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Pilgrimage and the Dynamics of Urbanism Reconsidered: Faubourg Architecture in Romanesque Aquitaine1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
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Since the late nineteenth century, scholars have considered pilgrimage a dynamic catalyst that influenced a range of cultural practices, not least architecture. The charismatic stewardship of such influential scholars as Arthur Kingsley Porter, Kenneth John Conant, Emile Mâle and Elie Lambert helped propel the study of ‘pilgrimage architecture’ to a leading field of study, and a handful of churches — notably St-Sernin in Toulouse, St-Martin in Tours, St-Martial in Limoges, Ste-Foy in Conques and the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela — achieved status as paradigmatic monuments. At the same time, the subject was also for a long while a source of heated debate fuelled by nationalist interests, occasionally lapsing even into ad hominem squabbles. The matter has in recent decades generated calmer discussion, including new perspectives introduced by studies of other complementary cultural phenomena. Urban and economic historians, in particular, have looked to the role of pilgrimage in relation to urban growth and the rise of commercial markets. This scholarship has contributed to re-evaluations among art historians and has shed greater light, for example, on the predatory fervour with which certain bishops, cathedral chapters and abbots enticed pilgrims to destinations like Chartres, Santiago de Compostela or Cluny, just as the infusion of interdisciplinary perspectives has helped architectural historians reassess so-called pilgrimage architecture. After all, not all churches of that type were on the pilgrimage roads, nor do all churches on those roads reflect the Toulousain-Compostelan model. The relative importance of the paradigmatic five churches has been called into question.
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1 A shorter version of this essay was presented at the 2000 Annual Meeting of the Society of Architectural Historians in Miami, and I thank session organizers Abby McGehee and Laura Hollengreen for their critique at that occasion. Professor Hollengreen subsequently commented extensively on a revised, expanded version, for which I am most grateful. The essay has also profited from the suggestions of two anonymous readers and the journal’s editor, Judi Loach. I am indebted to the Mairies and Archives Municipales of Bressuire, Châtillon-sur-Thouet, Parthenay, St-Jacques-de-Thouars, and Thouars, for permission to examine and photograph plans and documents in their care; and to the Association des Amis du Vieux-Bressuire for generous access to St-Cyprien. I wish also to extend thanks to Laura Good Morelli, who in October 1995 kindly shared with me her knowledge of the pilgrimage roads as we sped along the auto-routes of south-western France. Her own research on hospices can be found in the excellent study ‘Medieval Pilgrims’ Hospices on the Road to Santiago de Compostela’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Yale University, 1998). Some of my discussion of Parthenay’s faubourgs has now appeared: see The Art of Medieval Urbanism: Parthenay in Romanesque Aquitaine (University Park, Pa., 2007).
2 For the three dominant positions, see Porter, Arthur Kingsley, Romanesque Sculpture of the Pilgrimage Roads, 10 vols (Boston, 1923)Google Scholar; Conant, Kenneth John, Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, 800 to 1200, 3rd edn (New York, 1979 [1959]), pp. 91ff. Google Scholar; and Lambert, Elie, ‘Études sur le pèlerinage de Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle’, Études médiévales, 1 (1956), pp. 119–29 Google Scholar. A brief review of the debate and its literature is provided in Marcel Durliat, La sculpture romane de la route de Saint-Jacques: De Conques à Compostelle (Mont-de-Marsan, 1990), pp. 8-14.
3 See, for example, Cohen, Esther, ‘Roads and Pilgrimage: A Study in Economic Interaction’, Studi medievali, 13.21 (1980), pp. 322–41 Google Scholar.
4 E.g., Werckmeister, O. K., ‘Cluny III and the Pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela’, Gesta, 27 (1988), pp. 103–12 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Abou-el-Haj, Barbara, The Medieval Cult of Saints: Formations and Transformations (New York, 1997), pp. 13ff.Google Scholar; Moralejo, Serafín, ‘Artistas, patronos y público en el arte del camino de Santiago’, Compostellanum, 30 (1985), pp. 395–430 Google Scholar; and for a study on the regions concerned in the present article, see Camus, Marie-Thérèse, ‘L’empreinte du pèlerinage dans l’art roman du Poitou et de la Saintonge’, in Le vie del medioevo: Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi, Parma, 28 settembre-i ottobre 1998, ed. Quintavalle, A. (Milan, 2000), pp. 167–75 Google Scholar.
5 E.g., Kubach, Hans, Romanesque Architecture (New York, 1972)Google Scholar. John Williams maintains, yet nuances, the notion of an architectural ‘school’ in ‘La arquitectura del Camino de Santiago’, Compostellanum, 29 (1984), pp. 267-90.
6 One of the most sustained revisionist accounts to date is by Denise Péricard-Méa, Compostelle et le culte de saint Jacques au Moyen Age (Paris, 2000). Nonetheless, even recent works still bear the earlier bias; see, for example, Droste, Thorten, Der Jakobsweg in Frankreich. Romanische Kunst entlang der Pilgerrouten (Munich, 2008)Google Scholar; or see Bottineau, Yves, Les chemins de Saint-Jacques, 2nd edn (Paris, 1983 [1964]), esp. pp. 115–28 Google Scholar on architecture.
7 An exhibition such as that accompanied by the catalogue Santiago, Camino de Europa. Culto y Cultura en la Peregrainción a Compostella, ed. S. Moralejo and F. López Alsina (Madrid, 1994), is premised upon the European effect of Compostelan pilgrimage; yet the essays in the catalogue generally avoid oversimplification and offer close readings of particular countries’ responses to the cult of St James.
