Medieval France
. Paray-le-Monial (Saône-et-Loire) is a Romanesque priory belonging to Cluny III, the mother church of the Cluniac order, and located some 13 miles west of Cluny. The design of Paray-le-Monial is based directly on that of Cluny III, yet the sizes are vastly different: Cluny was originally 609 feet long and 97 feet high, with nave, four aisles, two aisleless transepts, choir, and five chapels radiating from an ambulatory, while Paray-le-Monial is 206 feet long and 71 feet high, with nave, two aisles, one aisleless transept, and three radiating chapels.
The interior spaces of the two monuments are similar: tall, narrow naves capped by pointed barrel vaults and strengthened by pointed transverse arches. The interior elevation of Paray-le-Monial consists of a pointed nave arcade, a blind triforium of three recessed arches separated by fluted pilasters, and a clerestory with three windows framed by arches. The precocious nature of the structure is stated by the clerestory and pointed barrel vaults supported by thick walls but no flying buttresses.
The unusual feature of Paray-le-Monial, as well as of Cluny, is the use of Roman decorative elements, fluted pilasters, that appear on nave piers capped by Corinthiantype capitals, which also decorate the triforium and clerestory. This use of the classical order with base, shaft, and capital is based on Roman monuments, such as the gates at Autun. In spite of this influence, the Romanesque master mason violated the Roman classical proportions by attenuating the pilaster, especially on the nave arcade.
Light plays a strong role in the nave of Paray-le-Monial by the clerestory and more dramatically in the east end, with light admitted in four vertical levels and four planes in space. Light penetrates the choir in three windows in
the upper wall, separating the forechoir from the choir, in the nine clerestory windows beneath the semidome, in the high windows of the ambulatory, and in the five low windows in each of the three radiating chapels.
The west towers and narthex of Paray-le-Monial are an earlier, smaller campaign than the church proper, with the south tower earlier than the north one. The west end dates from the second half of the 11th century; the church proper was constructed in the early decades of the 12th.
Sculpture at Paray-le-Monial consists of floral capitals throughout the church, and geometric and abstract ornament on the two transept portals.
Whitney S.Stoddard
[See also: AUTUN; CLUNY]
Armi, C.Edson. Masons and Sculptors in Romanesque Burgundy. 2 vols. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983, pp. 171–76; figs. 216–22.
Stoddard, Whitney S. Monastery and Cathedral in France. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1966, pp. 39–47, 52, 56; figs. 40, 45–46, 48, 51–52, 54–55.
——. Sculptors of the West Portals of Chartres Cathedral New York: Norton, 1987 [Transept portals, pp. 48–49; Plate XXXIV, 1, 2.]
Virey, Jean. Paray-le-Monial et les églises du Brionnais. Paris: Laurens, 1926.
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