Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, abbey
church. Photograph courtesy of
William W.Kibler.
of Cluny, this style is sparse, minimalist, and often associated with St. Bernard, who
fulminated against luxuriously decorated churches: “O vanity of vanities, yet no more
vain than insane! The church is resplendent in her walls, beggarly in her poor. She
clothes her stones in gold, and leaves her sons naked...” (Apologia ad Guillelmum
Abbatem 28). The fine abbey church of Le Thoronet, in Provence, shows the Bernardin
approach to church design, where austerity is the rule and decoration suspect.
Finally, there is another important Romanesque style that is linear in form and
constituted by the great pilgrimage churches. Saint-Sernin at Toulouse is a superb
example of the type. Other well-preserved examples can be seen at Compostela in Spain
and at Sainte-Foy, Conques, in Auvergne. Two other celebrated examples are now lost:
Saint-Martial at Limoges and Saint-Martin at Tours. All were characterized by two
elements typical of the major monuments of French Romanesque architecture: their
major spaces were covered with barrel vaults throughout, and their choirs were furnished
with ambulatory and radiating chapels. In addition, the aisles of the nave, the transept
arms, and the rectangular bays of the choir were surmounted with galleries, or tribunes,
as was the practice in such northern Early Romanesque monuments as Saint-Martin at
Tours or Orléans cathedral. The pilgrimage churches represent, like Cluny III,
Romanesque architectural practice at its apogee.
The developing Gothic style in the region around Paris was much indebted to the
Romanesque in its formative years and in fact adopted many of the features of
Romanesque structures, such as the ambulatory with radiating chapel, the use of high
vaults throughout, fine ashlar masonry, and the placing of galleries above the aisles to
counteract the thrust of high vaults. In much of the rest of Europe, however, the earlier
Carolingian and Ottonian approaches to architectural design prevailed down to Gothic
times. In France, the Romanesque charted new directions in the design of great
monuments. French Gothic continued this development.
John B.Cameron
[See also: CAEN; CHARTRES; CISTERCIAN ART AND ARCHITECTURE;
CLUNY; CONQUES; GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE; JUMIÈGES; LIMOGES;
The Encyclopedia 1539