Sacred places

Hello,

You are more than 25.000 to have visited me since the creation of the french blog, and I would like to thank you.

(and more than 100.000 pages seen)

Sincerely yours…

(If you want the french version : http://lieuxsacres.canalblog.com/ )

NEW…

A forum is born :

http://energetiquementvotre.forumculture.net/index.forum

And if you want to take part and post photographs, go on:

http://lieuxsacresphoto.canalblog.com/

And for crowned places, here one:

SMALL EXPLANATORY NOTE

To reach a particular category, it is enough for you to click on the left, in “categories”. If you seek for example the black virgin of Valfleury, you will find it in the album of the black virgins, (only in photograph), in the category “virgins black”, and in the category “Valfleury”.

You can also follow the wire of the voyage while clicking at the end of each page on “following page”.

For the last studies, you will find them also on the left, in lower part of “categories”, in “last messages”.

Here my banner. Thank you in Rem which supported me on msn while it worked above…

As regards the motivation of such studies, I leave the word to Gwelan which explained it in a way which touched me much in its site on the vibratory levels:

“For the very great majority among us, our implication in this radiesthesic discipline has matured with the frequentation of high vibratory places. They challenged us, educated, nourished… They were the essential ingredient of our awakenings.

I do not know what was thus given, not revealed with us. I suppose that each one will put at it the name which is appropriate for its beliefs, but it is one something which put to us in life, more, and sometimes even which revealed us with ourselves.

There is, between what is released from these places and ourselves, an intimacy even a new form of intelligence which was constituted gradually. It is with this intimacy, this intelligence, that it seems to to me interesting today to appeal, to endeavour there to foresee what is (perhaps) occurring: a phenomenon that we would not have to necessarily undergo, but which is perhaps a great progression appropriateness on the individual level. “

That it is thanked for it…

The shrine is placed under the term Sernin, or Saturnin, and was built on the site of his tomb. At the outset, this was an oratory built under the leadership of the first bishop of Toulouse, Hilaire, who draw up an oratory to honour the memory of his predecessor.
  In the fifth century, under the exceptional popularity of sanctuary and the devotion of the faithful to the memory of the martyr, bishops  Sylve and Exupère did build a small church. Leftover Saturnin were placed in a marble sarcophagus inside the church. This was the first time that a community of monks moved to this location.

The abbot often objected to the bishop of Toulouse, whose cathedral Saint-Etienne had much less radiation than Saint-Sernin. The community grows and an abbey was built around the church, governed by the rules of St. Augustine.
The growth of de Compostela pilgrimage, making Toulouse a mandatory step of the Tholosqua or via Arelatensis increase the number of visitors. This added many relics whose reputation drew early crowds considerable.

The church became too small, the construction of the current basilica, most important, was decided at the end of the eleventh century. It began under the auspices of architect Raymond Gayrard by the bedside, in 1080, above the chapel.

You can still visit today the primitive church, which acts as a crypt.

Sixteen years after the start of construction in 1096, Pope Urban II consecrated the altar carved by Bernard Gilduin. The completion of the transept and part of the nave is effective in 1180. The builders used primarily stone and brick up to the podium. But the high cost of the material forced to use only the brick in the upper parts of the building. It is in the Basilica of Saint-Sernin came as the first Gothic french experimentation.

A beautiful cloister and an important flanquaient abbey north of the basilica. Then the work dragged in length with structural changes until the XIV and even the sixteenth century to certain elements. The western towers were never completed.

During the Revolution, the chapter of Saint-Sernin was deleted. But the basilica was neither changed nor sacked. A restoration is ordered in the nineteenth century, carried out by Alexandre of Mège. But the result is poor and the restoration is pursued by Viollet-le-Duc. It restores then staging roofs and sides of the nave, which was abolished in the fourteenth century.
After the Revolution and the abandonment of buildings of the abbey, it was decided to clear the basilica and to make available its square and its various doors. This project will be implemented until the early nineteenth century. From 1804 to 1808, the cloister of the former abbey was dismantled. Some tents were preserved and are now visible to the Augustins museum. Then, through expropriation and acquisitions, buildings are destroyed and buildings around the church led by Jacques-Pascal Virebent to form an elliptical. It only remains that the Saint-Raymond museum , a former buildings of the abbey. Saint-Sernin remained merely a collegiate church until 1878, when it was finally consecrated basilica.
At the end of the twentieth century, a new restaurant has removed the staging of Viollet-le-Duc and replace it with the state of the XIV century.

