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.
Whether addressing spiritual, political, historical or archaeological matters, Paray's greatest nineteenth-century apologist was Abbé François Cucherat. He wrote a number of articles, books and guides that concerned themselves with many aspects of the town and its most important monuments, especially the church. Most importantly, Cucherat knew Paray intimately before the church was restored by Etienne Millet in the 1850s. Often critical of Millet's work, Cucherat relates what was lost during the restorations which is not reported elsewhere.(Note 2)
Without indicating why he thought so, the abbé believed that the porch of the present building belonged to a church at Paray, reportedly, dedicated in 1004 by Abbot Odilo of Cluny. (Note 3) Other remnants of this earlier church were the capitals of the aisles, which Cucherat believed were re-employed.(Note 4) He considered the rest of the building to be a simplified version of Cluny III. For rather complicated historical and very superficial stylistic reasons, the abbé attributed the construction of the priory church to the 1220s, during the abbacy of Roland de Hainaut when the narthex of Cluny III was completed. (Note 5)
The sanctuary and ambulatory were for him of a slightly different date, apparently earlier, than the nave.(Note 6) The spiritual and liturgical importance of the sanctuary meant that this part of the church required the most attention;(Note 7) indeed, he considered the high quality of execution of the hemicycle capitals comparable to any Corinthian ones of ancient Greece. (Note 8) However, he did not find all the building so perfectly conceived. For Cucherat, the flat section of wall terminating the choir aisle where aisle wall and ambulatory meet was nothing short of disgraceful.(Note 9) Cucherat believed that the nave was originally planned to be two bays longer and that this original plan was changed to preserve the so-called "Tour du Moine Gare," the north tower of the porch, as a relic, because it was reportedly the place from which Saint Hugh of Semur, abbot of Cluny, was called to aid an injured monk.(Note 10) Despite their shortcomings, Cucherat's studies make a number of observations which later authors reiterate. They also provide important pre-restoration information that helps clarify the building's condition before the arrival Etienne Millet, the architect from the Monuments historiques Commission.(Note 11)
Another early analysis of Paray is found in the published archives of the Commission des Monuments historiques.(Note 12) The bulk of this anonymous article traces the history of the town and priory of Paray and then provides an account of the restoration undertaken by Millet. The detail of the latter makes this article a very important early study of Paray. According to the author, occupation of the present site on the river Bourbince dated only to the abbacy of Saint Hugh.(Note 13) The porch is seen as the oldest part of the building, but the author was not sure whether it belonged to a now destroyed church or was the remains of an earlier and smaller project of the present building. At any rate, the porch clearly belonged to the eleventh century. Its two façade towers also dated to an earlier period than the rest of the present church. A change in the supervisor of the work accounted for the differences between the two towers.(Note 14) The rest of the church was considered "very probably" the work of Saint Hugh. Like Cucherat, the author considered it normal that the east end of the building should receive the most attention; nonetheless the choir elevation was repeated in the nave.(Note 15) The author mistakenly located Paray in the Autunois and believed that its location there accounted for the classicizing elements found in the building. As at Cluny, Chalon, and Semur-en- Brionnais, the influence of the Roman gates at Autun could be seen.(Note 16) Finally, this author found the portals excessively decorative.
