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Links to French Cathedral and Abbey Photo Pages in Paradoxplace
Abbaye St-Pierre de Moissac
Link to Maps of the Pilgrimage Roads of France
Back to Around Agen - Photo and History Pages
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The Abbaye St-Pierre de Moissac was founded in the mid 600s. It was extremely well endowed and regally protected, but that did not stop the turbulence of the times washing over it on several violent occasions and grinding it down. By the early years of the first Millennium things were going from bad to worse - in 1030 the church roof collapsed, and in 1042 what was left was ravaged by fire.
Then on cue the cavalry came riding over the hill in the form of the great Burgundian Abbey of Cluny. In 1048 Moissac became affiliated with Cluny, who in turn sent one of their senior managers, Durand de Bredons, down to do a turnaround job as Abbot (he also doubled as the Bishop of Toulouse). They did not muck around, those Cluniacs, and only 15 years later in 1063 a new Abbey church was consecrated.
Today the two glories of the Abbey are its cloisters, which are said to be the oldest surviving cloisters with narrative capitals, and the sculptures of the portal (and particularly the trumeau - central door pillar) of the abbey church.
46 of the 76 cloister capitals illustrate themes from the scriptures or the lives of saints. They were sculpted during the abbacy and under the direction of Ansquitil (? - 1085 - 1115) and completed in 1100. The cloister gallery roofing was rebuilt in the late 1200s, but the original capitals and columns remained in place. The cloister also contains reliefs of abbots (including Bredons), evangelists and disciples. The cloister is run as a separate state museum with a long lunch hour!
The portal in the south west corner of the church (which is still run as a church and does not close for lunch) followed under Abbot Roger (? - 1115 - 1135), close on the heels of the cloisters. The whole ensemble of sculpture in the portal is regarded as a leading example of French Romanesque art, with particular fame attaching to the tympanum (inspired by the Book of Revelations), and the statue of the Prophet Jeremiah on the east side of the trumeau (the central doorway column) which is truly gobsmacking, and widely acknowledged as one of the best remaining pieces of Romanesque art in France. It is also not noticed by many tourists who think that it's the tympanum that they should look at, not the door post!
Don't be concerned about allocating time to the church itself - it's like the aftermath of a wallpaperers convention (see bottom of page).
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The Prophet Jeremiah - the only competition in all of France to the relief panels of Santo Domingo de Silos in Spain - indeed it is thought that the same master artist may have worked in both places. It is sadly rare to find trumeau statues, one of the glories of medieval French church art, surviving at all, and certainly not in this condition.
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The amazingly carved elongated figures of the Prophet Jeremiah on the east side of the trumeau (central doorway column), accompanied by Saint Paul on the west side. In our view the most outstanding Romanesque sculptures left in France. Sadly, many people do not even notice them as they have been taught to look at Tympanums (or not look at all)! |
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The Portal (1115 - 1130) and on the right atop a column is Abbot Roger (? - 1115 - 1135), who commissioned the work.
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Marvel at the number of ways that legs can go .... The archivolts and lintel would have also have contained relief sculptures in earlier days.
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Portal sideshow (left) - Lazarus the spotty pauper dies at the door of the feasting rich man's mansion.
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LHS: Avarice and Lewdness
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RHS: The Magi on top (left) and the Annunciation and the Visitation on the bottom
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The cloisters, having survived Simon de Montfort in 1212 and the English, Hugenots, Revolutionaries and other nasties since then, nearly got destroyed by the great railway craze of the mid 1800s.
In the end a compromise was reached and "only" the refectory was sacrificed to the march of progress, but, as someone said elsewhere in the early 1800s, it was a damned close thing.
The photo below shows the north side of the cloisters (which themselves are on the north side of the church), where the refectory would have been before it was destroyed to make space for the railway cutting.
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North east corner
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West end of north side
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Capital 05 (north end of west side) - Daniel in the Lions' Den (link to the same subject in Autun)
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Capital 05A (north end of west side) - the Good Tidings are brought to the Shepherds
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Capital 50 (east side) - the Marriage at Cana
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NE Corner Capitals 59(L) & 58(R) - St-Jean (plus angels and dragon), Annunciation, Visitation
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Capital 69 (west end of north side) - Maybe Jerusalem?
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Capital 74 (west end of north side) - the Story of St-Martin
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Abbot Durand de Bredons, first Clunaic Abbot of Moissac and Bishop of Toulouse
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The numbers used above link back to the numbers used in this book |
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The Hotel le Moulin, a large converted mill on the River Tarn, just upstream from where it joins the Garonne. The small town of Moissac lies to the right (north) of the hotel. It's a one attraction town, the attraction being the Abbaye Saint-Pierre, which sits on the other side of town to the river. Signposting there ain't, so it's best to go away from the river till you hit the railway line which runs along the corner of the cloister, where there is a small car park. And don't go there for the attractive countryside - like many of the large French river valleys (the Dordogne being a notable exception) it's mostly flat, featureless and over-trafficked.
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Finally, just in case you were wondering what this beautiful old Abbey Church looked like inside, we saved the worst for last. A variant on the interior decorators' decoration cult of many of the churches of south west France, this one looks a bit like the venue for a recent wall paperers' convention?
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All original material on this site © Adrian Fletcher 2000-08 - The contents may not be hotlinked, or reproduced without permission
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