Today, it is the largest Roman church kept in Europe. The building still has 260 tents novels and numerous frescoes. It keeps a perfect consistency, since manufacturers successive respected the original draft well beyond the Roman period.   By its structure, Saint Sernin belongs to the family of churches known as "relics and pilgrimages" vast nave flanked by collateral, large transept highlight, choir deep surrounded by an ambulatory with radiating chapels.

I thank the "learned societies in Toulouse," Georges Prat, Coline Meunier, and all the websites below:

http://www.coline-design.eu/infographie-@/5-index.html#project22 http://www.coline-design.eu/infographie- @ / index.html 5-# project22
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilique_Saint-Sernin_de_Toulouse
http://architecture.relig.free.fr/sernin.htm
http://catholique-toulouse.cef.fr/site/161.html
http://www.augustins.org/fr/monument/accueil.htm
http://www2.ac-toulouse.fr/culture/dossierspdf/Saintsernin.pdf.
http://archives.arte.tv/hebdo/archimed/19971230/ftext/archi.html
http://www.societes-savantes-toulouse.asso.fr/samf/geo/31/toulouse/stsernin/ftol98il.htm
http://pmaude.free.fr/Sernin/

Ruan, whose name means “Street” in Old Latin, was called “Ruata” into 870. It was discovered there an old Gallo-Roman villa. This village has a church of XIIth century, Saint-Felix.

A dolmen was found, Pierre Luteau, nested in the middle of the fields, nearest the locality “Le Montant”. It is property of the district and was registered in the historic buildings in 1992.

He suffered, but remains a rather rare witness of the Neolithic time in Beauce. 

Many legends are attached to it, hawked by the popular tradition, and people of  speak about it like “druidic” monument …

Tillay-le-Peneux is a small town in the conty of Orgères-in-Beauce. Mentioned under the name of Tilietum-Pagani, Tilletum in 1198, Teillay-le-Pesneux in 1629. The name comes from the lime-trees present on the territory since a long time.
Close to the locality of Soignoles stand the dolmen known as the Godon stone. Excavations were carried out there by Guy Richard, of the regional service of the Archaeology of Orleans. It brought its classification under the Historical Monuments in 1979.

At the time of the excavations, about fifty individuals were found (30 adults and of 12 children). According to a dating with carbon-14, they were buried between -3400 and -3000 before J. - C.

On the architectural level, 5 stones out of limestone or grinding, originaly verticals, delimited space where deaths were deposited. A small flagstone in cover into grinding of 2,3 m by 2,2m covered and determined the funerary room.

In addition to the human remainders, osseous teeth and fragments, the sediments of the room included some small objects out of cut flint or bone and rare fragments of pottery. A furniture which makes it possible to specify two periods of use of the sepulchre. The first at the end of the average Neolithic era was completed by partial collapse of the flagstone of cover on the ground of the funerary room. This event which was perhaps natural on other excavated sites was caused by the last users of the sepulchre.

During the second period of use, in the final Neolithic era, other dead people are deposited in the content of the room after being introduced vertically. A pollinic analysis of the sediment contained in a cranium gives some information on the environment of the megalith at the time of the burial in particular the existence of corn fields rather distant but revealing of an agricultural activity as well as the presence of limes which will still stand until the modern time as the name of the village testifies it.

This monument was saved in extremis from destruction in 1975. 

http://www.intensite.net/articles.php?lng=fr&pg=3342

Outarville is a city of 750 inhabitants. Located in Beauce at 20 km in the West of Pithiviers, it is bordering the Eure et Loir. The St. Lawrence church was remade in XVIIth and was restored at the XIXth century. Registered with the additional inventory of the historic buildings, it has a before-porch of XIXth, which shelter a Roman gate with semicircular arch, its bell is dated 1656.

It is the third church of Outarville. The first was built during the XIIth century. The cemetery was joined there, in the south, where the place of the market is today. The second church was built arond 1400 per Jean II Le Vannier. It was burned in 1567 during religion's wars. The third and actual one, was rebuilt by Galéas de Frétard, lord of Outarville.