The first monographic study of the church at Paray by a professional archéologue was published by Eugène Lefèvre-Pontalis in 1885.(Note 17) For him, Bishop Hugh of Auxerre's donation of the monastery at Orval to the abbey of Cluny meant a move from the original site down to the Bourbince, where a new church was dedicated in 1004.(Note 18) Lefèvre-Pontalis saw the present porch as a remnant of this early eleventh-century building, which, judging from the size of the surviving porch, must have been quite large. He compared this porch with the narthex at Saint-Philibert at Tournus and thus dated it securely to the first quarter of the eleventh century. He even suggested that the porch at Paray might have served as the model for Tournus.(Note 19) Finding it difficult to reconcile the north tower of the façade with such an early date, Lefèvre- Pontalis considered the tower as a late eleventh-century reconstruction, suggesting analogues to towers in the Aisne and Oise regions.(Note 20) In contrast to all the other authors whom we examine here, Lefèvre-Pontalis believed that the incident of the injured monk reported in the "Vita" of Saint Hugh of Cluny took place in this earlier church. On the basis of the reference to Saint Hugh as "veteranus Christi" in one of the versions of Hugh's "Vita," he places the date of the accident late in the abbot's reign at the close of the eleventh or the opening of the twelfth century. Because the piece of wood that struck the monk fell from a tower over the "choro," he cites the incident as evidence for a lantern tower over the crossing of the earlier church.(Note 21)
According to Lefèvre-Pontalis, the nave and sanctuary were obviously later than the eleventh century; but he doubted both the dating of these elements by the author of the Archives entry (who he thought was the restoration architect Millet) to the lifetime of Saint Hugh and Cucherat's late dating in the early thirteenth century. Instead, formal analogies to Cluny III, which he believed was completed for the 1131 dedication; to Saint-Lazare at Autun, consecrated 1132; and to the collegiate church of Notre-Dame at Beaune, which he thought was finished in 1140, suggested a date of the second quarter of the twelfth century. More specifically, Lefèvre-Pontalis put forward a date of "vers 1140," for the transept and choir.(Note 22) To support this dating Lefèvre-Pontalis turned to the historical context. In his view, the years 1140-56 were particularly conducive for construction at Paray. By this time, funds were no longer being funneled to the construction of the great abbey church at Cluny, which had been completeed ca 1131-32. Furthermore, this period of the abbacy of Peter the Venerable was marked by continual new donations to the abbey's coffers. However, soon after Peter's death in 1156, Cluny and its lands were terrorized by the Count of Chalon. By 1180 when royal intervention has brought this harassment to an end, Cluny was in financial trouble.(Note 23) Only the choir and transepts of Paray had been built by the time of the crisis of 1156, when the monks were forced to cut short their original project, calling for razing the porch and constructing a nave five or six bays in length.(Note 24)
Evidently, Lefèvre-Pontalis believed Paray's construction was funded by direct intervention of the mother abbey. However, there is no documentary evidence for such financial support; more importantly, his account of Cluny's economic status during the abbacy of Peter the Venerable contradicts the now commonly accepted view that this period was a time of economic hardship, not conducive to construction on any grand scale.(Note 25) Nevertheless, Lefèvre-Pontalis suggested many ideas about Paray's artistic links to Cluny that were adopted in later discussion of Paray and were further elaborated upon.
In the conclusion of his 1885 article, Lefèvre-Pontalis wrote, that Paray could "toujours être étudiée avec un nouveau profit."(Note 26) Indeed, in 1913, he published a second article, in which he revised his chronology.(Note 27) Unfortunately, the author does not state explicitly why he changed his mind. He still believed that the 999 donation of Paray to Cluny meant a change of site to the river, but he no longer held that any remains of the church dedicated in 1004 still existed. The incident reported in Hugh's "Vita" suggested to him that the tower over the choir was under construction in the late eleventh century. However, he believed that this tower belonged to a structure which pre-dated the present one. Without further elaboration, Lefèvre-Pontalis also concluded that the porch still standing west of the church today was also under construction at this time.(Note 28) Apparently, he now thought that the porch was to have been retained from the start, that the nave had never been intended to be more than its present length of three bays, and that it was not possible to start the choir further east. He now dated the rest of the church to ca 1130.
The 1920s were the most fertile period for studies on Paray; Lefèvre-Pontalis' idea that the priory church was a replica of Cluny III was taken up with a vengeance. This suggestion was coupled with a trend in Romanesque studies among certain American and Burgundian scholars to see Burgundy as the birthplace of mature Romanesque sculpture by dating the east end of Cluny III to 1095 on the basis of the consecration of altars there in that year by the Pope Urban II. In so doing, the date for Paray was pushed much earlier.
Among these scholars, Jean Virey is particularly important for Paray, because his observations served as the foundation for much of the later discussion of the church. Virey's study is also important because he was the first scholar studying the priory church to support his assertions by citing specific physical evidence. In his view, this physical evidence suggested that the relationship between Cluny III and Paray was so close that the same monk must have been architect for both.
