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Saint Foy abbey-church

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Inner visit

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A slender nave

Straightaway, once crossed the narthex covered by a slightly crushing low vault, the visitor deep down experiences such a daring slenderness, a real springing up of the central nave even intensified by its closeness. Then, analysing this architecture so favourable to prayer, he quickly discovers that it expresses itself in the simplest of all possible shapes : semi-circular vaults, vertical supports, without any adornment in order to soften their harshness and strictness apart from the capitals. At the transept crossing, four strong pillars go up in one stream to the arches which hold up the dome's octogonal drum above the drop. Beyond, the sanctuary itself is composed of a straight bay which continues in elevation both the nave layout and the horseshoe form of the choir covered by a lengthened half-dome vault.

The choir

Round the sanctuary, the magnificent roman gates made of wrought iron volutes and ended by sharp points at nearly three metres high ensured the relics protection against any covetousness. Behind it, the pilgrims were quartered on the ambulatory where they had stone benches at their disposal in order to rest after their tiring journey. We can also notice the ambulatory division into seven bays ; therefore this symbolic digit already found concerning the choir's archways and the oriental chapels seems to characterize the curved section of the abbey-church. Is it only a simple coincidence ?

Galleries

Galleries offer gripping views from above. Their function is much more architectural than utilitarian seeing that they ensure in fact the whole monument's stability. Above the aisles, their quarter round vaults come and fit over the base of both the nave's great barrel vault and transept from each side where thrusts are the strongest ones. They retain its entire length thus playing the same part than Gothic flying buttresses but in a continuous way. Such a coherent system which nearly simultaneously appeared in Conques, Saint Sernin of Toulouse and Santiago of Compostela, favoured both the nave's climbing and its lateral wall's hollowing-out. Indeed, galleries are widely opened thanks to a series of openings grouped in pairs and framed in a discharging arch.

The capitals

In Saint Foy of Conques, inner structures wildly increased the number of capitals. These latter provided a vast area for ornamentation on the sides of the bells, while playing their part of architectonic support in all the places where arch does reign. The abbey-church conceals inside more than two hundred and fifty capitals which mainly share wheter at the spring of the ambulatory's, transept's and nave's archs, or at the galleries. Outside, austerity has prevailed and the capitals (about scarcelis thirty) could only lodge theirselves under the door's and the clevet's archs.

During the reign of the abbots Odolric and Etienne II, in the third quarter of the XIth century, the first works campaigns have given us the most important well-known whole of interlacing capitals with the Saint Pierre of Rode one, in Catalonia. They are about thirty, all of them carved in red stantstone, into the transept's apsidioles and round the chevet, as well as onto the northern portal. The interlacing is an original design composed of flat ribbons, the more often with three twigs which cross or join alternately passing one onto the other like a basketry before opening out in a terminal palm tree leaf. Due to their richness, the four interlacing capitals on the northern transept's portal rank among the most beautiful successes in the roman ornamental sculpture.

Isaac's sacrifice

The first experiments in the human face representation also on interlacing backgrounds achieved in the ambulatory were preparing the advent of the historiated capital, that is the roman sculpture's full becoming. Thus, in the northern transept, the "cycle of Saint Pierre" takes up three capitals with the arrest, realease and crucifixion upside down of the apostles' prince. On the pile which splits southwards two right bays of the choir, Isaac's sacrifice is located on the site which is usually reserved for this prefiguration of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, that is rear the high altar.

One of the latest caputals, on the fourth northern pile of the nave, is dedicated to Saint Foy's condemnation as a victim of the emperor Dioclétien's persecutions. There six figures lining up round the bell at regular intervals, their feet put onto the astragal. On the right side, one angel which holds a cross puts his hand on Saint Foy's shoulder in front of him as if he wanted to encourage her in her trial. One man grabs the saint's arm and seems to take her forcibly in order to appear behing the roman proconsul, Dacien. In the opposite corner, the latter sits on a throne and gives in to the headsman the long sword which will be used for the beheading torture. On the left side of the bell, Dacien's evil genius is the counterpart of the guardian angel : he is represented through the features of a hideous devil holding a snake in his hands. The expressive scene in a very sound construction already announces the tympanum of the last Judgement.

Saint Foy's condemnation

Texts from Jean-Claude FAU Editions of Beffroi - Regional Council of Aveyron Photographs from André KUMURDJIAN Translation from Valérie FABRE

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