Publication details
Vynalézání středověkého Conques : od Prospera Mériméeho po Jeana Taralona
| Title in English | Inventing medieval Conques : from Prosper Mérimée to Jean Taralon |
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
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| Citation | |
| Description | There is nothing more "Romanesque" than the basilica in the French village of Conques-en-Rouergue. With its wide galleries, it corresponds to the type of pilgrimage basilica, the high vaulted arches seemingly out of a textbook of "Romanesque" architecture. For decades, there has been debate about the age of this building, which recent research places in the very first generation of "Romanesque" buildings from the 1130s. But the story of the site could also be told in a completely different way: as a story of restorations that became the tools for 'inventing' the kind of medievalism imagined by their authors. This paper intends to focus on these restorations and aims to present the three main stages of the process by which the Abbey Church of Conques became an icon of the French 'Romanesque'. The first stage is the creation of the Romanesque imagery in the years when Prosper Merimée (1803-1870) first visited Conques, followed by a reflection on the period of major restoration work in the 1870s, when - in the milieu of the anticlerical Third French Republic and at the same time in the years following the First Vatican Council - the religious returned to Conques. The last step will be linked to the period after the Second World War, when the medieval Christian heritage becomes an ideological staple for the conception of a new Europe and when Jean Taralon (1909-1996) was active in Conques. |
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