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Description:
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The Abbey Church of Saint-Philibert was built between ca. 920 and ca. 1120 at Tournus, a town in southeastern Burgundy founded in ancient Roman times on the River Saône. It is the only building that survives relatively intact of a monastery first established in 875 by monks fleeing their abbey at Noirmoutier after invasion by Norsemen. These refugees were offered a home by King Charles the Bald (823-877) in the small monastery at Tournus where a community of monks already lived. This monastery, founded in the 6th C. and dedicated to the martyr Valerian, housed their patron’s relics which, as they had since the 2nd C., drew pilgrims. (Valerian of Lyon, d. 179, first evangelized Tournus.) The Noirmoutier monks brought with them the bones of their founder, St. Philibert (616-685), and soon built a church dedicated to him. This church was destroyed by Hungarian invaders in 936-937. It was haltingly rebuilt between episodes of political unrest and other calamities, including a devastating fire in 1006, resulting in the present-day building. The fortress-like westwork (shown here), perforated with loopholes for shooting arrows, is testimony to times so chaotic that monks needed not only to defend themselves against assault, but also had to provide refuge for the lay people who helped sustain them. This westwork, or narthex, which dates to ca. 1000, exhibits influences of both northern (Carolingian) and southern (Lombard) architecture. Its masonry murals, composed of patterned bands and blind arcades, as well as the short belfries that originally capped both towers are typical of First Romanesque style. The tall structure that now crowns the north tower was added in 1120. While the westwork is attached to the main church, it is a distinct, two-story (vestibule surmounted by chapel), three-bay, vaulted structure supported by four massive cylindrical masonry piers that divide the space into nave and two aisles. The portal is 19th C., as is the crenellated walkway connecting the two towers. ca. August 1981
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