Moutiers-Saint-Jean Abbey

Moutiers-Saint-Jean Abbey (from Latin monasterium sancti Johannis, French: Abbaye de Moutiers-Saint-Jean, also Abbaye Saint-Jean-de-Réome) was a monastery located in what is now the village of Moutiers-Saint-Jean (named after the monastery) in the Côte-d'Or department in eastern France. It is in Burgundy, northwest of Dijon.

Doorway from Moutiers-Saint-Jean, now in The Cloisters in New York

The monastery was founded by a monk named John de Réôme around 450. In the seventh century, during the abbacy of Chunna (Hunnanus), a monk from Remiremont, the original monastic rule, which had been that of the ancient saint Macarius of Alexandria, was replaced by that of Luxeuil, founded by the Irish missionary Columbanus.^[1] When Jonas of Bobbio stayed at the monastery in 659, during Chunna's abbacy, he was compelled by the monks to write a biography of their founder. The result was the Vita Iohannis.^[1]

In 816–17, Saint-Jean was reformed according to the synods of Aachen. According to the record of monasteries made around that time, it owed the Carolingian state annually both a monetary gift (dona) and a military contribution (militia).^[2]

The abbey became a major center of influence, by kings and nobles over the centuries; at one time it was financed by the dukes of Burgundy.^[3] Moutiers-Saint-Jean was sacked, burned and rebuilt a number of times; in 1567 the Huguenot army struck off the heads of the two kings on the main doorway.^[4] In 1797, after the French Revolution, the entire building was sold as rubble for rebuilding. It lay in ruin for decades, with the sculpture severely defaced, before the Doorway from Moutiers-Saint-Jean was bought from the landowner and moved to New York in 1932, where it is now in The Cloisters museum.^[5] Some Romanesque capitals, probably from the nave of the church, are in the Fogg Art Museum, the Louvre, and in the collection at Bard-les-Epoisses. Two spandrels from an arcade are held by the Davis Museum at Wellesley College.^[6]

The remains of the abbey (the 14th-century main gate, the facades of two 17th-century buildings, the grounds of the abbey and the abbey church) are protected by the French government.^[7]

See also

• Doorway from Moutiers-Saint-Jean

Notes

1. Fox 2014, pp. 97–98.
2. Lesne 1920.
3. Young, 78
4. Little, 67
5. Barnet, 70
6. Forsyth, 37
7. Base Mérimée: PA00112565, Ministère français de la Culture. (in French)

Sources

• Barnet, Peter. The Cloisters: Medieval Art and Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-1-5883-9176-6
• Diem, Albrecht (2008). "The Rule of an Iro-Egyptian Monk in Gaul: Jonas of Bobbio's Vita Iohannis and the Construction of Monastic Identity". Revue Mabillon. 80: 5–50. doi:10.1484/J.RM.5.101158.
• Fox, Yaniv (2014). Power and Religion in Merovingian Gaul: Columbanian Monasticism and the Frankish Elites. Cambridge University Press.
• Forsyth, William H. (1979). "A Gothic Doorway from Moutiers-Saint-Jean". Metropolitian Museum of Art Journal. 13: 33–74. doi:10.2307/1512709.
• Lesne, Émile (1920). "Les ordonnances monastiques de Louis le Pieux et la Notitia de servitio monasteriorum". Revue d'histoire de l'église de France. 6 (31): 161–75, 321–38 and 449–93. doi:10.3406/rhef.1920.2144.
• Little, Charles. "Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture". New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006. ISBN 978-1-5883-9192-6
• Young, Bonnie. A Walk Through The Cloisters. New York: Viking Press, 1979. ISBN 978-0-8709-9203-2

External links

• http://www.abbayedemoutiers.fr/

47.5601°N 4.2226°E / 47.5601; 4.2226