Medieval France. An Encyclopedia

(Darren Dugan) #1
Bayeux (Calvados), Notre-Dame, plan.

After Valery-Radot.

notes that Odo, bishop of Bayeux, consecrated the church in 1076 and finished it in 1087,
having “endowed it abundantly with many riches and ornament.” In 1105, Henry I of
England stormed the city and burned the church, and another fire in 1159 initiated the
restoration of most of the building. Only Odo’s crypt and the west towers survived the
12th century.


Bayeux, Notre-Dame, chevet.

Photograph: Clarence Ward

Collection. Courtesy of Oberlin

College.

Most of the 11th- and 12th-century Romanesque portions remain visible inside the
building in the intricate sculpture of the nave arcade, the crypt, and the west towers, but


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