8 Xavier Barral i Altet devoted an entire book to discussion of the many ‘myths’ that surround the Romanesque period, including selected aspects of scholarly treatment of pilgrimage: Contre l’art roman: essai sur un passé réinventé (Paris, 2006), especially pp. 115-29. (For literature on particular aspects, see the notes below.) Barral i Altet’s work clearly demonstrates the persistence of misconceptions and also the resistance even among scholars to recalibrate their points of view. In The Art of Medieval Urbanism, as in the present essay, I hoped to contribute in a small way to a recalibration regarding the role of town growth in Romanesque artistic production (also discussed by Barral i Altet as a topic in need of revision, pp. 133-46). I was nonetheless reminded of the continued weight of popular notions of ‘feudalism’ and, most especially, Romantic visions of knightly crusaders and artistic production in a review by L. Seidel (Art Bulletin, 91 (2009), pp. 366-69). In Seidel’s earlier work (Songs of Glory: The Romanesque Facades of Aquitaine [Chicago, 1981]), the author imagined crusader involvement by Parthenay’s lords (and by a great many other local lords) to explain, somewhat surprisingly, the ‘unique’ character of Aquitainian Romanesque (as if the crusading experience were distinctly different, or unlike, that of crusaders from other French regions). No one would deny that the crusades impacted upon twelfth-century culture in myriad ways; nonetheless, scholarship of the past sixty years has written a more careful history of crusader culture than that conjured by Seidel, and, in the case of Parthenay, has underscored the complete lack of evidence of specific crusader participation. In her review, Seidel defends her position by questioning the credibility of the historical, material, and archaeological sources analyzed by numerous specialists (whose dating of documents, churches and events weakens her argument), and she still insists on the importance of personal crusading by Parthenay’s lords. Not surprisingly, the local tourist office is also reluctant to let go of this particular myth.
9 Research on the Marian shrine at Chartres is instructive: see Chédeville, André, Chartres et ses campagnes (XIe-XIIe s.) (Paris, 1973), pp. 509–10 Google Scholar; see a further refined view in James Bugslag, ‘Pilgrimage to Chartres: The Visual Evidence’, Art and Architecture of Late Medieval Pilgrimage in Northern Europe and the British Isles, ed. Sarah Blick and Rita Tekippe (Leiden, 2005), I, pp. 135-85, and II, pls 86-99.
10 This notion seems to have got a tremendous boost from the exhibition in 1965 organized by the Marquis René de la Coste-Messelière: see the catalogue: R. de La Coste-Messelière, Pèlerins et chemins de Saint-Jacques en France et en Europe (Paris, 1964). La Coste-Messelière, in the decades that followed, also published a number of studies (see notes below) to support his claims of countless pilgrims’ hospices, yet deeper research into the history of individual sites often produces less conclusive results.
11 As Denise Péricard-Méa has put it: ‘[D]e nombreux chercheurs ont adopté les idées les plus extrêmes et ont choisi comme postulat que toute commanderie de quelque ordre que ce soit, toute abbaye exerçant ou non l’hospitalité, toute maladrerie, tout hôpital devait figurer sur les cartes comme jalons sur les chemins de Compostelle’. See her ‘Peut-on parler de réseau hospitalier sur le chemin de Santiago? Le silence des sources hospitalières médiévales’, published online 29 May 2009 <http://lodel.irevues.inist.fr/saintjacquesinfo/index.php?id=1256>
12 Cf. research pertaining to the Aquitainian towns under discussion: Fracard, M.-L., ‘Gîtes d’étapes pour pèlerins sur quelques chemins du Poitou central (Deux-Sèvres) en direction de Compostelle (vers la fin du XIVe siècle)’, Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de l’Ouest, 4th ser., 8.1 (1965), pp. 45–60 Google Scholar; Fracard, M.-L., ‘L’équipement hospitalier en Bas-Poitou sur les routes de Compostelle’, Compostelle, 25 (1968), pp. 16–19 Google Scholar; Garand, Raymond, ‘Les pèlerinages à Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle et le prieuré Saint-Jacques de Bressuire’, Bulletin des Amis du vieux Bressuire, 6 (1954-55), pp. 17–26 Google Scholar.
13 In specialist literature, ‘borough’ connotes something very specific in English contexts — a settlement with distinct administrative rights, for example — and bears with it the imprint of institutional urban history as established in the early twentieth century by figures like F. W. Maitland and C. Stephenson. So as not to conjure that particular sense, which is different from Continental contexts, I simply employ the French term here.
14 Cf. Crozet, René, ‘Parthenay (Deux-Sèvres)’, Dictionnaire des églises de France, III: Sud-Ouest (Tours, 1967), pp. 122–25 (p. 123)Google Scholar; Seidel, Songs of Glory, p. 2 and passim; Delhoume, Catherine, ‘Parthenay au Moyen Age’, Parthenay, une aventure urbaine millénaire. Exposition réalisée par le Musée Municipal de Parthenay, ed. Bourdu, Daniel (Parthenay, 1986), pp. 15–31 (p. 16)Google Scholar; René de La Coste-Messelière, ‘Recueil commémoratif de l’exposition “Parthenay, le Poitou, l’Aunis, la Saintonge, l’Angoumois et le pèlerinage de Saint-Jacques de Compostene de nos jours au XIIe siècle”’, Cahiers du Centre d’études compostellanes, Mémoires, 1 (1976), pp. 1-32, among other works by La Coste-Messelière (cf. infra); and Bélisaire Ledain, La Gâtine historique et monumentale, 2nd edn (Parthenay, 1897 [1876]), passim.
