Dater Bellechaise. Chroniques du Mont Saint-Michel et chronologie architecturale
The building called “Bellechaise”, which has guarded the entrance to the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel since its construction in the 13th century, has never been satisfactorily explained or dated. The article focuses on the chronology of the work, and on the relationship with the buildings of the “Merv...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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OpenEdition
2024-12-01
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| Series: | Tabularia |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/tabularia/7317 |
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| Summary: | The building called “Bellechaise”, which has guarded the entrance to the Abbey of Mont Saint-Michel since its construction in the 13th century, has never been satisfactorily explained or dated. The article focuses on the chronology of the work, and on the relationship with the buildings of the “Merveille”, which housed the monastic quarter on the north side of the abbey. While historians of the abbey, from the 17th century unto Édouard Corroyer, Paul Gout and their successors, have seen the work as dating to 1257 and as a separate construction site from the building of the Merveille, the analysis of textual evidence, combined with an examination of the construction techniques and the architectural style, leads us to propose an earlier date, contemporaneous to the work on the Merveille and to the creation of the new portal of the abbey church. These three worksites hence appear to have been functionally linked: they are part of a global project intended to reconfigure the circulation system within the abbey, a project which took shape shortly after the construction of the Merveille began. Redating Bellechaise thus leads to new insights into the restoration of the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel after the fire of 1204. |
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| ISSN: | 1630-7364 |