modern town center. The church rises above buildings dedicated to the pilgrimage of the Sacred Heart and Saint Marie-Marguerite Alacoque on the east and southeast; the eighteenth-century cloister and monastic buildings on the south; the municipal park dedicated to Saint Hugh, the putative patron of the church, on the north; and a small place, a road, and the Bourbince on the west (Figs. 1 and 2). The area south of the gardens of the pilgrimage complex remained undeveloped until the twentieth century. (Note 1)
The church consists of two chronologically distinct parts (Figs. 3 and 6a). At the west stands a triple-aisled two-story porch stylistically related to buildings in the Brionnais which are usually dated to the last quarter of the eleventh century. East of this stands the church proper. This part of the building (Figs. 20 and 21) is later than the porch, much larger in scale, and laid out on a different axis. It is connected very closely in form, ornament and execution to the third abbey church at Cluny. Construction of this later part was probably begun sometime towards the end of the second decade of the twelfth century. Except for the Gothic chapel which replaced the original one on the south cross arm near the end of the fifteenth century, this later part of the church has come down to us remarkably well preserved.
Excluding the fifteenth-century chapel off the transept, Paray has commonly been viewed as an entirely Romanesque structure. Working with this traditional view of Paray in mind, I initially set out to study in detail the construction sequence of the main body of the church (excluding the porch which was begun in the 1080s); I wanted not only to understand the construction process of the period better, but also to comprehend how construction was related to architectural design.
Two discoveries at the outset of my close examination of Paray demonstrated that traditional dating of the entire church to the Romanesque period was not correct and forced me to reconsider my approach to the project. (Note 2) The first revelation which reoriented my investigation was the discovery of full-fledged crocket capitals (datable to the last quarter of the twelfth century) crowning the window colonnettes in the clerestory of the transept and nave. The second was my discovery of brettelé finish (also datable to very late in the twelfth century) on much of the masonry of the upper stories of the transept and nave. These discoveries indicated that much of the fabric though Romanesque in appearance was, in fact, Gothic in date. They also indicated that Paray could not have been completd in the first decade of the twelfth century, as some scholars had suggested, nor finished by the middle of the century, as others had believed. Instead, this type of capital and the treatment of the masonry demonstrated that construction at Paray must have lagged much further into the twelfth century than had been previously thought, probably continuing well into the thirteenth.
In addition to commencing the project under the erroneous assumption that the traditional dating of the church at Paray was correct, I wrongly assumed that I would need to examine the building only in relationship to the region's largest projects, such as Cluny III, Saint-Lazare in Autun and La Charité-sur-Loire, which scholars had traditionally associated with Paray. However, I quickly discovered that the sculpture and masonry at Paray was related, not only to churches of the same scale as Paray, but also to a host of the much more modestly scaled eleventh- and twelfth-century structures that still dot the Burgundian countryside. Such connections to these more humble Burgundian churches indicated, that if I wanted to understand the complex construction history of Paray thoroughly, I would have to study both the major monuments and the hundreds of smaller churches of the region. Moreover, as I came to realize that much of Paray was not only Romanesque, but Gothic in date, the number of related monuments that I needed to investigate necessarily grew to include not just the Romanesque structures in Burgundy, but Gothic ones as well. The fact that the smaller buildings of both periods were both poorly documented and poorly studied complicated my examination of Paray still further.
Despite the complexity and long duration of Paray's construction history, the design established at the outset was maintained throughout entire building. Thus, only part of my project addresses construction, and I have broadened my focus to include an analysis of Paray's design and the place of that design within the context of church architecture of the Romanesque period. This investigation has two parts. The first part is a rigorous formal analysis of the building that is undertaken to gain a thorough knowledge of the different aspects of its design, including its plan, elevation, massing, and ornamental vocabulary. (Note 3)
The second part is a detailed study of Paray's fabric that outlines the precise sequence of construction for the entire church. The two parts of my analysis establish a clear understanding of the building and its construction history and serve as the basis for comparing Paray to other structures. I compare Paray to other Burgundian structure buildings in order to date the different phases of its construction and to determine its place in local and regional architectural and sculptural trends. In comparing Paray to similar monuments in Burgundy, I show how Paray is related not only to the largest projects of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, such as Cluny III, but also to some of the most modest structures surviving from this period. In many respects, Paray stands as a compromise between the two. I also compare Paray to buildings outside of Burgundy to place the church within the general development of the twelfth-century European architecture.
In addition to a detailed analysis of the church and a comparison of the building to related structures, I have discuss more information about Paray in order to establish a more complete history of the church. As well as providing the first full account of the building's restoration history, I reexamine the priory's cartulary in order to outline the history of Paray to ca 1200 and thus establish the historical context in which the church's construction took place.
A close reading of the surviving charters strongly suggests a rôle for Paray within its region which differs from the one assigned to it by previous art historians. My reading of the documents suggests that, by the last quarter of the eleventh century, the major patrons of the priory were the nobility of the immediate vicinity of the priory, and not the more distant Lords of Semur and abbots of Cluny. Moreover, I examine certain charters in Paray's cartulary, along with modern analyses of Cluniac monastic practice in order to shed new light on the light that can be know about liturgical function of a priory church like Paray.
I have organized this material into extended chronological narratives as a corrective to past highly circumscribed studies of Paray. All too often, in the effort to support a particular argument, previous studies have focused on small parts of the discussions of earlier writers or certain, supposedly, key moments in the history of the priory or the restoration of the church. This myopic approach to Paray has limited what has been discussed. For example, earlier scholars of the church have taken a great interest in the charters from the priory's cartulary which discuss Paray's earliest history. However, art historians have essentially paid no attention to the rest of the documents collected there. This neglect has been unfortunate because the cartulary contains information about the priory that sheds important light on the extant church.
The thesis thus presents as complete a picture as possible of Paray's history to ca 1200 and of the restoration of the building. I hope that such an extensive treatment of these topics will serve as a starting point for further discussion and exploration. At the very least, I hope that such a comprehensive discussion will allow later researchers to spend more of their energy studying the church itself and less the archives in Mâcon and Paris.
The thesis begins with two background chapters. Chapter 1 reviews the previous literature and the state of the research on Paray, while Chapter 2 outlines the early history of the priory and the restoration history of the church. Building on this preliminary material, Chapters 3 through 6 describe and analyze the formal aspects of Paray while relating them to contemporary buildings. While Chapter 3 examines the porch, the three following plus an excursus turn to the church itself. Chapter 4 addresses its plan, Chapter 5 its elevation, and Chapter 6 its volume and spatial articulation. Between Chapters 5 and 6 a short Excursus discusses the possible sources for the pointed arch of Burgundian Romanesque architecture. Chapter 7 presents the construction sequence for the church and the evidence for my dating of the two main phases of its construction. The last three chapters address topics related to Paray's design. Chapter 8 examines the evidence for the cloister that predated the present one. Chapter 9 outlines what can be determined about the church's liturgical function from the laconic sources that have come down to us. Finally, Chapter 10 establishes the context for the predominant capital type used at Paray by examining its distribution in Burgundy and by looking at how it and other capital types were used in other churches of the region. The thesis concludes with a brief discussion of how the construction sequence of the church at Paray relates to the history of priory from the late eleventh century down to the first quarter of the thirteenth.
Send any comments or suggestions to Minott Kerr at:
mkerr@reed.eduLast Modified: 21 May 1996