Meymac Abbey: A Former Benedictine Monastery in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page14 sections
History
Meymac Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey in Meymac, France, dedicated to Saint Andrew the Apostle and Saint Leodegar of Autun. Its granite church, begun in the Romanesque period around the foundation of the monastery in 1085, served both the monastic community and the parish. The surviving complex reflects a history that runs from early Christian tradition through medieval pilgrimage, wartime destruction, revolutionary dissolution, and modern heritage protection.
Early Christian Tradition and Foundation
Tradition connects an early church at Meymac with a sixth-century hermit named Mamacus. It also attributes the consecration of a new church in 546 to Rorice II, bishop of Limoges. The monastery itself was founded on 3 February 1085 by Archambaud III, Viscount of Comborn, who established a priory with several Benedictine monks. Benedictines were monks who followed the Rule of Saint Benedict. The new foundation, including its church, was placed under the authority of the Benedictine Abbey of Uzerche.
With the support of Ebles II of Ventadour, the priory became an abbey around 1146. The surrounding area subsequently formed one of the four principal duchies of Ventadour. During the early twelfth century, the monastery acquired the head and hand of Saint Leodegar, a seventh-century bishop and martyr also known as Saint Leger. These relics, bodily remains or other objects associated with a saint and preserved for veneration, made Meymac a pilgrimage destination.
War, Reform, and Dissolution
The abbey’s fortunes declined during the thirteenth century amid the conflict between the Plantagenets and the French king. The Plantagenets were an English royal dynasty whose territorial struggle with the French monarchy affected western and southwestern France. During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the monastery buildings were plundered and burned in the Hundred Years’ War, the prolonged series of conflicts between the English and French crowns.
By 1633, only one monk remained at Meymac. In 1669, the Maurists took over the monastery and commissioned new conventual buildings. The Maurists were a Benedictine reform congregation associated with stricter observance and scholarly work. The French Revolution brought the abbey’s final dissolution. The last five monks departed on 27 January 1791, and the former monastery was then sold in successive lots.
Reuse and Preservation
During the nineteenth century, the former abbey was used as a barracks, hay store, and stable, and its survival remained uncertain until 1824. After Prosper Mérimée drew attention to the site, the abbey church was placed on the 1840 list of protected historic monuments. Renovation began in 1846. Later in the century, parts of the former monastery accommodated a school, post office, tourist office, and the Marius Vazeilles Museum.
Renovation during the 1980s allowed the former monastic buildings to be used by the Marius Vazeilles Museum of archaeology and heritage and the Meymac Contemporary Art Centre. The church remains affiliated with the Catholic Diocese of Tulle and the Parish of Meymac, while the former abbey belongs to the commune. The church received historic-monument protection in 1840, and the former Saint-André Abbey received additional heritage protection in 1983.
Remains
Church Layout and Medieval Construction
Bell-Tower Porch
Built in granite on a Latin-cross plan, the church measures approximately 49 to 50 metres internally. Its transept is 26 metres wide, and the vault rises 14 metres above the floor. The Romanesque-Limousin bell-tower porch at the west entrance is the oldest surviving part and was probably begun in 1085, possibly before the monastic foundation. Its square bell tower was rebuilt in the seventeenth century. The west façade has three portals. The central entrance is framed by a zigzag arch and slightly pointed archivolts, bands of moulding that follow the curves of the arches, while three slightly pointed windows open above it.
Narthex
The lower part of the porch forms a three-aisled narthex, an entrance vestibule, covered by a dome. Its two side aisles do not open into the main body of the church. Eleven sculpted capitals from the eleventh century survive in this area. Their imagery includes faith, dreams, and hopes, alongside vegetal forms, lions, winged monsters, and naked human figures being devoured by creatures.
Nave, Transept, and Choir
The single-aisled nave was built at the end of the twelfth century and occupies two bays. Its rib vault, a ceiling supported by intersecting stone ribs, belongs to the thirteenth century and represents the beginning of the Gothic style. Both arms of the transept end in semicircular apses, each illuminated by three windows. The choir stands three steps above the nave and terminates in an apse with five windows. The apses are markedly inclined southward in relation to the nave axis. They may have been aligned with sunrise at dawn on the feast of the church’s patron saint, although this interpretation remains uncertain.
A frequently repeated tradition assigns the construction of the transept and apses to 1119 through engraved stones. That interpretation is considered highly improbable because the alleged use of Arabic numerals for a twelfth-century date would be unusually crude.
Religious Furnishings and Glass
Statues and Holy-Water Stoups
The church contains a twelfth-century Black Madonna statuette carved from very dark wood. The Virgin sits on a throne without a backrest and holds the Christ Child on her lap. The child carries a book in his left hand, while both figures wear polychromed and partly gilded clothing. A copy is displayed in a case in the choir. A figurally carved twelfth-century capital has been converted into a holy-water stoup, and a grain measure serves the same purpose. The church also contains a statue and a reliquary bust of Saint Leodegar.
Stained Glass
The choir windows include works dated 1861 and signed by Émile Thibaud. Their central image is Jesus, with the Apostle Peter on the left and John the Evangelist on the right. Three further windows, made in 1885 by Félix Gaudin in Clermont-Ferrand, depict Saint Leodegar, the instruction of Mary, and Saint Joachim. Other windows date from 1940 and were made by the Limoges glass painter Francis Chigot. One window from 1984 bears the signature of Dominique de Raed.
Organ and Later Painting
The organ is a contemporary instrument by Barthélemy Formentelli, inaugurated on 19 July 1987. It was conceived as a newly created Baroque organ in a purely seventeenth-century style and stands on the floor in the south transept. Alméry Lobel-Riche’s Homage to Wounded France, an old partial and inverted copy after a work by Charles Le Brun based on a print by Nicolas de Poilly, was moved from the cultural centre to the church in late 2019. Humidity in the church walls threatened the painting, so it was returned to the town hall.
Monastic Buildings and Cloister Area
Two surviving wings of the monastery frame the present Place du Bûcher together with the church. The cloister formerly occupied this space, and its appearance is known through a plate in the Monasticon Gallicanum and an engraving published in 1886 by Joseph Treich-Laplène. On the south wall of the church, two former buttresses were cut down to ground level from the roofline of the cloister galleries, or from the level of the church windows. The more regular masonry visible today belongs to a relatively recent restoration, probably carried out in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.
