The Abbey of Saint-Gilles (French: Abbaye de Saint-Gilles ) is a monastery in Saint-Gilles, southern France. Founded by Saint Giles, it is included in the UNESCO Heritage List, as part of the World Heritage Sites of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France.
According to the legend, it was founded in the 7th century by Saint Gilles, over lands which had been given him by the Visigoth King Wamba after he had involuntarily wounded the saint during a hunt. The monastery was initially dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul: however, in the 9th century, the dedication was changed to St. Giles himself, who had become one of the most venerated figures in the area. His relics were housed in the abbey church and attracted numerous pilgrims.
In the 11th century, the monastery was attached to that of Cluny. Thanks to its prosperity, it was enlarged and decorated from the 12th to the 15th century, when the cloister was finished. In the 16th century the church, in the course of the Wars of Religion, was devastated when the Huguenots took shelter in it. Restorations were held in the 17th century and again, after further damage during the French Revolution, in the 19th century. The tomb of St. Giles was rediscovered in 1865, becoming again a pilgrim destination from 1965. 43°40′43″N4°25′54″E / 43.67861°N 4.43167°E
The abbey church is in typical southern French Romanesque style. The façade, built from 1120 to 1160, has a decorated entrance portico with three portals (the central one larger) with Corinthian columns and medieval sculpture decorations. These include, in the lower sector, a bestiary and scenes from the Old Testament; in the middle one it has statues and characters from the New Testament; the frieze and the tympana above the latter have also scenes from the same book, including the "Adoration of the Magi", the "Crucifixion of Jesus" and a "Maestà".
The frieze scenes are inspired to Roman ones. The upper part of the façade had originally also a classical-inspired decoration, which has now disappeared. The bell tower dates to the 18th century.
The crypt, or lower church, dates to the early 11th century. It measures 50 by 25 meters, and occupies the whole subterranean section of the nave. In its center is the tomb of St. Giles, a medieval place of veneration until in the 16th century, his relics were moved to the Basilica of Saint Sernin at Toulouse. The upper church, with a nave and two apses, mostly belongs to the 17th-century reconstruction, aside from the massive pillars in Corinthian style.
Behind the apse are the remains of the ancient choir, which once were part of the originally longer church (98 meters instead of the current 50). Inside the northern wall of the ancient choir is a spiral staircase (now free standing) known as "Screw of St. Gilles", dating to the 12th century, made of cantilevered stone steps.
A plaster cast of the façade exists in the Hall of Architecture at the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
| Paris Route or Via Turonensis |
|  | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Vézelay Route or Via Lemovicensis |
| ||||
| Le Puy Route or Via Podiensis |
| ||||
| Arles Route or Via Tolasana |
| ||||
Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of medieval Europe that was predominant in the 11th and 12th centuries. The style eventually developed into the Gothic style with the shape of the arches providing a simple distinction: the Romanesque is characterized by semicircular arches, while the Gothic is marked by the pointed arches. The Romanesque emerged nearly simultaneously in multiple countries ; its examples can be found across the continent, making it the first pan-European architectural style since Imperial Roman architecture. Similarly to Gothic, the name of the style was transferred onto the contemporary Romanesque art.
The Basilica of Saint-Denis is a large former medieval abbey church and present cathedral in the commune of Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris. The building is of singular importance historically and architecturally as its choir, completed in 1144, is widely considered the first structure to employ all of the elements of Gothic architecture.
Saint Giles, also known as Giles the Hermit, was a hermit or monk active in the lower Rhône most likely in the 7th century. Revered as a saint, his cult became widely diffused but his hagiography is mostly legendary. A town that bears his name grew up around the monastery he purportedly founded, which became a pilgrimage centre and a stop on the Way of Saint James. He is traditionally one of the Fourteen Holy Helpers.
Saint-Gilles or Saint-Gilles-du-Gard is a commune in the Gard department in southern France.
Montmajour Abbey, formally the Abbey of St. Peter in Montmajour, was a fortified Benedictine monastery built between the 10th and 18th centuries on what was originally an island five kilometers north of Arles, in what is now the Bouches-du-Rhône Department, in the region of Provence in the south of France.
Saint-Étienne-du-Mont is a church in Paris, France, on the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève in the 5th arrondissement, near the Panthéon. It contains the shrine of St. Geneviève, the patron saint of Paris. The church also contains the tombs of Blaise Pascal and Jean Racine. Jean-Paul Marat is buried in the church's cemetery.
The Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés is a Roman Catholic parish church located in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter of Paris. It was originally the church of a Benedictine abbey founded in 558 by Childebert I, the son of Clovis, King of the Franks. It was destroyed by the Vikings, rebuilt, and renamed in the 8th century for Saint Germain, a 6th century bishop. It was rebuilt with elements in the new Gothic style in the 11th century, and was given the earliest flying buttresses in the Ile-France in the 12th century. It is considered the oldest existing church in Paris.
