The nave abuts a transept that was originally designed to support a wooden roof. The
transept arms were barrel-vaulted in the 12th century, and at the crossing is a cupola
carried on squinches. The choir, with ambulatory and radiating chapels, rests on a crypt
of the same plan.
The church was consecrated in 1120, but documents recording places of burials
indicate that the south wall of the nave was probably complete in 1056 and the south
transept by ca. 1105. The crossing has Brionnaise capitals, a type not found in Burgundy
after ca. 1120.
Saint-Philibert brought to Burgundy many of the distinctive elements of the northern
Early Romanesque style found in the great Loire Valley churches of the 11th century,
such as the cathedral of Orléans or Saint-Martin at Tours: vast wood-roofed basilicas
constructed in ashlar masonry, whose choirs had ambulatories with radiating chapels. The
architects of Tournus adopted the type but used the small-stone construction technique
characteristic of the more compact churches of southern Early Romanesque.
John B.Cameron
[See also: ORLÉANS; ROMANESQUE ARCHITECTURE; TOURS/TOURAINE]
Armi, C.Edson. Masons and Sculptors in Romanesque Burgundy: The New Aesthetic of Cluny III. 2
vols. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983.
Henriet, Jacques. “Saint-Philibert de Tournus: l’œuvre du second maître: la galilée et la nef.”
Bulletin monumental 90 (1992):101–64.
Vergnolle, Éliane. “Recherches sur quelques series de chapiteaux romans bourguignons.”
Information de l’historie de l’art 20 (1975):55–79.
TOURS/TOURAINE
. Tours (Indre-et-Loire) was the chief town of the Turones, the Roman Caesarodonum,
capital of Lugdunensis Tertia. It had a flourishing Christian community by the time of St.
Martin (bishop 372–97), founder of Marmoutier, whose tomb became a major pilgrimage
site. It fell under Visigothic, then Frankish rule. Its bishop Gregory (r. 573–94)
chronicled Merovingian Gaul, and its treasures attracted the Muslim razzia turned back
by Charles Martel in 732.
An intellectual center whose scriptorium helped develop Carolingian minuscule under
Alcuin (d. 804), Tours was subject to numerous Viking raids (853–911), leading to the
fortification of the suburbs and abbey of Saint-Martin as the châteauneuf. The region
furnishes some of the earliest examples of feudal usage, of the use of radial chapels, and
of stone architecture, both secular and ecclesiastical.
The countship and the lay abbacy of Saint-Martin fell to the ancestors of Hugh Capet,
and the countship then passed to the house of Blois (940/41) and to that of Anjou (1044),
although the king retained the right of episcopal appointment. Site of a stone bridge and a
flourishing bourg, including a Jewish community, Tours experienced renewed
intellectual life. Berengar of Tours (d. 1088) initiated a eucharistic controversy that led to
the definition of Transubstantiation.
The Encyclopedia 1737