Notre-Dame church of Dijon

The Notre-Dame church of Dijon is a masterpiece of Gothic architecture of the 13th century, located in the middle of the 93 ha of the safeguarded sector of Dijon. It is located behind the Palais of the dukes and the States of Burgundy and faced the street Musette. It is estimated that the construction of the building under its current form began in the neighborhoods from 1220.

This church of modest size shelters several symbols and tourist attractions of the town of Dijon, with the number of which Notre-Dame of Good-Hope, old black Vierge; the Jacquemart brought back Courtrai, and the owl.

History of the building

With the site of Notre-Dame is in the beginning, before second half of the 12th century, a simple vault. It is located apart from the enclosure of the city and is called Sainte-Marie vault.

Seem it after 1150, the vault is shaven to be rebuilt in the Romance style. They is approximately 70 years later that the church takes the form which is his today. Notre-Dame being located in the middle of popular quarters, the place is lacking and the architect uses of many new techniques to set up the church. For example, all the weight of the frame and the roof rests on the pillars and not on propping up, thus making it possible to use a maximum of surface on the ground for the interior of the church, whose dimensions astonish when one penetrates there.

The Western frontage and the porch

According to Jolimont, “the most remarkable part is the principal, single gate in its kind”. The Western frontage, measuring approximately 28,6m top on 19,5 m broad and 6,2 m of depth, is divided into three stages, whose first by three large entirely open Arcade S is occupied, forming the entry of vast a Péristyle or porch, whose vaults are supported by two rows of pillars. This porch precedes the three doors by the church, whose Voussure S, tympanum and the side walls were decorated statues and sculptures until 1794.

The two other stages are two galleries of superimposed blind arcades, composed each of seventeen columns of only one piece, crowned of their capital and a small arc warhead, and underlined by three stringcourses decorated with false waste-gas mains.

Buttresses, of which the upper part takes the shape of a small round turret in Encorbellement, flank the two angles of the frontage. On the starter of the southern tower of the frontage a bell-tower supporting rises Jacquemart.

Waste-gas mains

Precision of importance: the “Gargouille S” of Notre-Dame of Dijon never were, it acts only of decorative sculptures. The waste-gas mains owe their name with their role of drainage of rain and with the characteristic noise of gargouillis which they produce, which forever be the case with Notre-Dame. The church comprises some true waste-gas mains however, but they are located on the gouttereaux walls, plumb with the street of the Owl (in north) and the sacristy (in the south).

The frontage comprises 51 false waste-gas mains grotesque S with anthropomorphic faces or of animal inspiration and mythological. Those which one can admire today go back to a restoration carried out in 1880 and 1881 and are the work of seven Sculpteur S Paris iens. They were allotted wrongly to the only Lagoule sculptor. According to the account of the monk Etienne de Bourbon, the original sculptures did not preserve their place well a long time, besides that located at the right end of the last stage of colonnades: they were deposited since approximately 1240, following a fatal accident. Indeed, a usurer found death on the square of the church the day of its weddings, after a stone figure precisely representing an usurer was detached, killing it on the blow. The fellow-members of the victim would then have obtained the dismantling of all them false waste-gas mains of the frontage.

Jacquemart

One of the principal tourist points of passage of Dijon is located street Musette, vis-a-vis Notre-Dame. There, the guides make have patience their groups while waiting for that the Jacquemart sounds, clock with Automate S brought back of Courtrai, in Belgium, following the plundering of the city by the armies of Philippe Bold the in 1382.

This year, the duke of Burgundy leaves to shift to the head thousand Dijonese soldiers in order to carry help to his father-in-law, the count of Flanders, taken course by a rebellion which extends between Lille and Courtrai. The Burgundian victory is total and the duke seizes the jewel of the city, a clock provided with an automat, which it makes pack and bring back in his capital. What remains of Courtrai is delivered to plundering and the damage comes to be added to the loss of 20.000 men at the adversary. In 1383, the automat striking the hours is placed on the southern turret of the Western frontage of the Notre-Dame church. At the 17th century, the clock is victim of a breakdown as short as unexplained. A poet of the time, Jean Changenet, allots it to the loneliness in which saw Jacquemart on its lathe and launches the idea to create a partner to him: it will be Jacqueline, who takes seat in 1651 on her line and the assistance in her task. In 1714 or a little later again on the idea of a local poet, the couple is seen associating a child, Jacquelinet, which sounds the half-hours. In 1884 Jacquelinette is added, which strikes fifteen minutes in fifteen minutes with his/her brother. It is consternation: the damage is very important. Rather than to leave it in the state or to change all the block of stone on which it was carved, it was decided to repair the breaks of them. A moulding of the owl had been carried out in 1988 by a sculptor moulor of Louvre. It was used as model with the repair, carried out by incrustation of stone fragments, then patinated. This work is achieved at the end of January and at the beginning of February 2001.

Since this incident, a system of Vidéosurveillance was set up in order to prevent any repetition. The new owl was entitled to an official unveiling.

The bird always enjoys a great popularity in Dijon. The tourist office chose it like Symbole arrowing for the Course of the Owl, pedestrian tourist tour which makes the turn of the historical center with a beaconing in front of the principal monuments.

The statue of the Virgin

The statue of the Virgin, called Notre-Dame of Good-Hope, passes to be one of oldest of France, dating from XIe or XIIe century. It acted in the beginning of a Vierge to the Child: the child-Jesus was broken with the French revolution, perhaps at the same time as the doors of the church lost their ornaments, in 1794. Notre-Dame of Good-Hope had already lost her two hands at the XVIIIe century. It was in the beginning sitting on a throne but was separated from this one, from now on lost. The back of the statue in the past was sawn and replaced by a piece of wood. The face is on the other hand almost completely unscathed. For several centuries, the statue has been often presented crowned and equipped with a coat.

In XVIe or the XVIIe century, the statue was painted in black, for an unknown reason. In 1945, this color was removed, which made it possible to find the polychromy of origin. Since final removal, in 1963, black painting which recovered the face, the statue is not any more black Vierge and is known only under the name of Notre-Dame of Good-Hope.

One allots several shares to him miraculous S. In September 1513, the Swiss armies besieged Dijon and the situation seemed desperate. September 11th, a procession was organized in Dijon and the Virgin carried at the head procession. Two days later, the Swiss ones raised the camp in an unhoped-for way, just before the reserves of food of the city are not completely exhausted.

In September 1944, Dijon was occupied by the German army, which seemed to want to resist advanced of the French troops. September 10th, the bishop of Dijon publicly asked Notre-Dame of Good-Hope to protect the city from the dreaded devastations. In the night from September 10th to 11th, the Germans left Dijon, and the French entered there the 11, birthday day of the procession of 1513.

The statue is exposed in the absidiole southern, in a vault which bears its name.

Criticisms architectural

With the 17th century, Vauban known as of Notre-Dame: “it missed with this majestic Temple only one box to lock up it”, comparing the church with a jewel without ECRIN, perhaps because of contrast between the beauty of the building and the narrowness and the insalubrity of the surrounding streets.

According to Eugene Purple-the-Duke, person in charge, inter alia many building sites, of the restoration of the Saint-Benign cathedral, Notre-Dame of Dijon is “a masterpiece of reason. ”

F.T. of Jolimont known as of Notre-Dame, in her work Seen picturesque of the cathedral of Dijon (Engelmann and Co, 1829):

Notes and sources

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