Turning around the church, one discovers indeed various elements which correspond to various times: the porch testifies to the most recent work and evokes the beginning of the XIXth century. Under the porch, the gate was build in the XIIIth. Six columns support capitals.

The Northern wall is oldest. The East pinion  present a triplet, the window of the medium surmounts a small buttress. The Southern wall shows the trace of an arch. The bell-tower is a solid square tower. This kind of turn is seen in all Beauce exposed to the wind. In 1937, the old tiles punts composing the cover, were replaced by slates. In 1968, the old rough coat of pink color was pickled. The stones were then rejointed, which restored at the building its first character. In the same way, the white enamelled dial of the clock, on the Western pinion was replaced by a simple gilded metal circle.

The XVIIIth century left us two wood statues: SAINT LAURENT and St Jean Baptist. The XIXth century saw building the platform and opening a window in the southern wall. In the XXth century, the chorus was refitted about 1930. In 1963, the grid of this chorus was re-used to constitute a door closing the lower part of the bell-tower. The furnace bridge leaned with the East wall, as well as the retable were removed.

A furnace bridge “facing the people” was installed on a wood estrade which covers the stone steps. this church was built on an old crowned templar line. One notices out a keystone with a significant cross. The church is remarkable for the progression of energies. One can feel the traces of an old megalith, probably located under the Southern part of the building.

http://beauce45-catholique-orleans.cef.fr/Html/eglises/outarville.htm

Andonville is a french little town located in the department of Loiret (45). Its church, built in XIVth century, under the term of Saint-Pierre and Saint-Wolf, was in the beginning a castral vault. It was included in the strengthened enclosure. A kind of crypt or vault, in the undergrounds, contains the tombs of the lords of the place. One still finds remainders of foundations of the castle, destroyed in the XIXth century, and an enclosure.

Actually,the pilgrimage of Saint-Wolf is still attended. Near to the village, one finds the sources of Juine, Fountain and Saint-Jacob.

A little further, by the road of Annemont, 600 meters in the south of the borough, is drawn up a stone, the "Pierre-clouée", or Clouet, also said Pierre Koraïre. It is a dolmen dated from the Neolithic era, classified historic building since 1992. It has more than 6.000 years.

In the middle of the fields, it was, according to the legend, the place of appointment of the Gallic chiefs of the vicinity.

Formed of several blocks of sandstone, it presents on one on its sides, the grooves of polishing machine. Its flagstone of cover was broken in three pieces.

On one of the stones, several cups were dug. Deepest in top, then a series of smaller others communicating between them. In the bottom of the stone under the dolmen, one can see a hole. With which ritual this stone was used?

In between Forez, Lyonnais and Roannais, the Morning Mountains are nested in a framework of small valleys and hills, nearby of the Lyonnais Mounts and the river  Loire

Salt-in-Donzy, nested in these mountains, has an antic and rich past. Men left there marks of all the times: from Gallo-roman period, where an activity develop itself nearby the thermal baths to the medieval time  with the site of Donzy, the church of Roman style, priory…

But also far before, attested by the discovery  of the prehistoric site of the valley of Charpassonne. Salt, whom name means “which spouts out”, allusion to the source of hot water of the Gour-Heat, was an important city at the crossing of two Roman roadways.

The church was, with its foundation, the church of the benedictan priory whose building equipped with a tower remains, not far from the road. This building whose foundations are Gallo-Roman, was given in 1018 in a state of outdatedness to the abbey of Savigny to become priory at the same time as a church close under the term to  Saint Julien. The givers were two lords of Donzy, Girlin and Jarenton, whose castle still offers to us imposing ruins, about two km from here.

Recent excavations restored the foundations of this primitive church of 1018. It had three absidioles in the north visible on the northern side of the current church. Its basement comprised many burials of the Early middle ages with their funerary rites (ablation of the feet, reduction of skeleton). Fragments of engraved bones and a burgonde currency accompanied them, as well as potteries.

This pre-Roman church was demolished at the beginning of XIIth century, and its materials reinstated in the new construction industry, with the use of the monks and the parish which developed around the priory.

The current church, 1140, is roman, meridionnal influence, in an austere unit. 

The pilot wheels of the transept are decorated with blind arcades of which one, equipped with a barrel of column having probably supported a furnace bridge, ended in a painted absidiole. Cupola in blocking on rudimentary horns and  squared pillars supported the bell-tower.

