The Prieuré Sainte Gemme is a Romanesque priory church built in the 12th Century in the Saintonge style that we have explored before. We can see the highly sculpted west facade featuring stunning carvings on all of the archivolts. The church is – no pun intended – a gem. There is one feature of the […]
If I were the photographer I wanted to be, would it be Helmar Lerski, whose faces burn into one’s soul with a “harsh and beautiful light”? Would I be Edouard Boubat, who made the ordinary marvelous? Certainly I would have thought that faces would be my subject, looking for the elusive and dangerous soul. But […]
One incredible feature of Romanesque art in all forms is the fact that the creators are, for the most part, anonymous. No headlines, no public tributes or fame acknowledge their skill and accomplishments. It was enough to create for the greater glory and love of God. The capital sculpture in the churches offers a clear […]
In early October last year, PJ and I returned to Conques for two days. While there, we saw something that took us back to the origins of this great pilgrimage church. In the late morning, I was photographing the tympanum over the west portal. This sculpture has the same subject as many similar works, the […]
The Charente-Maritime can be difficult for explorers of churches like PJ and myself. While there is a wealth of Romanesque churches, many are closed and accessible only a certain times of the day or even the week. Some are not open at all except for services. In addition, it is heartbreaking to see so many […]
We’ve described the Allier department in France as a place that we go through on the way to someplace else, but this year we decided to spend time there to capture a cluster of important Romanesque structures just west of Moulins. The first church we visited was in the town of Bourbon-l’Archambault, the home of […]
Craig Shier wrote to us last week about our post on the Église Saint Gal de Langast, “It’s great that you are documenting these “lesser” churches. There was tremendous diversity beyond that seen in the “great” churches.” We have already shot 37 churches in our two weeks in France this year, and of those, 30 […]
PJ and I have shot approximately 450 of our beloved Romanesque churches in the past five years that we have been doing the Via Lucis project, and this year we’ll be shooting another 85 or so. One would think that we might tire of old churches, but the opposite is true. We constantly discover new […]
Beziers has fallen! They’re dead. Clerks, women, children: No quarter. They killed Christians too. I rode out, I couldn’t see nor hear a living creature. I saw Simon de Montefort. His beard glistened in the sun. They killed seven thousand people! Seven thousand souls who sought sanctuary In St. Madeline’s. The steps of the altar […]
Civray in the Vienne is a thriving market town almost sixty kilometers south of Poitiers. I lived in the area for two years growing up but never saw Saint-Nicolas until October 2011. We came into the center of town on market day, which meant that every inch of space in the square was taken with […]
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