15 On the authorship, see Díaz, Manuel C. Díaz y, El Códice Calixtíno de la catedral de Santiago: estudio codicológico y de contenido (Santiago de Compostela, 1988), pp. 81–87 Google Scholar; Moisan, André, ‘Aimeri Picaud de Parthenay et le “Liber sancti Jacobi”’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 143 (1985), pp. 5–52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Shaver-Crandell, Annie, Gerson, Paula et al., The Pilgrim’s Guide to Santiago de Compostela: A Gazetteer (London, 1995), pp. 54–56 Google Scholar.
16 For basic historical and topographic information, see the excellent surveys edited by Luc Bourgeois: Les petites villes du Haut-Poitou de l’Antiquité au Moyen Age, formes et monuments. 1: Bressuire, Brioux-sur-Boutonne, Loudun, Montmorillon, Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, Thouars (Chauvigny, 2000); and II: Angles-sur-l’Anglin, Argenton-Château, Charroux, Melle, Parthenay, Rom (Chauvigny, 2005). Parthenay’s architectural and sculptural history was the subject of my book The Art of Medieval Urbanism.
17 By context I am referring to the specific historical trajectory of urban construction, but I mean to allude also more generally to a theoretical understanding of contextual instability, such as that described by Bryson, Norman, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (New Haven, 1983), pp. 38ff Google Scholar.
18 The classic account for this region is by Garaud, Marcel, Les châtelains de Poitou et l’avènement du régime féodal, XIe et XIIe siècles (Poitiers, 1967)Google Scholar. See also Bachrach, Bernard, ‘The Angevin Strategy of Castle Building in the Reign of Fulk Nerra, 987-1040’, American Historical Review, 88 (1983), pp. 533–60 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Zadora-Rio, Elisabeth, ‘Les bourgs castraux et bourgs ruraux en Anjou aux XIe-XIIe siècles’, Châteaux et peuplements en Europe occidentale du Xe au XVIIIe siècle (Auch, 1979), pp. 173–80 Google Scholar.
19 For the attribution to the Angevin count, I follow Beech, George, A Rural Society in Medieval France: The Gâtine of Poitou in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Baltimore, 1964), pp. 129–32 Google Scholar.
20 The accomplished local historian Bélisaire Ledain wrote general histories of each town: Histoire de la ville de Parthenay (Paris, 1858) and Histoire de la ville de Bressuire (Poitiers, 1880). For Bressuire, see most recently Favreau, Robert, ‘Bressuire et ses alentours au Moyen Age’, Regard sur Bressuire et son canton (Bressuire, 1982), pp. 15–23 Google Scholar and cf. infra.
21 For the history of settlement, see Sanfaçon, Roland, Défrichements, peuplement et institutions seigneuriales en Haut-Poitou du Xe au Xïlle siècle (Quebec, 1967)Google Scholar; and Beech, A Rural Society, pp. 24-35.
22 Beech, George T., ‘The Origins of the Family of the Viscounts of Thouars’, Études de civilisation médiévale, IXe-XIIe siècles: Mélanges offerts à Edmond-René Labande (Poitiers, 1974), pp. 25–31 (pp. 29ff.)Google Scholar. See also Bourniseaux, P.-V.-J. Berthre de, Histoire de Thouars (Paris, 1992 [1824])Google Scholar; and Imbert, Hugues, ‘Histoire de Thouars’, Mémoires de la Société de statistique, sciences et arts des Deux-Sèvres, 2nd ser., 10 (1870), pp. 1–415 Google Scholar.
23 The following synopsis for Thouars gives a sense of typical seigneurial relations. In 1030, for example, Viscount of Thouars Geoffroy II joined forces with the count of Anjou to defeat his own sovereign, the count of Poitou William VI the Fat. In the 1060s Geoffroy’s successor Aimery IV battled Count William VIII, as well as the powerful Duke of Normandy, before also joining ranks with William of Normandy to defeat Harold at Hastings. In response to Aimery’s dealings with the Duke of Normandy, the Count of Anjou besieged and burned Thouars in 1104. In 1158 it was seized by Henry II of England who hoped to get better footing in his new Plantagenet empire; the chateau and fortifications were destroyed in this effort. Later Henry, appreciating its strategic site, made Thouars his court in 1165. In 1204 Phillip Augustus made Viscount Aimery VII the seneschal of Poitou and Aquitaine, but, when the king discovered that Aimery was still loyal to the English cause, he stormed the town and the chateau was again destroyed. Such reversals of fortune were commonplace at Thouars — and at other like towns of Aquitaine — right through the Hundred Years War.
24 ‘juxta castrum Toarcensium alodum in loco qui dicitur monte Abboini’, Chartularium Sancti Jovini, ed. Charles L. Grandmaison, Mémoires de la Société de statistique du département des Deux-Sèvres, 17 (Niort, 1854), pp. 1-3 (p. 2). See also Imbert, , ‘Histoire de Thouars’, pp. 43–45 Google Scholar. On the difficulties of the term alodum, see Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, ed. J. F. Niermeyer (Leiden, 1997), pp. 36-38.