Like Lefèvre-Pontalis, Virey held that the 999 donation of Paray to Cluny resulted in the relocation of the establishment to the Bourbince in time for the dedication of a new church there in 1004.(Note 29) Also like Lefèvre-Pontalis, he saw the porch and the main body of the church as belonging to two separate epochs. Virey saw the south tower of the porch as built with small blocks of cut-stone masonry typical of eleventh-century construction of this area of Burgundy. For him, this tower was earlier than its companion to the north, but he found it difficult to date the earlier one as early as 1004. He thought that the north tower was rebuilt either at the end of the eleventh or the opening of the twelfth and was the model for a number of towers in the area.(Note 30)
According to Virey, the incident with the injured monk in Hugh's "Vita" proved that construction was underway at Paray at the end of the eleventh century. (Note 31) Paray's architect, believed by him to be a monk from Cluny, who after having built the chevet of the abbey church, then began work at the priory, finishing the east end there ca 1100.(Note 32) The nave followed. Originally, the plan called for the complete destruction and rebuilding of the earlier church dedicated in 1004. Lack of funds, however, meant that the porch was kept and the nave left one or two bays shorter than originally intended.(Note 33) According to Virey, the nave was the work of a single campaign completed around 1110-1120.(Note 34)
The telling evidence for Virey was the close similarity ("presque identité") between the still extant chapel of Saint-Léger of the abbey church at Cluny and the radiating chapels at Paray. Virey noted that these chapels share the same type of masonry, the same engaged half column buttresses (rather rare in the region), the same plinths with similar moldings and identical billet string courses joining the imposts over the half columns and passing over the windows.(Note 35) In plan, both Paray and Cluny III showed the odd narrowing between their choir aisles and ambulatories.(Note 36) In a word Paray's chevet was, if not identical with Cluny's, at closely least analogous to it and "à peu près son contemporain."(Note 37) They also shared the same nave elevation, the prototype of which, Virey saw in the Porte d'Arroux in Autun.(Note 38)
Virey also believed there were important differences between the two buildings. In contrast to Cluny III, Paray shows a discrete use of sculpture;(Note 39) he cited the differences between the hemicycle capitals of the two churches,(Note 40) and noted that in contrast to Cluny, except for a few capitals, Paray systematically rejects the representation of the human figure.(Note 41) Virey also noted that Paray's north portal relates not only to Cluny, but also to Charlieu.(Note 42) He stressed the less delicate execution of the south portal,(Note 43) the different splays for windows at different heights,(Note 44) and the relatively poor quality of the interior ashlars at the west of the church.(Note 45)
Despite such attention to detail, Virey's essay is not a detailed and comprehensive analysis of the building. Nowhere does he explicitly outline his chronology. His observations are often vague, and sometimes the comparisons he makes with Cluny III are ill-founded.(Note 46) Perhaps this essay in the Petite monographie format is best understood as a guide for the curious "amateur." This format probably offered Virey a chance to present his observations and ideas on a building that he had not previously discussed in print. Virey's discussion of Paray is more descriptive than analytical, and while similar to many of the entries in his Les églises romanes de l'ancien diocèse de Mâcon, it falls short of his article on Tournus in the Congrés archéologique of 1928. Nonetheless, in comparison to those who preceded him and to those who closely followed, his work did much to demonstrate more precise artistic ties between Cluny and Paray.
The work of Charles Oursel is important for the study of Paray, because he attempted to establish even closer links between the priory church at Paray and Cluny III than Virey had suggested. Charles Oursel is also important for the study of Paray because he was the first author to develop fully the idea that Saint Hugh was personally involved in the construction of Paray. According to him, both Cluny and Paray were personal enterprises undertaken by Saint Hugh. To support this idea, Oursel noted that Hugh belonged to the family of the Lords of Semur who had intermarried with the Counts of Chalon --the founders of the monastery at Paray. Hugh, Count of Chalon and Bishop of Auxerre, who deeded Paray to Cluny, supposedly had a great influence on his namesake. Thus, at least according to Oursel, the abbot of Cluny:
portait évidemment à Paray-le-Monial un intérêt particulier parce que, pour lui, ce monastère était vraiment un bien de famille, sa prospérité un héritage et une tradition de famille, une obligation filiale à laquelle il ne pouvait manquer de rester fidèle. (Note 47)
As we will see in the following chapter, Saint Hugh's ties to Paray are not so certain. Oursel believed that the miracle concerning the monk at Paray proved that construction was under way on the crossing of the present church during Hugh's lifetime.(Note 48) According to Oursel, the short nave was out of proportion with the grandiose chevet and was the result of the church's hasty completion after Saint Hugh's death.(Note 49)
Oursel's analysis essentially concentrates on the church proper, which he attributes to Saint Hugh. Besides sharing similar elevations and decorative motives, Cluny III and Paray show the same interest in multiple levels of lighting, as can be seen in the rare double tier of windows in the ambulatory. Furthermore, both churches narrow where the choir aisle opens on to the ambulatory. Oursel believed, in part, that this constriction was a structural necessity in the critical area where the hemicycle columns carry the apse vault. In addition, he believed that this constriction created a correct perspective when one looked eastwards from the transept. For Oursel, Paray, like Cluny, was a building of perfect balance and stability; the need for a correct perspective of Paray's compact chevet required inserting a square bay between the ambulatory and the apses of the radiating chapels. In the final analysis, for Oursel, the similarity between the priory and abbey churches was the result, first of all, of a common patron, Abbot Hugh, and, secondly, of being built by the same workmen. Essentially, Charles Oursel is developing here ideas articulated by Virey, since having the same patron and workmen responsible for both Cluny and Paray explains why Virey's architect worked at the two sites, and how the work at these sites came to resemble each other so closely.
