The Abbey of Saint Martial , also the Abbey of Saint Martial ( French Abbaye Saint-Martial ) is a Benedictine monastery in Limoges , one of the centers of literary and musical creativity in medieval Europe. Abolished during the French Revolution , it was destroyed in 1794 and has not survived to this day. Discovered during the excavations of 1960, the crypt of Saint Martial is included in the list of historical monuments of France .
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| Abbey of St. Martial | |
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 Abbey of St. Martial on the Plan of Limoges (1594) | |
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Content
Historical Review
The abbey was founded in 848 at the burial place of Martial , the first bishop of Limoges, venerated by Catholics in the guise of saints (the mosaic above his tomb dates from about the same time). In the same IX century, a scriptorium with a library was founded. The heyday of the abbey fell on the XI-XII centuries, when it became the most important center of art in Aquitaine and in Western Europe as a whole. The luxury of the monastery of that time is evidenced by preserved samples of church utensils with Limoges enamel , made by local craftsmen.
In the history of music, the abbey's achievements in the development of a polyphonic composition are especially significant. It is believed that it was here around 1100 that the melismatic organum and other polyphonic genres were first introduced (hence the generalized name accepted by musicologists as “Aquitaine Polyphony”). Great merits of Saint-Martial and in the preservation of the Gregorian tradition . Here was compiled the famous among the medievalists, the St. Yrieix grad , a model of Aquitaine irresponsible notation .
Since the 10th century, the poetic processing of monodic church chants known as troping and sequencing flourished in Saint-Martial. In the troparia of the abbey (now stored in the National Library under the signature lat. 1240; circa 930), one of the oldest surviving sequences has been kept, the so-called “ ” ( lat. Planctus cygni ). From the paths of cantus planus in the XI century in Saint-Martial, a Latin stanza song was born (the original term is versus ), which at first was monodic and then (in the XII century) continued to exist in polyphonic form .
The oldest surviving manuscripts of troubadours (verses and notated music) are also believed to come from the Abbey library (now in the French National Library).
During the French Revolution, the abbey was abolished and ruined. Part of the ancient monastery library was left in Limoges (now the ), part was transferred to the central Paris library. The monastery buildings were destroyed in 1807, and in their place was erected the Republic Square ( Place de la République ).
As a result of archaeological excavations in 1960, a crypt of the 10th century was discovered, in which the remains of St. Martial. Crypt is listed in the historical monuments of France .
See also
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 base Mérimée - ministère de la Culture , 1978.
Literature
- Treitler L. The polyphony of St. Martial // Journal of the American Musicological Society 17 (1964), p. 29-42.
- Treitler L. The Aquitanian repertories of sacred monody in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Diss., Princeton University, 1967.
- Treitler L. Medieval lyric // Models of musical analysis: Music before 1600, ed. M. Everist. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992, p. 1-19.
- Grier J. A new voice in the monastery: Tropes and versus from eleventh and twelfth century Aquitania // Speculum 69 (1994), pp. 1024-69.
- Fuller S. Early polyphony to circa 1200 // The Cambridge companion to medieval music. Cambridge, 2011, p. 46-66 (especially p. 55-63).