The abbatial church of Notre-Dame de Mouzon is the ancient church of the monastery of Mouzon, in the Ardennes region of France.
The evolution of this abbatial church in the Middle Ages is linked to the relics housed here, notably those of Saint Victor and Saint Arnoul. These relics became sources of material income as they were objects of ostentatious worship. The influx of pilgrims led to the construction of this building in the 11th and 13th centuries, inspired by the early Gothic style, but already heralding a second generation through certain technical choices. The relatively small size of the site, compared with the stone vessels of the great cathedrals, means that visitors can easily take in the entire church envelope, with differences in light intensity giving relief to the architectural elements and religious furnishings. The presence of a recluse just a few meters from the abbatial's choir also bears witness to the diversity of religious life in the West at the time.
In the early 18th century, Christophe Moucherel installed an organ and a Baroque-style high altar. During the French Revolution, the building was preserved by the commune, despite the dissolution of the monastic community, and became the parish church.
However, the church has suffered from disaffection and lack of maintenance, making it vulnerable. However, it was classified as a historic monument as soon as the first list of monuments protected in this way, the 1840 list, was issued. Between 1855 and 1890, it underwent a major restoration campaign. The work, requested by Prosper Mérimée, was led by architect Émile Boeswillwald. The building was saved. However, the western facade was radically altered.
History As early as the 6th century, the city of Mouzon had several churches attached to the diocese of Reims: Saint-Martin within the city walls and Saint-Pierre and Sainte-Geneviève extra muros.
In the 9th century, a church of Notre Dame was founded within the first monastic establishment, bringing together Benedictine nuns. In the last years of the episcopate of Hincmar, the relics of Saint Victor were discovered nearby. However, this same period was troubled by conflicts and invasions, notably in 882 by the Vikings, who went up the Meuse, ruining the city, devastating the ecclesiastical buildings, and provoking the departure of the nuns.
A new archbishop, Herivée, restored Mouzon's walls and religious buildings between 900 and 920. He installed a college of canons there and entrusted them with the relics of Saint Victor. In 971, Adalberon, Archbishop of Rheims, dissatisfied with this community of canons living in a particular disorder, re-established a monastery with the help of Benedictine monks coming from Thin-le-Moutier, who also replaced the church of Notre Dame, the chapter of canons. This reform was carried out rapidly. The relics of Saint Arnoul, a pilgrim murdered in the 8th century, were entrusted to this new community, adding to those of Saint Victor. These saints were lay people who could respond to a famous aspiration to holiness.
With the influx of pilgrims coming to venerate the relics, the abbatial church became too small. At the same time, there was a general trend towards enlarging church choirs to provide a more spacious setting for a liturgy called for greater pomp. This movement affected abbatial churchessuch as Saint-Rémi in Reims, Vézelay and Saint-Germain des Prés. The project to build a new choir and the entire eastern part of the church was launched in the early 1190s, taking into account innovative architectural approaches implemented as early as 1130 by Suger for the abbatial church of Saint-Denis. In addition to this project, another ambition led to the expansion of the clergy area in the existing church: in the same years, Archbishop Guillaume aux Blanches Mains of Rheims was planning to divide the diocese of Rheims by creating a bishopric in Mouzon. Mouzon was the second-largest city in the diocese, ahead of Mézières, Rethel, Attigny, Rumigny, Épernay, etc., and the conversion of the abbatial churchchurch into a cathedral would have been a highly suitable solution.
To enlarge the existing church, the choir was demolished and rebuilt according to Parisian or Laonnais models, in the style that would later be called Primitive Gothic. The project for a new diocese, although approved by Pope Celestine III and later by his successor Innocent III, was finally abandoned by the archbishop of Rémois a few years later, in the late 1190s, even though this first stage in the transformation of Mouzon abbatial churchchurch had come to fruition.
It is challenging to know whether it was initially planned to extend the work and rebuild a transept and nave in continuity with the chevet and choir. However in 1212, a fire broke out, sparing the new part for the most part but making it necessary to rebuild the old parts. This second stage of construction of the present abbatial church continued until the middle of the 13th century, remaining in the same style and proportions as the choir. The upper part of the two towers, on the other hand, dates from the 16th century, while maintaining the same style. In 1515, however, windows of flamboyant style were added to the choir's lighting, in addition to the flamboyant galls roof installed above the tympanum of the western portal in the previous century.
The additions in the 17th and 18th centuries focused more on interior fittings and religious furnishings. In 1725, the organ was installed, built by Christophe Moucherel, and initially placed in the north transept. Finally, in April 1728, the Master Altar was consecrated.