Raymond Oursel, the son of Charles, has written extensively on Paray and has modified his views on the building's history several times. Despite changing his views about Paray, the younger Oursel has based all of his discussions of Paray upon the work of his father. His earliest study of the priory church was co-authored with his wife Anne-Marie.(Note 50) They, like Lefèvre-Pontalis, Virey and the elder Oursel, believed that Bishop Hugh's gift of Paray to Cluny in 999 was followed by a change of site from a hill somewhere outside of the present town to the banks of the Bourbince. The 1004 dedication by Odilo referred to a new, but unfinished building at this new site. Most probably, the porch that still stands today is a remnant of this church and shows that the building was still under construction ca 1050.(Note 51)
Raymond and Anne-Marie Oursel were the first writers to pay detailed attention to the porch. They compared the masonry of its arches to work at the Cluniac priory of Saint-Nazaire at Bourbon-Lancy, at the priory of Perrecy-les-Forges, and in the east end of Anzy-le- Duc.(Note 52) For them, the restoration architect Millet reliably copied the remains of the capitals of the ground floor piers. The Oursels compared the multi-colonnette section of these piers to the hemicycle supports of Bois-Sainte-Marie.(Note 53) They also suggested connections between the capitals in the porch at Paray and some at Anzy, as well as others in the nave and the cloister of the Cluniac priory of Saint-Fortunat at Charlieu.
When the couple turned to the main part of the building, they relied upon the observations of Charles Oursel and Jean Virey. For example, they accepted the elder Oursel's views concerning the priory church's close relationship to Cluny III and Saint Hugh's direct involvement in its construction. They quoted at length the section of Charles Oursel's article concerning Hugh's filial attitude towards the complex. According to them, the miracle in Hugh's "Vita" proved the abbot's r“le in its construction. Like the elder Oursel, they believed that the priory church was an exact replica of Cluny III.(Note 54) Claiming to accept Virey's chronology, the younger Oursels maintained that the analysis of the 1926 Petite monographie was the definitive one. However, they differed from Virey in claiming that the east end finished by 1100 (rather than ca 1100). But like him, they believed that the construction of the nave was halted by Hugh's death, and asserted that Hugh's demise forced the monks to complete the church quickly, perhaps modifying the plan. Without indicating exactly where, they detected some unfinished capitals and anomalies in the triforium. The Oursels inferred that these compromises and modifications were evidence for a decline in the quality in the work resulting from the quickened pace of construction which occurred when the project no longer had a patron.
While they closely followed Jean Virey and Charles Oursel in their discussion of the design and construction of Paray's nave, Anne-Marie and Raymond Oursel did contribute towards a better understanding of the sculpture at Paray. Although they maintained that much of the priory's sculpture was not of the same quality as Cluny III's, the Oursels observed that much of the carved ornament in the east end and around the north transept portal was not as simple as earlier scholars had suggested.
