Germigny-of-Meadows

Administrative

Germigny-of-meadows, like all the communes of the Canton of the Ouzouer-on-Loire, was attached to old the Arrondissement of Gien, removed in 1926 during the recutting of the districts and ever reconstituted.

The church

Germigny-of-meadows is particularly known historians and archeologists to have one of the oldest churches of France, rare example of the architectural style Carolingian.

This one was built by Théodulphe, bishop of Orleans, theologist and poet of the IXe century which was familiar of Charlemagne. It adopts a outline drawing of Greek cross (four semicircular apses out of four sides of a square, the Eastern apse being that of the mosaic), imitated oratory of the imperial palace with Aachen and whose prototype is the cathedral of Etchmiadzin.

It was devoted on January 3rd 806 under the term of Sainte Genevieve and Saint Germain. She would have been then richest of Neustrie. She was the seat of a council into 843, and burnt before 854. Set up in Priory in 1067, parish with the XIIIe century. A nave is built with the XVe and XVIe century after destruction of the Western apse. This nave is lengthened with the XIXe century, the initial solid mass being surmounted of a bell-tower. The church was classified “historic building” in 1839 and was restored starting from 1868.

The oldest part (in Greek cross) makes up of exceeded blind arcades (i.e., whose curve is higher than that of the Roman arch) of style wisigothic. The cupola is not origin. It crowns a tower lantern with two levels of openings: four series of three blind arcades in lower part of windows furnished with alabaster squares filtering the light.

The mosaic is located at the top of a series of small blind blind arcades, but of which the interior was obviously decorated with mosaics which one still sees the traces.

Furniture is not very abundant. One distinguishes primarily a Pietà from the Burgundian school, located close to the oratory. The church comprises a small museum with in particular a Reliquaire of XIIe century.

The Mosaic Byzantine

The church contains, on the Cul of furnace of the Abside, the only Byzantine mosaic of France, it represents two angels which surround the Ark of the Covenant. This scene is inspired obviously by mosaics of the Basilique San Vitale of Ravenne.

It was whitewashed at the time of the French revolution, then redécouverte in the middle of 19th.

This representation is particularly interesting by the close links which it maintains with the crisis iconoclast which prevailed at the time of its realization.

The mosaic occupies in the church the place that the Byzantine tradition holds for the images of the Virgin Mary trônant, Christ on her knees, and surrounded by two angels, one on the right and the other on the left. These two angels mean the divine character of That which they surround.

The mosaïste of Germigny, which knows obviously well the uses of Byzance, if he is not Romain (Byzantine) itself, with given up the representation of the Mother of God for an equivalent image on the symbolic system plan. The Ark of the Covenant indeed which contains the basket, the bread descended from the sky, is held by the Christian exégètes for a prefiguration of the Holy Mother which holds Christ, born at Bethlehem, the city of the bread.

One can thus wonder whether the artist is not influenced by the iconoclasme which replaced the real images by the " ombres" and symbols.

It represents the Ark of the Covenant surrounded of the two gold angels which, according to the Bible, surround the propitiatory one and it adds two more other angels, images " réelles" this time, as if it were a question of surrounding the Virgin Mary and her divine son.

It should be known that the passages of the Exodus (36,35 and 37,7-9) which describe the veil of the Temple and the propitiatory one were abundantly used in Byzance by the partisans of the veneration of the images. They indeed constitute an exception of size to prohibition to manufacture cut images or figures (e.g. 20,4-5).

The mosaïste, and behind him Théodulphe, seems to be located halfway between the iconoclasme and the position of the Byzantine partisans of the images (Jean Damascène and Theodore Studite for example). This intermediate position is exactly that of the theologists of Charlemagne, the Concile of Frankfurt and the Livres carolins. It was not accepted at the time by the popes.

External bond

Historical and description of the church

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