25 Pouillé du diocèse de Poitiers, ed. Henri Beauchet-Filleau (Poitiers, 1868), p. 316. See also Coste-Messelière, René de La, ‘Sources et illustrations de l’histoire des établissements hospitaliers et du pèlerinage de Saint-Jacques de Compostelle, des passages de Loire au grand chemin chaussé des pèlerins de Saint-Jacques’, Bulletin de la Société historique et scientifique des Deux-Sèvres, 2nd ser., 10.2-3 (1977), pp. 195–269 (p. 215)Google Scholar. The church is variously referred to as St-Jacques-de-Montauban or St-Jacques-de-Thouars.
26 For the 1099 document, see Paris, Archives nationales, Chartrier de Thouars, 1 AP 605, cited in Rozenn Coûtant and Luc Bourgeois, ‘Thouars (Deux-Sèvres)’, in Les petites villes du Haut-Poutou de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge, formes et monuments. I: Bressuire, Brioux-sur-Boutonne, Loudun, Mortmorillon, Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, Thouars, ed. Luc Bourgeois (Chauvigny, 2000), pp. 107-35 (p. 124). It also figures in the bull of Alexander III from 1179, confirming St-Jouin-de-Marnes’s possessions (Chartularium Sancti Jovini, ed. Grandmaison, p. 40). See also Chartularium Sancii Jovini, p. 49, a charter of 1226.
27 Thouars, Archives de la Mairie.
28 The bridge, along with one dedicated to St-André (near the church honouring that saint), the only two known in medieval Thouars, is mentioned as early as the late eleventh century; see Paris, Archives nationales, Chartrier de Thouars, 1 AP 605, no. 5, a parchment original, cited in Coutant and Bourgeois, ‘Thouars’, p. 125. See also Imbert, , ‘Histoire de Thouars’, p. 62 Google Scholar. It was no longer standing by the fifteenth century. A bridge and gate were indeed named for St James, but these were on the other site of town and provided only roundabout access to the faubourg of St-Jacques.
29 On this general trend in the region, see Pon, Georges, ‘Église princière, église cléricale (Xe-XIIe s.)’, Le diocèse de Poitiers, ed. Favreau, Robert (Paris, 1988), pp. 34–52 (pp. 40–41)Google Scholar; on Parthenay and the surrounding territory, see Beech, A Rural Society, pp. 25ft. See also the numerous examples of faubourg donations scattered throughout the manuscripts collected by Dom L. Fonteneau (Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., MSS Fonteneau, 89 vols, 1760S-80), including those pertaining to La Chaize-le-Vicomte, St-Maixent, Chauvigny, Nouaillé, Lusignan, etc.
30 Good discussions of the general issue can be found in Constable, Giles, ‘Monastic Possession of Churches and “Spiritualia” in the Age of Reform’ (1971) reprinted in his Religious Life and Thought (11th-10th Centuries) (London, 1979), pp. 304–31 Google Scholar; and Wood, Susan, Proprietary Churches in the Medieval West (Oxford, 2006), esp. pp. 851–82 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 St-Nicolas does not even appear on the 1830 cadastre (Thouars, Archives de la Mairie). Bits of medieval dressed stone are embedded in modern houses near a street that preserves the priory’s name, but their relation to the priory is highly speculative.
32 On the church’s restorations, see Niort, Archives départementales, 2 O 2194 (1864-67).
33 Crozet further suggested that it had a flat chevet (L’art roman en Poitou [Paris, 1948], p. 60); since he took the church for a pre-1038 construction (see my comments, infra), he believed it was not vaulted.
34 Well documented in the region: Camus, Marie-Thérèse, ‘Les chapiteaux peints du choeur de Saint-Hilairele-Grand’, L’acanthe dans la sculpture monumentale de l’Antiquité à la Renaissance, ed. Pressouyre, Léon (Paris, 1993), pp. 297–312 Google Scholar.
35 Cf. St-Maixent-1’École’s crypt capitals, c. 1070s-80s. See further examples in Camus, Marie-Thérèse, Sculpture romane du Poitou. Les grands chantiers du XIe siècle (Paris, 1992), pp. 150–68 Google Scholar.
36 Crozet assigned the vestiges a pre-1038 date, based on Renaud’s donation. He was apparently unaware of the presence of the capital in situ, which cannot be so early (L’art roman en Poitou, pp. 60,123).
37 E.g., La Coste-Messelière, ‘Sources et illustrations’, p. 215; Fracard, ‘Gites d’étapes pour pèlerins’, p. 50.
38 La Coste-Messelière, ‘Source et illustrations’, p. 214 (Viscount Geoffrey IV).
39 It was also sometimes called La Madeleine (see Coutant and Bourgeois, ‘Thouars’, p. 123). St-Lazare is named in 1119 in a papal bull issued in favour of the adjacent abbey St-Jean de Bonneval-les-Thouars: ‘ecclesia sancti Lazari et domus eleemosynariae quae est sita est extra muros’ (Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., MSS Dom Fonteneau, vol. 26, pp. 195, 222). See also Pouillé, p. 420. It was also named in 1312 as the ‘maladerie de Saint Ladre’ in M. Montois, ‘Documents concernant l’aumônerie de Saint-Michel de Thouars’, in Archives historiques du Poitou, 7 (Poitiers, 1878), p. 361. La Coste-Messelière (‘Sources et illustrations’, p. 215) opines that it was founded in 1026, referring to an undocumented source offered by M. Fracard. Nothing survives of St-Lazare, although Imbert believed some of its foundations were still visible in 1870 (‘Histoire de Thouars’, p. 107), as did Léon Palustre, ‘Thouars (Deux-Sèvres)’, Paysages et monuments du Poitou, ed. Jules Robuchon, VIII (Paris, 1894), pp. 1-24 (p. 9).
