The Church of St. Philibert, Tournus is a medieval church, the main surviving building of a former

Benedictine The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly contemplative monastic order of the Catholic Church for men and for women who follow the Rule of Saint Benedict. Initiated in 529, th ...

abbey An abbey is a type of monastery used by members of a religious order under the governance of an abbot or abbess. Abbeys provide a complex of buildings and land for religious activities, work, and housing of Christians, Christian monks and nun ...

, the Abbey of St. Philibert, in

Tournus Tournus () is a Communes of France, commune in the Saône-et-Loire Departments of France, department in the Regions of France, region of Bourgogne-Franche-Comté in eastern France. Geography Tournus is located on the right bank of the Saône, 20& ...

Saône-et-Loire Saône-et-Loire (; Arpitan: ''Sona-et-Lêre'') is a department in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in France. It is named after the rivers Saône and Loire, between which it lies, in the country's central-eastern part. Saône-et-Loire is B ...

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

. It is of national importance as an example of

Romanesque architecture 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 Ro ...

History

In 875

Charles the Bald Charles the Bald (; 13 June 823 – 6 October 877), also known as CharlesII, was a 9th-century king of West Francia (843–877), King of Italy (875–877) and emperor of the Carolingian Empire (875–877). After a series of civil wars during t ...

gave Tournus to a community of monks who came to the locality with the relics of

Saint Philibert In Christianity, Christian belief, a saint is a person who is recognized as having an exceptional degree of sanctification in Christianity, holiness, imitation of God, likeness, or closeness to God in Christianity, God. However, the use of the ...

. The monks had fled

Viking Vikings were seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway, and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded, and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9� ...

raids on

Noirmoutier Noirmoutier (also French: Île de Noirmoutier, ; , ) is a tidal island off the Atlantic coast of France in the Vendée department (85). History Noirmoutier was the location of an early Viking raid in 799, when raiders attacked the monaster ...

, and had previously stopped at

Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu (; ) is a commune in the Loire-Atlantique department in western France. It is about 400 km southwest of Paris, via Chartres, Le Mans, Angers, and Nantes. The town is twinned with the Welsh suburb of Radyr in C ...

. Noirmoutier was the location of the first recorded

raid on continental Europe, when raiders attacked the monastery in 799. Around 863 the monk Ermentarius wrote a history of the transfer of the monastery and the relics of Philibert of Jumièges. The abbey was damaged by a Hungarian invasion in 936/937. The abbey was closed in the seventeenth century and St. Philibert became a

collegiate church In Christianity, a collegiate church is a church where the daily office of worship is maintained by a college of canons, a non-monastic or "secular" community of clergy, organised as a self-governing corporate body, headed by a dignitary bearing ...

. Like many other churches in France, it was secularised as a

Temple of Reason A Temple of Reason () was, during the French Revolution, a state atheist temple for a new belief system created to replace Christianity: the Cult of Reason, which was based on the ideals of reason, virtue, and liberty. This "religion" was supposed ...

during the French Revolution.

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

worship resumed after the

Concordat of 1801 The Concordat of 1801 was an agreement between the First French Republic and the Holy See, signed by First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII on 15 July 1801 in Paris. It remained in effect until 1905, except in Alsace–Lorraine, ...

formally ended the period of dechristianisation.

Architecture

According to a tradition, a tenth-century abbot began construction of the present building. Some sources follow tradition in suggesting that construction began before 1000. However, current thinking is that the earliest parts of the church are eleventh century. It is in the early

First Romanesque One of the first streams of Romanesque architecture in Europe from the 10th century and the beginning of 11th century is called First Romanesque, or Lombard Romanesque. It took place in the region of Lombardy (at that time the term encompassing ...

style of

Burgundy Burgundy ( ; ; Burgundian: ''Bregogne'') is a historical territory and former administrative region and province of east-central France. The province was once home to the Dukes of Burgundy from the early 11th until the late 15th century. ...

, which began to use further Romanesque and early Gothic styles during the beginning of the 11th century. The church is set in a fortified enclosure, and defence was evidently a factor in the design of the building. The

west West is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some Romance langu ...

front can be described as "lithic" in that it has heavy masonry walls and few windows.

Interior

The

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

is roofed with

barrel vault A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...

ing, supported on tall cylindrical columns. The barrel vault is unusual in that it is transversal: instead of one long barrel running along nave, the vault consists of multiple smaller barrels running across the nave. This arrangement helps the engineering by avoiding lateral thrust but it "is not beautiful and was never repeated."

Conservation

The church was included in the

list of historic monuments of 1840 The List of historic monuments protected in 1840 is a list of the historic monuments of France created in 1840 by the French Commission for Historical Monuments (''Commission des monuments historiques''). It was the first protection of this type i ...

. Like others on the list, the building required conservation work which it received under the direction of the preservationist architect

Charles-Auguste Questel Charles-Auguste Questel (19 September 1807 – 30 January 1888) was a French architect and teacher. As well as designing new buildings, his projects included the preservation of historical monuments. He worked on several historical monuments i ...

References

Books

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External links

First Romanesque in France, Pictures of St. Philibert at Tournus and St. Martin at Chapaize
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Philibert, Tournus Benedictine monasteries in France Christian monasteries established in the 9th century 11th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in France Churches in Saône-et-Loire Monuments historiques of Saône-et-Loire Romanesque architecture in Burgundy