Germigny-des-Près and St-Benoît-sur-Loire
France > Loire > East > Germigny
An afternoon's bike ride or a short drive east out of Orléans, passing through CHÂTEAUNEUF-SUR-LOIRE (whose Château has very pleasant gardens of rhododendrons and magnolias and a small museum of traditional Loire shipping), brings you to GERMIGNY-DES-PRÈS. The small, plain church here (daily: April–Oct 8.30–7pm; Nov–March 8.30am–5pm) incorporates at its east end one of the few surviving buildings from the Carolingian Renaissance, a tiny, perfectly formed church in the shape of a Greek cross. It was built in 806 as a private oratory for Theodulf, who was one of Charlemagne's counsellors as well as bishop of Orléans and abbot of St-Benoît. The chapel's horseshoe arches suggest the Arabic form, but in fact reflect Theodulf's Visigothic origins, while the chapel itself is a typically Carolingian design, rationally planned and Classical in temper. The oratory's sheer antiquity is spoiled by too-perfect restoration work, but the unique gold and silver mosaic on the dome of the eastern chapel preserves all its rare beauty. Covered by distemper, it was only discovered by accident in the middle of last century when children were found playing with coloured glass cubes in the church.A few kilometres further south along the D60, ST-BENOÎT-SUR-LOIRE offers a more impressive edifice, the Romanesque Abbaye de Fleury (daily 6.30am–10pm). In around 672, monks from Fleury returned home from a daring expedition to Monte Cassino in Lombard-occupied Italy with the remains of St-Benoît (St Benedict), the sixth-century founder of the reforming Benedictine order. The presence of the relics secured a prestigious future for the abbey, and over the course of the next 1100 years, its abbots included many familiar names from French and Loire history – Jean de la Trémoïlle, from the Château de Sully; Louis II, Cardinal of Guise, who was murdered in the Château at Blois; and the great Cardinal Richelieu, who received the title of abbot as a political reward in 1621. For all its importance, the abbey stagnated as often as it flourished, and its population had dwindled to ten monks at the time of the Revolution, after which it was abandoned and dismantled. But the church itself survived, and Benedictine monks returned in 1944. The community now numbers forty brothers, who still observe the original Rule – poverty, chastity and obedience – and can be heard singing Gregorian chant at the daily midday mass (11am on Sun). Built in warm, cream-coloured stone between 1020 and 1218, the church dates from the abbey's greatest epoch. The oldest part, the porch tower, illustrates St John's vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation – foursquare, with twelve foundations and three open gates on each side. The fantastically sculpted capitals of the heavy pillars are alive with acanthus leaves, birds and exotic animals. Three of them depict scenes from the Apocalypse, while another shows Mary's flight into Egypt. Inside, the choir is split into two levels: above, a marble mosaic of Roman origin covers the chancel floor; below, in the ancient crypt, the relics of St-Benoît lie buried at the very root of the church's forest of columns and arches. You can leave by the north door, where an unfinished Romanesque frieze, discovered only in 1996, shows the progress of sculpture from blind block of stone to finished work.
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