40 See Cartulaire et chartes de l’aumônerie de Saint-Michel de Thouars, Archives historiques du Poitou, ed. Alfred Barbier, 31 (Poitiers, 1901), pp. 5-6 (dated 1206); Palustre, ‘Thouars’, p. 9. By the early fifteenth century it was commonly referred to as the ‘aumônerie et Maison-Dieu de Saint-Michel’ (pp. 55-60, naming St-Michel as ‘Maison-Dieu’, dated 1413). See also Abbé Longer, ‘Documents concernant les principaux établissements de charité des Deux-Sèvres’, Mémoires de la Société historique et scientifique des Deux-Sèvres, 7 (1911), pp. 217-354 (pp. 307-18).
41 Ledain, Histoire de la ville de Bressuire, pp. 73-74, suggests a date of c. 1180-1220 for the gate and town walls. Ledain also writes (p. 80), without citing his source, that pilgrims to Compostela gathered at the Maison-Dieu outside the gate, particularly on the saint’s feast day, giving rise to the largest foire of the area. The foire is documented in later medieval sources, but its origins are unknown.
42 On this arrangement generally, see Morelli, Good, ‘Medieval Pilgrims’ Hospices’, pp. 79 n. 221, 81–82, 204–06 Google Scholar.
43 The only surviving Romanesque example of a vaulted road passage for hospice buildings may be the one at Pons, near Saintes. See Morelli, Good, ‘Medieval Pilgrims’ Hospices’, pp. 178–207 (pp. 206–07)Google Scholar.
44 René de La Coste-Messelière speculated that it formed part of the town lord’s gift of Notre-Dame de Bressuire to St-Jouin-de-Marnes in c. 1092 (La Coste-Messelière, ‘Sources et illustrations’, pp. 208-09). The relevant charter (Chartularium Sancti Jovini, pp. 25-26) does not corroborate this assertion. On Bressuire in general, see the notes above and also Garand, Raymond, ‘Les églises de Bressuire’, Bulletin de la Société historique et scientifique des Deux-Sèvres, 2nd ser., 1.2 (1968), pp. 111–16 Google Scholar; and Augereau, Nicole, ‘Bressuire (Deux-Sèvres)’, in Les petites villes du Haut-Poitou de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge, formes et monuments. I: Bressuire, Brioux-sur-Boutonne, Loudun, Mortmorillon, Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, Thouars, ed. Bourgeois, Luc (Chauvigny, 2000), pp. 7–25 (p. 17)Google Scholar; and on St-Jacques, R. Garand, ‘Les pèlerinages à Saint-Jacques de Compostelle et le prieuré St. Jacques de Bressuire’, Bulletin de la Société des amis du vieux Bressuire, 6 (1954-55), pp. 17–25 Google Scholar.
45 ‘juxta villam est elemosinarla […] et eligitur prior a fratribus dicte domus et habet curam de fratribus et familie et presentatur episcopo’ (Pouillé, p. 220).
46 MSS Dom Fonteneau, vol. 3, p. 457, cited in Augereau, ‘Bressuire’, p. 17.
47 An act of 1307 indicates that with the abdication of the current prior the Bishop of Poitiers would exceptionally name his replacement, suggesting that the task usually fell to the town lord. Documents from later centuries also claim this right for the lord (e.g., Niort, Archives départementales, Chartrier de St-Loup, E 1961, an election in 1474).
48 In the fourteenth century its personnel included, in addition to the prior and three monks, a priest. See Ledain, , Histoire de la ville de Bressuire, 2nd edn, pp. 275–76 Google Scholar; and Pouillé, p. 220.
49 Cf. Poitiers, Direction régionale des affaires culturelles (DRAC), photothèque #4.79.811z (narthex capital) or #74.79.10367 (choir? capital). The latter shows an engaged capital with tall, fanning, undecorated leaves that curl (with a ball above) to form a simplified kind of volute.
50 Ledain, Histoire de la ville de Bressuire, p. 80.
51 Both were dependencies of La Réau Abbey, as confirmed in a papal bull of 30 March 1218. See Ledain, Histoire de la ville de Bressuire, p. 80; and Augereau, ‘Bressuire’, pp. 17-18.
52 The study by Beech, G. (A Rural Society, pp. 59–60 and 62 Google Scholar) argues that there were only two town lords named William in the twelfth century, rather than three, as scholars beginning in the nineteenth century had assumed. I follow Beech’s numbering, thus William III, rather than William IV (indicated in brackets). See also Maxwell, , Art of Medieval Urbanism, p. 308, n. 77 Google Scholar.
53 See Ledain, Bélisaire, ‘Parthenay et Saint-Loup’, in Paysages et monuments du Poitou, VII (Paris, 1894), p. 17 Google Scholar. Ledain reports that his source was J. Aubert, Histoire généalogique des seigneurs de Partenay [sic], 1694 (Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., MS 438 [317]), and the Archives de l’hôpital de Parthenay. It has since then been repeated by most modern authors, including Delhoume, ‘Parthenay au Moyen Age’, p. 22; Fleuret, Laurent, La ville de Parthenay à la fin du Moyen Age (XIVe-XVe siècles) (Parthenay, 1994), p. 29 Google Scholar; Cogny, Laurent, ‘Une histoire de famille (1012-1427)’, Le château des seigneurs de Parthenay (Parthenay, 1992), p. 26 Google Scholar, among others.
54 William III founded the priory of Châteaubourdin (c. 1170), offered donations to nearby Bois-d’Alione and Absie (1169) and increased the possessions of a new priory of Bois de Secondigny (1194) (Ledain, ‘Parthenay et Saint-Loup’, p. 4).