For the Oursels, the sculpture at Paray followed the general sculptural trend in southern Burgundy during the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries. According to them, the atelier that worked at Cluny III produced two kinds of sculpture: a decorative type consisting of foliate or interlace designs, which they deemed any skilled artisan could execute; and a second type, exemplified by the Cluny hemicycle capitals, which they considered to have been the work of a genius. They believed that sculpture of this second type appeared in the Brionnais only before 1100 or after 1115. Between these times, the artisans responsible for this high quality sculpture worked exclusively at the most important site in the region, Cluny III. Paray, which, according to the Oursels, was carved precisely during this period, could attract only minor artists capable of merely carving the first type of sculpture.(Note 55)
Despite devoting more attention to the sculpture at Paray than had previous scholars, the Oursels kept their discussion of Paray's sculpture rather general. And while distinguishing between the work of the east end and that of the nave, which because of some unfinished capitals they dated slightly later, they did not establish the exact differences between the sculpture of these earlier and later parts of the building. Moreover, while seeing Paray's sculpture as belonging to the regional trend of 1100-1115, they did not indicate how the work of the church's earlier parts related to the pre-1100 trend.
In later publications, Raymond Oursel clarified his ideas. In the entry on Paray in the Dictionnaire des églises de France, Oursel considered the priory church the most exact replica of Cluny III. He cited the miracle recounted in Saint Hugh's "Vita" one of the few "textes précieux" for dating Burgundian Romanesque architecture. While still asserting that Saint Hugh's death brought construction at Paray to a premature and rapid end, Oursel now thought that the latest work at Paray was the north tower of the porch which he dated to ca 1120.(Note 56)
In Bourgogne romane, Oursel made even more significant changes in his chronology of Paray. No longer able to find any aspect of the porch that would permit him to connect it with the church dedicated in 1004, Oursel now maintained that a date for the porch before 1050 seemed impossible. On the basis of the sophisticated quadrilobed piers of the ground floor, he suggested that the porch was constructed between 1050 and 1080.(Note 57) These piers had traditional Brionnais type bases of this date.(Note 58) He still dated the north tower to ca 1120, suggesting that it served as a model for a series of similar towers in the region. Importantly, Oursel discussed the interior of the upper floor of the porch, a subject which had never been addressed by his predecessors. His three photographs of the upper floor of the porch were the first to be published.
Expanding the idea articulated by his father, Oursel further developed Saint Hugh's relationship with the priory. He maintained that the older Hugh had been the saint's spiritual adviser and instrumental in his choice of vocation. Thus, for the younger Oursel, the church east of the porch became almost a votive shrine, built by Saint Hugh in the memory of his great uncle and namesake.
The miracle related in Hugh's "Vita" became proof for Oursel that the choir of the present church was in use during the abbot's lifetime. He believed that the poor monk was struck by a piece of scaffolding falling from the crossing tower still under construction at this time.(Note 59) Oursel apparently still thought that Hugh's death dried up financial support for the project. This led to the shortened nave when construction had to be hastily completed. While believing that construction of the nave ended abruptly around 1110 for financial reasons, Oursel does not explain how work was able to continue on the north tower of the porch to ca 1120.
In addition to reconsidering the problem of Paray's chronology, Oursel also changed his mind concerning sculpture at Paray. In a building with such careful attention given to light, sculpture could be nothing more than an accessory. He regarded the contrast between the richness of the portals on the exterior with the starkness interior as intentional. Clearly, Oursel believed that the relative simplicity of the sculptural forms reflected the views of church's patron. Oursel attributed the "Arabic" flavor of the north portal (Fig. 33a) to Saint Hugh's voyages to Spain in 1072 and 1090 during which the abbot's aesthetic sensibility would have permitted him to comprehend just how great a r“le such decoration could play in "la synthèse architecturale que son [Saint Hugh's] génie était précisément en train de concevoir."(Note 60) Here, Oursel made assertions without supporting them. For instance, he did not suggest any sites that the abbot might have seen in his travels that would have helped the abbot form such ideas. However, when Oursel turned to discuss some of the formal aspects of Paray's architecture, he is at his best, especially in his brief analysis of the church's interior division and the disposition of its volumes in relation to light and exterior massing.
Edson Armi was the first scholar to examine Paray in detail with any archaeological sophistication. That is, he was the first researcher to study Paray's fabric in rigorous enough detail to provide concrete physical evidence both to establish a sequence of construction for the church and to make comparisons with related structures. In essence, Armi further refines both Virey's study of Paray's masonry and Raymond and Anne-Marie Oursel's discussion of Paray's sculpture. His close analysis of the masonry and the sculptural ornament allowed him to link Paray much more closely with Cluny III than scholars had previously. The great similarity in the treatment of masonry and ornamental details that Armi established between Paray's east end and the remains of the abbey church allow him to conclude that the same ateliers of masons worked at both buildings. Though this idea is effectively one previously expressed by Charles Oursel, Armi's restatement of it is made much more tenable by the amount of detail he is able to amass to support his conclusion.
