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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue439" data-source="post: 826632" data-attributes="member: 53455">The priory of Serrabone, a largely ignored jewel of Mediæval art (2023)Today we are in the Pyrénées mountains that make a natural border between France and Spain, for a brief glimpse at a truly unique place, the so-called “priory” of Serrabone, which features an absolute world-class masterpiece of Romanesque sculpture: its tribune.I say “so-called” because a priory, in the genuine meaning of the word, is a “subsidiary” monastery established by an abbey. It is populated by monks sent by that abbey. Those monks are led by a prior, whose superior is the abbot of the founding abbey. In the case of Serrabone, there was none of that. At the beginning, there was a late Carolingian parochial church established in this mountainous locale and first mentioned in writing in 1069. The walls of the nave are, for some part, still those of that ancient church.It was then, at a time when local lords used to meddle more and more in the affairs of the Church (which was one of the reasons that prompted the coming of the Gregorian reform), that the viscount of Cerdagne and the local lord of Corsavy installed on the Serrabone mountaintop an unusually mixed group of canons and canonesses to live in accordance with the Augustinian Rule. A new college church was built (mostly by enlarging the previous one) and consecrated in 1151.Its architecture is harmonious but very simple, as one would expect: in the Middle Ages, those mountains were populated (hence the creation of the parish) and did feed their inhabitants (serra bona in the local Catalan language means “good mountain”), but there was precious little commerce with the outside world and the locals had nothing of real value to export. Therefore, the local economy was pretty much a closed circuit and money was far from flowing in abundantly. The style of the church, even though there were donations from the aforementioned lords, reflects this paucity of financial resources.It is therefore a total mystery how the magnificently sculpted tribune, which would have cost a veritable fortune, was funded, and by whom. Nothing has ever been demonstrated in that matter, although many have conjectured in various directions. The only certainty we have is that it was built around the time when the church itself was completed, i.e., the mid–1150s.The culmination of the “priory” did not last very long: canons and canonesses are not monks and nuns, their commitment is found throughout History and places to be much less strong, and by the late 1200s they had already broken communal life and begun to live in their own separate homes. Decadence went to such extremes that the “priory” was secularized by the pope in the 16th century and made a dependency of the chapter of the cathedral of Solsona. The last “prior” died in 1612 and the church returned to its simple parochial status.The place was progressively abandoned as people left the mountains to go live easier lives in the valleys. It was almost in ruins when it was listed as a Historic Landmark in 1875 and the restoration  began. Fortunately, the tribune had been protected and its capitals and columns hidden by the locals.Nikon Z7 II, Micro-Nikkor 85mm, ƒ/2.8 PC-E tilt-shift lens, manual focus, FTZ II adapter. Gitzo tripod, Benro geared head. Natural light, single exposure.[ATTACH=full]412669[/ATTACH]</blockquote>

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