55 For fuller discussion, see Maxwell, , Art of Medieval Urbanism, p. 340 Google Scholar, n. 21, where evidence is presented to support the possibility — still an uncertainty — that the lord’s son planned a pilgrimage. We do know that several local lords also undertook pilgrimages to Jerusalem at this time: e.g., Hugh of Lusignan, in 1171; an otherwise unknown lord named Samuel in c. 1178; and Aimery, Viscount of Thouars, in 1198 (Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., MSS Dom Fonteneau, vol. 5, p. 27; vol. 18, p. 515; vol. 26, p. 217). As of 1216, the lords of Maire and Talmond departed on crusades to the Holy Land (MSS Fonteneau, vol. 22, pp. 59 and 63; and vol. 25, p. 201). Parthenay’s lords are never specifically named among those who departed, but it is clear that there was an ambiance of devotion among other Poitevin lords.
56 It was a dependency of one of Parthenay’s Benedictine priories, St-Paul (cf. Pouillé, p. 342).
57 Evidence from the early modern period confirms its modest standing. See, e.g., Merle, L. and Crozet, R., ‘Artistes et travaux d’art en Poitou aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles’, Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de l’Ouest, 4th ser., 2.2 (1952), pp. 65–78 (p. 67)Google Scholar; and Drochon, Bénoni, L’ancien archiprêtré de Parthenay. Visites des paroisses 1598-1740 (Poitiers, 1884), p. 75 Google Scholar.
58 After the Revolution the building was salvaged by private owners for use as a woodshed. Transferred to the possession of Parthenay’s archpriest after 1802, it was sold off on 16 May 1808 for 1,200 francs. At the time of the sale the archpriest commissioned a plan drawing of the building, our earliest record of its appearance (Niort, Archives départementales des Deux-Sèvres, 9 T 15). In the twentieth century St-Jacques served successively as a barn, garage and municipal theatre (cf. Paris, Services des Monuments historiques, Archive et Bibliothèque du Patrimoine, dossier Parthenay).
59 We know that it must have received numerous donations soon after its foundation, because in 1284 the lord set about confirming all of the priory’s rights and restating the priory’s privileges (Ledain, ‘Parthenay et Saint-Loup’, p. 18; and Fleuret, La ville de Parthenay, p. 65). Exemption from an important seigneurial tax (the soubmaille) lends further credence to the belief that the priory’s founding was the result of direct intervention by the town lords. See also the notes in Longer, ‘Documents’, pp. 262-68 and 270-75, that list donations and lands around the town. Additional information is provided in a 1450 document that lists Maison-Dieu’s properties (Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., Fonds Ledain, unnumbered document); see Fleuret, La ville de Parthenay, p. 62, where the 1450 documents appears as Appendix 6; and Catherine Delhoume, ‘La vie économique à Parthenay au XVe siècle d’après un manuscrit de 1450 du fonds Bélisaire Ledain conservé à la Bibliothèque municipale à Poitiers’, Bulletin de la Société historique et scientifique des Deux-Sèvres, 2nd ser., 19.4 (1986), pp. 407-16, where the text is also transcribed.
60 After the Revolution, the Maison-Dieu was returned to the municipality, and in 1924 was finally registered as a historic monument. It has undergone numerous modifications since that date; see Paris, Service des Monuments historiques, Archives et Bibliothèque du Patrimoine, dossier Châtillon-sur-Thouet, Maison-Dieu. Vestiges of a fourteenth-century cloister are preserved on the north side of the church, but recent archaeological excavations have also unearthed evidence of late twelfth-century claustral construction. See Garry, Olivier and Pironnet, Cyrille, ‘Rapport de prospection archéologique. Châtillon-sur-Thouet, église de la Maison-Dieu’, 1991 (Poitiers, Direction régionale des affaires culturelles, dossier Châtillon-sur-Thouet, Maison-Dieu)Google Scholar.
61 Maria Cavaillès, ‘Les résultats des fouilles archéologiques de la Maison des Cultures de Pays’, in Dialogues […] il était une fois la rue de la Vau Saint-Jacques (Parthenay, 1991), p. 139.
62 Cf. Fleuret, La ville de Parthenay, pp. 20, 29-30, information largely based on the 1450 text mentioned in n. 59 above.
63 Parthenay’s textiles are mentioned in documents of c. 1076 and 1097 from across northern Aquitaine and as far away as Navarre in 1164. See Ammann, Hektor, ‘Vom Städtewesen Spaniens und Westfrankreich im Mittelalter’, Studien zu den Anfängen des europäischen Städtewesens, ed. Mayer, Theodor (Constance, 1958), pp. 105–50 (pp. 143–44)Google Scholar. A 1297 text (see n. 65 below) also specifically identifies the faubourg St-Jacques as the locus of production.
64 Lavedan, Pierre, L’urbanisme au Moyen Age (Paris, 1974), pp. 19–22 Google Scholar, giving the instructive examples of Verdun, Dijon and Reims among others; and also Howard Saalman, Medieval Cities (New York, 1968), pp. 22-26, 31.
65 Poitiers, Bibl. Mun., Fonds Ledain, unnumbered document. For commentary on this text, see Fleuret, La ville de Parthenay, p. 54. Further information on the faubourg’s commercial activity is provided by the 1450 document mentioned in n. 59 above.
66 It is difficult to discern, but a window on the south side of the nave may also present similar characteristics; the window in question is barely perceptible in Fig. 15.