The chorus presents openings in semicircular arch: the small window of left gives primitive dimension, the other openings having been widened later.
With transept crossing, the bell-tower rests on four enormous granite pillars. Each pillar comprises 3 steps in order to give more lightness to the unit. Two of these pillars are crowned with very simple capitals: they are the only sculptures of the building.

On the meridionnal side , in the right arm of the transept, the blank wall is supported by two arcades in semicircular arch. Between the two, a fragment of column, vestige of the Roman temple on the ruins of which the priory of Salt was high.

The church suffered during the wars of religion. In 1570, a fire destroyed the nave. The church was then reduced to its only transept. Work of restoration was undertaken after 1614. The restoration of 1977 made it possible to restore the church in its primitive provision and made fall the coatings. One rediscovered the blind arcades of the southern brace then, the door of the bell-tower, the door of the brace northern, known as “door of the monks”.

In the apse, a cavity forming “depositorium” was released and formed the current gate vault. The depositorium was in the beginning an inviolable place, firmly closed, where one placed the holy species during the disturbed periods.

The stoup, at the entry, also testifies to the church of 1018. In the right arm of the transept, on the ground, an enigmatic star is traced…

Before the appearance of the cistercians, quite even the arrival of the Romans, the area saw the man of Heidelberg (related with the family of the homo erectus). The many prospections in the river Cher gave place to discovered very old industries, of which there remain to us tools, cut in the rollers.

Quite still, at the beginning of Jurassic, the area is covered with a not very deep hot sea in edge of the Central Massif. An important sedimentation generates deposits, qualified of Hettangien according to the determination of Eugene Rénevier. But I am mislaid. (http://drevant.free.fr/index.php?lng=fr)

The Abbey of Noirlac was called the Abbey "House of God" (Momus dei). It is located in the north of Saint-Amand Montrond, on right bank of the river Cher, in the commune of Bruère-Allichamps: geometrical center of France according to calculations' of the French geographer Adolphe-Laurent Joanne. He was found there a boundary-stone dating from the reign of Alexandre Sévère (180-235). It is the only boundary-stone which attests of a trivium (crossroads of three roads). It had been dug out of sarcophagus.

House of God? The site had this denomination until 1276. It would be necessary to see there one of these many house-God, modest charitable foundations for the poor travellers, or of a small hermitage, witness of the spiritualism of this time. A many cistercians communities accepted the hospitality of hermits, when they were not called to take again the hermitages.

It is in 1136, in this wild and uncultivated site, at the bottom of a marshy valley, in accordance with the tradition, that 12 monks resulting from Clairvaux settled. They were under the control of their abbot, Robert de Châtillon, nearest relative of Bernard de Clairvaux: “Plant where water runs, it is that abounds the grace there” said Saint Bernard… which was even obliged to intervene in 1149 near the king so that the small community, stripped of all, can survive. A donation took place in the following year. It marked the material foundation of the abbey. The lord of the place, Ebb V of Charenton, ensured the means to them of surviving and granted to the monks, who lived hitherto of gathering and alms, in 1150 their first charter of establishment. He gave up any seigniorial rights in this place, to build an abbey in the honor of Notre-Dame.

The abbey is a place three times over closed (triple enclosure of druids?) : the first fence is ensured by topography even, the river bank on a side, the slope of the hill of the other, ahead and behind bulky woods. The second fence contains what one calls the farmyard. It is there that the visitors are received and that are gathered the utility buildings. It was initially of piles and spines, before becoming stone wall. With the East of the court rise the conventual buildings, whose quadrilateral forms the third enclosure.

At the end of XIIth century appear the first indirect incomes: dîme, revenues of silver, seignorial products. The abbey grows rich gradually to reach its apogee about 1250. The great donations ceased at the end of XIIIth century. It is at this period that "House of God" became Noirlac (first mention in 1322). The tradition reports that it is in this time that the son of a lord drowned in the river Cher not far from the abbey, during a hunting and that the abbey took this name because of this incident. But one can notice that the stone quarry bore already the name of Noirlac in 1261…

In 1423, the monks accepted the authorization to strengthen the abbey, after the episode of the occupation of the places by the roughneck soldiers of the English captain Robert Knolles between 1359 and 1360. They raised a keep, whose access was defended by a drawbridge placed on a ditch full of water which ran all along the frontage of the church.