Saint-Pierre de Montmartre is the second oldest surviving church in Paris, after the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Pres. It is one of the two main churches on Montmartre, the other being the more famous 19th-century Sacré-Cœur Basilica, just above it. Saint-Pierre de Montmartre, begun in 1133, was the church of the prestigious Montmartre Abbey, destroyed in the French Revolution.
The Cathedral of Saint Lazarus of Autun, commonly known as Autun Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Autun and a national monument of France. Famous for its Cluniac inspiration and its Romanesque sculptures by Gislebertus, it is a highlight of Romanesque art in Burgundy. It is the seat of the Bishop of Autun. The Bishop of Autun set forth the construction of St. Lazarus Cathedral as a result of the large movement of pilgrims travelling to Vezelay as they progressed on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela.
The Basilica di San Zeno is a minor basilica of Verona, northern Italy constructed between 967 and 1398 AD. Its fame rests partly on its Romanesque architecture and partly upon the tradition that its crypt was the place of the marriage of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.
The Church of St. James on Coudenberg is a Catholic church located on the historic Place Royale/Koningsplein, in the Royal Quarter of Brussels, Belgium. It is dedicated to Saint James, one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus.
San Giovanni Evangelista is a Mannerist-style, Roman Catholic church located on Piazzale San Giovanni, located just behind the apse of the Parma Cathedral, in the historic center of Parma, northern Italy. The buildings surrounding the piazza were also part of a former Benedictine convent. The church is notable for its Correggio frescoes.
The Abbey of Santa Giustina is a 10th-century Benedictine abbey complex located in front of the Prato della Valle in central Padua, region of Veneto, Italy. Adjacent to the former monastery is the basilica church of Santa Giustina, initially built in the 6th century, but whose present form derives from a 17th-century reconstruction.
Notre-Dame des Blancs-Manteaux is a Roman Catholic parish church at 12 Rue des Blancs-Manteaux in Le Marais, in the 4th arrondissement of Paris. It takes its name from the "Les Blancs-Manteaux", for the cloaks worn by the mendicant Augustinian Order of Servites, who founded the first church 1258. It was rebuilt between 1685 and 1689 in the French Baroque or French neoclassical style. It is noted for its remarkable carved wood pulpit (1749) and its collection of paintings and sculpture.
Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas is a Roman Catholic parish church in Paris, France. The church is located at the corner of Rue Saint-Jacques and Rue de l'Abbé de l'Épée in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. The first church on the site, a monastery chapel, was built in 1360. The present church was completed in 1685. The church is named for Saint-Jacques Du-Haut-Pas,", a cousin of Christ and the first bishop of Jerusalem, who was martyred in the year 60 A.D. It was registered as an historical monument on 4 June 1957.
The Abbey Church of Sainte-Foy in Conques, France, was a popular stop for pilgrims traveling the Way of St. James to Santiago de Compostela, in what is now Spain. The main draw for medieval pilgrims at Conques were the remains of Sainte-Foy, a young woman martyred during the fourth century. The relics of Sainte-Foy arrived in Conques through theft in 866. After unsuccessful attempts to acquire the relics of Saint Vincent of Saragossa and then the relics of St. Vincent Pompejac in Agen, the abbey authorities set their sights on the relics of Sainte-Foy at the ancient St. Faith's Church, Sélestat. The Conques abbey opened a priory next to the shrine in Sélestat. A monk from Conques posed as a loyal monk in Agen for nearly a decade in order to get close enough to the relics to steal them. The abbey church has been a listed monument since 1840.
The Église Saint-Leu-Saint-Gilles de Paris is a Roman Catholic parish church in the 1st arrondissement of Paris. It has housed the relics of the Empress Saint Helena, mother of Constantine, since 1819, for which it remains a site of veneration in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. In 1915 the French Ministry of Culture listed it as a monument of historical value.
Romanesque architecture appeared in France at the end of the 10th century, with the development of feudal society and the rise and spread of monastic orders, particularly the Benedictines, which built many important abbeys and monasteries in the style. It continued to dominate religious architecture until the appearance of French Gothic architecture in the Île-de-France between about 1140 and 1150.
The abbey church is the church of the Abbey of Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye in the village of Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye, Isère, France. The abbey church was listed as a historical monument in 1840 by Prosper Mérimée.
The Saint-Sauveur Abbey Church is a Catholic church situated in Redon, in the French department of Ille-et-Vilaine, in the Brittany region. The church is located to the north of the former Saint-Sauveur Abbey of Redon, where it served as the abbey church until 1790. At that time, the abbey was suppressed, and the church was then assigned to the parish. The monastic buildings subsequently became a high school.