67 Among the three towns, only Thouars erected a charitable institution before 1100, St-Lazare (cf. supra).
68 On the variety of souls that would have availed themselves of the hospices and on the multiplicity of contemporary terms used to describe the various hostelleries, see Morelli, Good, ‘Medieval Pilgrims’ Hospices’, pp. 31–34 Google Scholar.
69 Ste-Catherine was destroyed in the late nineteenth century for the construction of a railway line. Photographs (Parthenay, Musée Turpin) show that the church was constructed in a style not too dissimilar from that of Maison-Dieu (see also below). On its history, see Vincent, J., Vicissitudes d’une léproserie poitevine du XVe au XIXe siècle: Sainte-Catherine de Parthenay (Paris, 1929)Google Scholar; and Pouillé, pp. 342-43. Two capitals appear to survive, both preserved in Parthenay’s Dépôt archéologique, but their provenance is questioned.
70 On the displacement to town outskirts, see Heers, Jacques, La ville au Moyen Age en Occident. Paysages, pouvoirs et conflits (Paris, 1990), pp. 483–84 Google Scholar; Jourdin, Mollat de, ‘L’hôpital dans la ville’; and Orme, Nicolas and Webster, Margaret, The English Hospital, 1070-1570 (New Haven, 1995), pp. 41–44 Google Scholar. There are biblical and hagiographie traditions for almsgiving and other charitable acts taking place before city gates; see Morelli, Good, ‘Medieval Pilgrims’ Hospices’, pp. 89–90 Google Scholar.
71 Cf. Frugoni, Chiara, A Distant City: Images of Urban Experience in the Medieval World, trans. McCuaig, William (Princeton, 1991 [1983]), pp. 10ff Google Scholar.; Goff, Jacques Le, ‘The Wilderness in the Medieval West’, in The Medieval Imagination, trans. Goldhammer, Arthur (Chicago, 1979), pp. 22–33 Google Scholar.
72 Cf. Turner, Victor and Turner, Edith, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture: Anthropological Perspectives (New York, 1978)Google Scholar, although their view of ritual as community action of resolution and reintegration remains problematic. See also Deflem, Mathieu, ‘Ritual, Anti-Structure, and Religion: A Discussion of Victor Turner’s Processual Symbolic Analysis’, journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 30.1 (1991), pp. 1–25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Grimes, Ronald L., ‘Victor Turner’s Definition, Theory, and Sense of Ritual’, Victor Turner and the Construction of Cultural Criticism: Between Literature and Anthropology, ed. Ashley, Kathleen (Bloomington, 1990), pp. 141–46 Google Scholar.
73 Fear spilled over in the fourteenth century when Parthenay’s Lord John I L’archevêque shut down the leprosarium in 1321 following rumours that Jews were poisoning the town water with the lepers’ water from Ste-Catherine. See Vincent, J., ‘Le complot de 1320 (v.s.) contre les lépreux et ses répercussions en Poitou’, Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de l’Ouest, 3rd ser., 7.4 (1927), pp. 825–44 Google Scholar.
74 Bériac, Françoise, Des lépreux aux cagots: recherches sur les sociétés marginales en Aquitaine médiévale (Bordeaux, 1990), pp. 67–77 Google Scholar, for the Lateran Council regulations. A more meticulous study of seclusion is offered in Nicole Bériou and François-Olivier Touati, Volúntate Dei leprosus: les lépreux entre conversion et exclusion aux XIIème et XIHème siècles (Spoleto, 1991). See also Mollai, Michel, ‘Floraison des fondations hospitalières (XIIe-XIIIe siècles)’, in Histoire des hôpitaux en France, ed. Imbert, Jean (Toulouse, 1982), pp. 33–66, esp. p. 36 Google Scholar (‘moins un hôpital qu’un lieu de relégation’) and pp. 40-42 (on ceremonies of ‘separation’).
75 On the care of the poor and sick as an ‘urban affair’, see Touati, François-Olivier, Maladie et société au Moyen Âge: la lèpre, les lépreux et les léproseries dans la province ecclésiastique de Sens jusqu ‘au milieu du XIVe siècle (Brussels, 1998), pp. 267–80 (p. 270)Google Scholar; and also Jourdin, Michel Mollat de, ‘L’hôpital dans la ville au moyen âge en France’, Bulletin de la Société française d’histoire des hôpitaux, 47 (1983), pp. 6–17 Google Scholar.
76 Beech, A Rural Society, pp. 42-70; and Hajdu, Robert, ‘Castles, Castellans and the Structure of Politics in Poitou, 1152-1271’, Journal of Medieval History, 4 (1978), pp. 27–53 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 33ff., which describes the important consolidation of castellanies and properties around Thouars (of which Bressuire was a subject) and Parthenay. Taken together, their properties encompassed virtually all of Bas-Poitou and beyond.
77 Augereau, ‘Bressuire’, p. 10.
78 See Touati, Maladie et société, pp. 267-80 (p. 270). An urban environment’s response to health and hospice needs is the subject of Kupfer, Marcia, The Art of Healing: Painting for the Sick and Sinner in a Medieval Town (University Park, Pa., 2003)Google Scholar.
79 Jacques Le Goff, ‘Ordres mendiants et urbanisation dans la France médiévale: État de l’enquête’, Annales ESC, 25 (1970), pp. 924-46; see also for northern Aquitaine, Favreau, Robert, ‘Les ordres mendiants dans le Centre-Ouest au XHIe siècle’, Bulletin de la Société des antiquaires de l’Ouest, 4th ser., 14.1 (1977), pp. 9–36 Google Scholar.