In 1789, the French Revolution made the abbey's property available to the Nation by decree on 2 November. Concerning the real estate, the farms and mills were auctioned off as national property. However, the municipality of Mouzon saved the essentials by reserving the cloister for the use of the elderly and the sick and changing the use abbatial church. This municipality indeed submitted a request to the Director du Département asking that the abbatial church become the parish church, thus sacrificing the old parish church to the demolishers. When the civil constitution of the clergy was decreed in August 1790 and a short-lived diocese of the Ardennes, distinct from the diocese of Reims, was created, the same municipality hoped for a few weeks that Mouzon would be erected as the seat of this new diocese and that the former abbatial church would become the diocesan church, but the State chose Sedan. In 1793, during the Terreur, worship was interrupted, the building was transformed into a Temple of Reason, and some sculptures were vandalized. The authorization of the Constitutional Cult was re-established in 1795, and the religious situation was definitively stabilized by the Concordat of 1801. In 1807, lightning struck the church. Lacking maintenance and with cracks in its fabric, the building underwent a major restoration campaign from 1855 to 1890. It was classified as a historical monument from the liste de 1840.
In 1932, the Commission of Historical Monuments rejected stained glass projects. In retrospect, such an initiative would have proved futile since 1940 shells fell on the abbatial church, shattering the existing windows and stained glass. One shell damaged the rose window illuminating the southern part of the transept, and another tore through the vault, requiring some reparation. The stained glass windows were replaced by white glass or sober stained-glass windows with simple geometrical patterns.
General architecture
The nave, surrounded by two collaterals, gives itself up to the visitor's gaze as soon as he enters, with its three-story elevation, characteristic of the Primitive Gothic style. The lower level features large pointed-arch arches supported by round pillars with circular carvings. The second floor consists of tribunes, inherited from the Romanesque style, which opens with double arches under a relieving arch with tiers-point. The second floor is a triforium, a passage that goes around the building, characteristic of Gothic architecture, topped again by a third floor of large windows. On the exterior, the flying buttresses, a recent technique at the time of construction, contribute to the solidity of the building. Five radiating chapels surround the choir and open onto a five-sided ambulatory, giving this part of the church a specific size.
Despite the length of time between the beginning of the construction of the chevet and the choir and the end of the rebuilding of the transept and the nave, the style within the abbatial church is relatively homogeneous. The building is vaulted on ribbed crossings, with sexpartite vaults in the middle and quadripartite vaults in the choir.
For example, no crypt from an earlier church has been identified. The mobility and humidity of the soil could have prevented its construction.
Tympanum Two square towers surround the portal. The portal's tympanum, dating from the 13th century, is composed of three levels of sculpted decoration, separated by wavy bands, evoking, in medieval symbolism, the sky. The second floor depicts, on the left, the dormition of Christ's mother, and, on the right, the martyrdom of Victor de Mouzon and Arnoul de Mouzon. The middle floor is devoted to three scenes from the iconographic tradition on the life of the Virgin Mary. On the left is the Visitation of the Virgin Mary, or visit that Mary, pregnant with Christ, would have made to her cousin Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist. In the middle, the crowning of the Virgin, an episode unknown in the gospels according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, but popular in the 12th and 13th centuries. This scene, relatively new in religious iconography, can also be found in the sculpted decoration of the tympanums of the cathedrals of Chartres, Senlis, Paris, and Laon. And on the right is the Annunciation, or announcement to Mary of her divine maternity by the Archangel Gabriel. The third floor, or upper floor, consists of kneeling angels. This is the area of the tympanum where the carvings have been most damaged, introducing more uncertainty about the interpretation. A figure seems to be pushed by an angel toward a divine being, perhaps God the Father, or Christ, to whom another angel holds out a crown. The figure thus presented to God for glorification could again be Victor, the martyr and patron saint of Mouzon.
The whole is part of a balanced composition, contributing to its legibility. The scenes follow one another without interfering. The proportions are natural, except for the horse. The modeling and the relief are well rendered. Some liberties are taken concerning a very coded religious iconography, such as placing the angel on the left and the Mother of Jesus on the right in the Annunciation scene. The figures no longer have the stiffness and hieraticism of the first Gothic works, even if the artist does not rank with the best sculptors of his time if there are still some clumsinesses in articulating the limbs, for example, and if the general inspiration needs more vigor. The central scene of Christ's crowning of the Virgin Mary is one of the simplest and successful.
At its construction, the tympanum was protected by several rows of voussures. Only one row remains, where twelve figures of angels have been reinstalled. A statue of the 'Virgin and Child' is installed in the overmantel. The statues that stood at the right feet have disappeared.
Some dimensions