At the end of XVth century the abbey passes through a major moral crisis. Then the system came from the commende which did not arrange anything with the business. At the XVIIth century, there remained 4 monks in the walls…
In 1650, the buildings are seriously damaged in the adverse combat in favour of Prince de Condé and royal troops. 
In 1724, work of rebuilding is undertaken. Finished in 1730, after the obligation to sell wood, they completely transform the wing of the monks which resembles now a traditional frontage of castle. The remainders of fortifications are shaved.

With the revolution, the abbey is ready to be sold like country house under the nationnals goods. It was repurchased by Amable-Jean Desjobert, a Parisian man of law. In 1822, the residence is repurchased by manufacturers, Merlin de Failly and Hull. They transformed the buildings into porcelain factory, whereas the southern wing was reserved to the director, the old dormitory to the workmen. In the church, drying kilns and the workshop of enamel in the chorus…

In 1894, the abbot Jules Pailler, cleaned of Saint Amand, buy the all building. To install its orphanage, he undertake a first repairing.

Then in 1909, after its acquisition by the department of Cher, Noirlac is used as vacation camp to the first small singers with the wood cross.

In 1950, restoration under the control of the architects Ranjard and Lebouteux which will end in 1980.

After having crossed the arcade, remains long arched passage which formed the entry of the fence, we are in front of the abbey church. The gate of entry, on the Western frontage, was in XIIIth century preceded by a porch of 4 arched spans.

The church takes again the cistercian plan in cross, composed of two spans with flat bedside, opened on the transept crossing whose each brace carries, in the East, two vaults.

The nave includes 8 arched spans of warheads and is composed of an alongside central vessel of two sides. Dimensions of the church contribute to the harmony of all the monastery:
Overall length of 59 m, width 17, length of the transept 28 m and width 8 m, chorus reduced to 10 m by 8. The vaults of the transept rise to 17 m under key.
It should be noted that the width of the principal nave passes 8 m between the piles close to the transept to 7,35 m at the entry of the church, which forms a trapezoid and not a rectangle, as in Bourges.

The unit was built in three shifts: 1150-1160, which saw rising the sanctuary, the transept, and the first two spans. Then between 1170 and 1190, the Southern wall of the nave, which borders the northern gallery of the cloister, then finally, in first half of XIIIth century, the completion of the nave, the frontage of entry and the porch.

The church comprises two levels of rise: small windows nest under the vaults, above large broken arcades. Those fall down on rectangular piles. The barrel of the columns narrows in its high part, on the level of the bases, which support the repercussion of the warheads.    

The northern arm of the transept is lit by three broken windows and a polylobed pink. At the extremity, one finds the door of dead which gave on the old cemetery, located behind the head of the church close to a vault dedicated to Marie-madeleine, missing in the XVIIIth century.

The cloister serves by its galleries all the essential parts of the abbey: the chapter house, the sacristy, the room of the monks, the refectory.

Its galleries open on a garden whose well is eccentric. One can imagine that a first cloister, square, existed before the reconsrtuction of the current one. Its groined vaults are still visible in the galleries north and south. The rebuilding started with the galleries north, against the church, then western, against the storeroom. The posts make it possible to allot these galleries to the period 1270-1280.

The southern gallery was very altered, and one assigns a dating around 1300 to him. 

The Eastern part is dated from first half of XIVth century: arched warheads on square level, it presents broad arcades formed of a quadruple blind arcade and a hollow tympanum of an alongside pink of two curvilinear triangles, with clovers and polylobed profiles. One will notice the last blind arcade, whose tympanum forms a rose with 5 petals, contrary to the three others which have an opening clover. What does it occur there?

In decoration of foliage ((vineleaves and cistelle) which decorates the capitals, vis-a-vis the chapter house, two heads of man and woman. This is unexpected in a Cistercian abbey, and a message is surely hidden.

A little further, a head look at on the other side of the gallery, where we find an echo (bird?) surrounded by foliages. The mouth is open in the shape of O. It seems to me that a sacred network passes in this place.

It is in this gallery that in 1893, the excavations allowed to find the grave from the founder, the abbot Robert de Châtillon, who died about 1163. The body was covered with a maroon bore-hole dress, capped, fitted of a pair of sandals. A stole violet and gold surrounded the neck. Beside, a stick out of wooden.