Concerned only with the ateliers that he believed worked at Cluny, Armi left the question of the porch aside, and dealt only with the church proper. Masonry analysis and comparisons of moldings and sculpture coupled with masons' marks led Armi to conclude that an atelier of masons that worked on the later campaigns at the mother abbey also built much of the priory church at Paray. They laid the foundations from west to east and were responsible for the first few courses around the entire perimeter of the building. The entire east end and the full elevation of the east walls of the transept immediately adjacent to the crossing were also their work. According to Armi, these artisans were also responsible for the rest of the east walls of both cross arms up to, approximately, the level of the arches of the transept chapels and the north portal. Local Brionnais ateliers using a slightly retardataire style finished the transepts, aisle walls, and nave.(Note 61)
Armi did not see Paray as a copy of Cluny III. Rather, the "artists" of the atelier from Cluny simply continued at Paray what they had done at the mother abbey.(Note 62) This perception of the work at Paray followed from how Armi conceived of artistic production. In general, Armi viewed the work of masons and sculptors as if it were in perpetual stylistic evolution. His view is difficult to accept because Armi never attempted to explain, either for Paray or any other building, the reasons that might have caused this evolutionary development. Apparently driven solely by their continually evolving style, Armi's artisans at Paray and elsewhere seem to have worked away without direction from their patrons or attention to function. Thus, it seems that, for Armi, the masons were the final arbitrators in all things architectural or sculptural.
While many of Armi's observations about Paray were accurate, many of his assumptions about the working methods of medieval construction and sculptural production are highly questionable. Paray fits nicely into Armi's schema, but his schema is very narrow, and does not take into account either the pre-existing building that his workmen found on their arrival at Paray or the work completed after their departure. Thus, he examined only the sections of Paray that fit into his overall thesis, leaving aside the larger part of the church. In analyzing Paray's wall elevations, Armi did establish a series of building campaigns, but he treats them almost as a series of unrelated walls or stacks of masonry and not as integral parts of a completed structure. Essentially, Armi treats the wall elevations primarily as two-dimensional objects without considering that they are relatively thick structures with two faces, often almost two meters apart. More importantly, he does not consider either the spatial disposition such elevations create or how they relate to structure of the building. By focussing solely on the fabric, both masonry and sculpture, Armi looses sight of the building as a whole. He confuses production for result, means for ends.
Reviewing the existing literature on Paray demonstrates the shortcomings of the previous studies of the former priory church. Paray has never been fully described nor analyzed in detail. Most discussion has focused on the church itself with much less attention being paid to the earlier porch. Just as the porch has been neglected, so has the sculpture. Moreover, when scholars discuss the history of the priory, they have used only the earliest documents from the surviving cartulary and ignored the subsequent ones from the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. Without citing documentary support, Virey and the Oursels have attributed the work at Paray to Abbot Hugh of Cluny.
The following discussion establishes a chronology for the complete construction history of Paray by extending Armi's examination of the building's fabric to the entire church. In order to insure that I concentrate on what is, in fact, masonry and ornament of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, I provide a detailed account of Paray's entire restoration history and not just the work of Etienne Millet, the focus earlier studies. Also in contrast to earlier studies, mine examines the porch and relates it to the church proper. I discuss the spatial aspects and the structural considerations of the building and not merely the inventory the wall elevations. My study goes further than earlier ones in comparing Paray to other buildings, since my comparisons are made not only to date the church and to establish its position in Burgundian Romanesque, but also to place the former priory within the development of the twelfth-century European church architecture in general. The following study, as well, investigates all of the sculpture at Paray. Furthermore, I present for the first time the little information we know about the function of Paray by drawing upon information in the surviving cartulary. Most importantly, my study places Paray and its construction history in context by discussing them in relation to the history of Paray as can also be sketched from the priory's cartulary.(Note 63)
Send any comments or suggestions to Minott Kerr at:
mkerr@reed.eduLast Modified: 3 March 1997