Our Lady Collegiate Church in Semur-en-Auxois: A Gothic Parish Church
Site at a Glance
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- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Burgundy
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page12 sections
History
Our Lady Collegiate Church in Semur-en-Auxois, France, is a Gothic church begun in 1225 to serve a growing pilgrimage centre on a branch route of the Way of Saint James. Dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, it belongs to the Roman Catholic Church and remains a parish church attached to the Diocese of Dijon. Its institutional history began with an earlier priory dependent on the Benedictine Abbey of Flavigny-sur-Ozerain.
The priory and its foundation
The original priory was founded in 1060 or 1065 in association with Robert I, Duke of Burgundy. A penitential tradition links the foundation to the duke’s remorse for killing his father-in-law, Dalmace of Semur-en-Brionnais. According to this tradition, Robert decided to establish a new church in the eastern part of the town as an act of atonement. The priory was a dependent religious house rather than an independent abbey, and its connection with Flavigny placed it within the Benedictine monastic network.
The Gothic rebuilding
Increasing pilgrimage to Semur-en-Auxois led to the replacement of the priory church with the present building. Construction began in 1225, and the church developed through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The medieval work included the nave, choir, transept, and a westward extension completed in the early fourteenth century. This extension added the last three bays, towers above the side aisles, and the great western porch.
Further alterations continued during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Major donations from craft and trade guilds supported the construction of chapels along the north aisle during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The church therefore reflects both the requirements of a major pilgrimage foundation and the continuing religious and civic involvement of Semur’s working communities.
Collegiate status and restoration
In 1739 the church became collegiate, meaning that it was served by a college of clergy, usually secular canons, rather than by a monastic community. Its later history included an extensive nineteenth-century restoration by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, the French architect and restorer known for work on medieval buildings. The campaign began in 1844–45 and continued until 1854–55. It included plans to rebuild the top of the crossing spire, consolidate its shaft and the south-transept gable, and replace the choir roof structure.
The church has been protected as a French historic monument since 1840, while its organ received separate historic-monument protection in 1987. In 1846, the historic strap hinges of the Porte des Bleds were restored by Pierre Boulanger, who also made the wrought-iron enclosure for the Chapel of Our Lady.
Remains
Plan and exterior
The church is a three-aisled basilica with a two-towered west facade, a cross-shaped transept, and a five-aisled choir. The crossing is crowned by an octagonal tower that rises 58 metres. A small cloister survives on the south side, with two bays on each side. The nave and choir run eastward toward the rising sun on 15 August, the feast associated with the church’s dedication.
West facade and porch
The west facade faces Notre-Dame Square and contains a large fifteenth-century porch with three portals. The original extensive figural decoration of this arrangement has been destroyed, but late Gothic stone figures of the Evangelists remain above the porch. The principal portal has a sixteenth-century Virgin and Child on its trumeau, the central support dividing a doorway. The figure was installed there after the portal was created.
The Porte des Bleds
The Porte des Bleds is a side portal dating from about 1250 in the north arm of the transept. It was formerly sheltered by a two-storey porch. Its sculpted tympanum, the field above the doorway, presents episodes from the story of the Apostle Thomas in two registers. The scenes include Thomas’s disbelief, his journey to India, an incident in which a cook strikes him and loses a hand, and his distribution to the poor of money given by a king for the construction of a palace. The story continues with Thomas’s imprisonment and the king’s conversion after Thomas explains that charity has earned him a heavenly palace. The archivolts, the sculpted bands framing the arch, show the labours of the months.
Nave and choir
The nave dates from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It is narrow and lofty, with eight bays, while the choir has three. Continuous wall shafts rise from the nave to the points where the vaults begin, reinforcing the interior’s strong vertical proportions. The building also contains articulated round piers, passageways, and lancet windows without tracery. The nave originally had three levels, but its triforium, an upper arcaded gallery or passage, was removed during fourteenth-century alterations.
The choir and transept are divided into three levels. Massive round piers with bud-shaped capitals support the arcades opening onto the ambulatory, the passage around the choir. Above the horizontal supports from which the arches spring, wall shafts stand on cubic corbels. A triforium overlooks the choir, with numerous sculpted heads representing different members of thirteenth-century society in Semur-en-Auxois. The apse ends in three chapels that project outward from the ambulatory.
North-aisle chapels
The chapels along the north aisle begin at the transept with the Chapel of the Drapers, followed by the Chapel of the Butchers, the Chapel of Saint Barbara, and the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre. The sixteenth-century Drapers’ Chapel has stained-glass scenes of shearing, washing, fulling, cutting, carding, weaving, and combing. The Butchers’ Chapel contains two windows showing the slaughter of an ox and the preparation of meat.
The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre contains a polychrome Entombment group from the late fifteenth century, attributed to the Burgundian sculptor Antoine Le Moiturier. An Entombment represents the burial of Christ. The group was transferred there in 1791 from a Carmelite convent and is regarded as one of the finest examples of its type in Burgundy. A stained-glass window in the chapel commemorates American soldiers who died during the First World War.
Windows, sculpture, and furnishings
The church preserves stained glass, stone sculpture, and wooden and metal furnishings dating from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. The central choir window depicts the Assumption of the Virgin, with four angels bearing her into heaven. The Chapel of Saint-Claude contains a 1454 painting of the Tree of Jesse and a fifteenth-century baldachin, a canopy over an important religious object. Other furnishings include an enclosure around the baptismal font with statues of the four Evangelists, a ciborium used to hold consecrated hosts, and a sixteenth-century image of Christ displaying his wounds between two angels.
Organ and symbolic sculpture
The organ has an eight-foot facade, a 16-foot stopped bourdon, and a four-foot positive. In organ building, stops are sets of pipes that produce particular tones; a bourdon is a stopped flue stop, while a positive is a smaller division of pipes traditionally placed near the player. The instrument has 35 stops, three manual keyboards, and a pedalboard. Its first form dates from 1584. It was enlarged in 1682 when a gallery was built, modified in 1778, and rebuilt in 1883.
Figures holding amphorae, or large vessels, appear on the crossing tower and symbolize the rivers of Paradise. Together with the eastward orientation of the nave and choir, this imagery connects the building’s surviving decoration with its dedication to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.
