Thoronet Abbey

He called for a stricter observance of the Rule of St Benedict, written in the 6th century, and a sober aesthetic which emphasized volume, light, and fine masonry, eliminating the distraction of details.

The first site apparently was not satisfactory for their system of agriculture, so in about 1157 they moved twenty-five kilometers south, to land they already owned at Le Thoronet.

Born about 1150 into a family of Genoese merchants, he had a remarkable career, first as a troubadour, a composer and singer of secular love songs, who was famous throughout medieval Europe.

[4] In the 13th century, there were no more than twenty-five monks in the monastery, but money came in from donations, and the Abbey owned extensive lands between upper Provence and the Mediterranean coast.

The building was to be sold in 1791, but the state officials in charge of the sale declared that the church, cemetery, fountain and row of chestnut trees were "treasures of art and architecture", which should remain "the Property of the Nation.

Following the Rule of St. Benedict, Thoronet Abbey was designed to be an autonomous community, taking care of all of its own needs.

The placement of the church literally atop a rock symbolized[citation needed] the precept of building upon strong faith.

The stones were carefully cut and placed to provide smooth ashlar surfaces, to avoid any flaws or visual distractions.

The water supply was a crucial factor for the Cistercian monks; it was used for drinking and cooking, for powering the mill, and for religious ceremonies, such as the mandatum, which took place once a week.

Order rules prohibited bell towers of stone or of immoderate height, but exceptions were made in Provence, where Mistral winds blew away more fragile wooden structures.

Inside, the church consists of a main nave with three bays covered with a pointed barrel vault, and two side aisles.

The choir at the eastern end finishes with a half-dome vaulted apse with three semicircular arched windows, symbolizing[citation needed] the Trinity.

There are two small chapels in the apses of the transept, aligned the same way as the main sanctuary, as in the Cistercian abbeys of Cîteaux and Clairvaux.

The chevet of the Abbey, the semi-circular space behind the altar, has no decoration, but the refinement of the workmanship, as well as the perfectly rounded form, was itself an expression of the religious ideas of the Cistercians.

The pale stained-glass windows date to 1935 - they were recreated following the model of 12th-century stained glass from Obazine Abbey in the Corrèze.

It is believed that it contained books of medicine, geometry, music, astrology, and the classical works of Aristotle, Ovid, Horace and Plato.

Its architecture - with cross-ribbed vaults resting on two columns with decorated capitals, was the most refined in the monastery, and showed the influence of the new Gothic style.

It measures about thirty meters on a side, is in the shape of an elongated trapezoid, and follows the terrain, sloping downward from the monks' building toward the river.

The thick walls of the galleries, their double arcades, the simple round openings over each central column, and the plain capitals give the cloister a particular power and simplicity.

Thoronet Abbey had a significant influence upon the Swiss architect Le Corbusier Following the Second World War, Father Couturier, a Dominican priest and artist, who had contacts with contemporary artists Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard, invited Le Corbusier to design a convent at La Tourette, close to Lyon.

The convent that he eventually built has a number of features inspired by Thoronet, including the tower and the simple volumes, and the alternating full and empty spaces created by bright light falling on the walls.

The British architect John Pawson also used Thoronet as an inspiration for the cistercian abbey of Novy Dvur in the Czech Republic (2004).

Le Thoronet was a source of inspiration for the Belgian poet Henry Bauchau (born 1913), who published in 1966 La Pierre Sans Chagrin.

In 1964, the French architect Fernand Pouillon published Les pierres sauvages, an historical novel in the form of the journal of a master worker at the abbey.

It won the prix des Deux Magots (1965) and was praised by Umberto Eco as "a fascinating contribution to the understanding of the Middle Ages."