04 août 2007
The abbey of Noirlac, history
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.
The abbey church
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
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.
The chapter house
It
is the neatest part and most remarkable. It dates from XIIIth century.
It is the place where the community meet, where the abbot exerted his
magistery and where he pointed out the chapters of the rule.
Moreover,
the brothers convers were entitled to the chapter, but were not
entitled to the “voice”. “Not to have a say” was often deformed by “not
being entitled to the chapter”…
The
rectangular space of 12,64 m out of 8,48 m is organized in two naves
forming six square spans arched on intersecting ribs, whose
repercussions are supported in the medium by two piles cut in facets
multiple and surmounted capitals decorated with water sheets, broad and
punts. The room opens on the cloister by a flanked central arcade of
two arcades geminated on sideboard.
The room of the monks
The
room of the monks date from the XIIth century. This part is
decorated of a chimney, perhaps added on a later date. The large
windows date from the XVIIIth century.
This
room, very altered, preserved its groined vault. On the chimney,
two leaned sticks of abbot, emblematic image of the cistercian order.
It was to be used as scriptorium. 
The refectory
Located
in the southern wing, it forms the principal axis of it. Transformed in
the XVIIIth century by a middle height floor, in order to build
the apartment of the hosts, this room found its primitive volume today:
24 m length, 11 of width, 9 height.
It
is covered with 8 vaults on intersecting ribs whose repercussions
take support on a file of three median columns. It is enlightened in
the south by four high surmounted lancets of two polylobed roses. 
The
recent restoration made possible to find the pulpit of the reader
and the stone benches which run to the bottom of the walls. The oblique
establishment of the southern wall is explained by the presence of the
river of the fisheries, filled since the XVIIIth century. At the
beginning, the refectory communicated with a shaven kitchen in 1725.
Dormitories
The
first is in the wing of the monks, on the first floor. It was
enlightened in the east as in the west by the small windows of which
only those of the Western face remain. Community until the XVIIth
century, it was arranged at that time in individual cells by wood
partitions.
The
frontage on the garden was considerably modified and made it possible,
with its broad openings, to build true private apartments. The last
room at the bottom of the corridor was used as the prior apartment.
The
dormitory of the convers, 28 m length on 13 m broad, transformed into
attic in XIIIth century, does not present much any more of traces of
its primitive provisions. It was used as appendix with the keep in
XVth century and taken the name of abbey home in XVIth. Recovered by
the monks, in 1703, it failed to be destroyed because of its pitiful
state following a fire. The north and west walls were remakes as well
as the frame.
The storeroom
The
walls of the storeroom are certainly former to the wall of the frontage
of the church which comes to be stuck to it, and date from the work
campaign carried out of 1170 to 1190.
The vaults probably date from first half of XIIIth century. At the origin, its openings were closed by oiled fabrics.
(Drawn from the work of Jean-Yves Ribault, “the abbey of Noirlac” to the Ouest-France editions)