80 Favreau, Robert, ‘La formation d’un nouveau réseau urbain dans le Centre-Ouest du Xe au XIIIe siècle’, in Les réseaux urbains dans le Centre-Ouest Atlantique de l’Antiquité à nos jours, ed. Guignet, Philippe et al. (Poitiers, 1996), pp. 91–108 (pp. 106–07)Google Scholar; and ibid., ‘Réseau hospitalier et fait urbain (début XIVe siècle)’, in Mondes de l’Ouest et villes du monde. Mélanges en l’honneur d’André Chédeville, ed. C. Laurent et al. (Rennes, 1998), pp. 593.
81 Favreau, , ‘La formation’, and idem, ‘Pauvreté en Poitou et en Anjou à la fin du Moyen Âge’, in Études sur l’histoire de la pauvreté, ed. Mollat, Michel II (Paris, 1974), pp. 589–619 Google Scholar.
82 René de La Coste-Messelière provides lists of minor hospices (‘Sources et illustrations’), but, as noted above, his data should be read with caution; moreover, a very limited number of those named by that author are firmly dated to before the early fourteenth century.
83 For brief summaries, see Coutant and Bourgeois, ‘Thouars’; Augereau, ‘Bressuire’; Maria Cavaillès, ‘Parthenay (Deux-Sèvres)’, in Les petites villes du Haut-Poutou de l’Antiquité au Moyen Age, formes et monuments. Il: Angles-sur-l’Anglin, Argenton-Château, Charroux, Melle, Parthenay, Rom, ed. Luc Bourgeois (Chauvigny, 2005), pp. 113-46; and Garand, Raymond, ‘Les églises de Bressuire’, Bulletin de la Société historique et scientifique des Deux-Sèvres, 2nd ser., 1.2 (1968), pp. 111–16 Google Scholar. Parthenay’s constructions are analysed in my Art of Medieval Urbanism.
84 Around the chevet and choir, for example, the techniques are related to those found at other Parthenay churches (e.g., put-log holes, sizing of masonry rows, base and moulding carving), but on the whole the execution is sloppier and less exact. The nave walls, moreover, are built in an altogether different style.
85 Even Parthenay’s mid-twelfth-century constructions tended to employ a mixture of pointed and rounded arches for bays, windows and arcading (Maxwell, Art of Medieval Urbanism, pp. 134-78).
86 E.g., Vieux-Pouzauges, Beauvoir-sur-Mer, le Puy-de-Serre, and in the Parthenay domain itself at Le Tallud, Gorgé and Chalandray, these last three all dating to about the mid-twelfth century. For fuller discussion of the earlier building traditions at Parthenay, see Maxwell, , Art of Medieval Urbanism, pp. 84–123, 134–78 Google Scholar.
87 Bressuire’s St-Nicolas, although aisle-less, included a transept with absidioles to complement the rounded axial apse; St-Jean was a triple-aisled structure that likewise terminated in a triple apse; Notre-Dame was single-aisled with a transept and covered with a pointed vault. Cf. Garand, ‘Les églises de Bressuire’, and for Notre-Dame, see Bénédicte Fillion, ‘Historique de l’église Notre-Dame’, Revue d’histoire du pays Bressuirais (1991), pp. 4-41.
88 Garand, Raymond, ‘Le prieuré de Saint-Cyprien de Bressuire’, Bulletins et mémoires de la Société archéologique et historique de la Charente, 1 (1944), pp. 245–55 Google Scholar; Augereau, ‘Bressuire’, p. 14.
89 The portal was reconstructed in the twentieth century, apparently imitating the original (cf. Poitiers, DRAC, photothèque photo # 74.79.783V and the accompanying ‘Dossier de pré-inventaire’, by Charles Merle).
90 Crozet, René, L’art roman en Poitou (Paris, 1948), p. 114 Google Scholar.
91 Crozet estimates at about 150 the number of regional churches with such plans (L’art roman en Poitou, pp. 114 and 118). Small, single-aisled castrai churches turn up at the castra of Poitiers’s bishops at Angles-sur-l’Anglin, at the Angevin count’s Moncontour, and at sites of lesser lords, including Tiffauges, Argenton-Château (both near Thouars and Bressuire), etc. Similar churches among charitable institutions include: Bonnes, Auzon, Charroux and Civray. It is worth emphasizing that Bressuire’s St-Cyprien was a priory with no claims to charitable services, and indeed, there were numerous rural (Limalonges, Clussais, etc.) and even urban churches (Notre-Dame in Châtellerault) with this simple plan.
92 Cf. Baudry, Marie-Pierre, ‘Le château du Coudray-Salbart’, Bulletin archéologique du Comité des travaux historique et scientifique, 23-24 (1991), pp. 137–212 Google Scholar; and for the other sites, eadem, Les fortifications des Plantagenêts en Poitou, 1154-1242 (Paris, 2001).
93 As Philippe Durand does in ‘L’architecture militaire dans les domaines Plantagenêt: une identité’, Les fortifications dans les domaines Plantagenêt, XXIe-XIVe siècles, ed. Marie-Pierre Baudry (Poitiers, 2000), pp. 133-35; and Baudry, Les fortifications, pp. 119-22.
94 As for the main towns on the principal Compostelan route — Melle, Aulnay, Saint-Jean-d’Angély, and Poitiers — none featured a faubourg named for James, although Poitiers featured a small extramural chapel dedicated to the saint. Melle added a chapel to St James at a later date.