Thoronet Abbey

 

‘Le Thoronet is the physical expression of a link between what is profound and what is everyday.’ It is with this sentence that John Pawson sums up the paradox of monastic architecture, which must provide a religious community with the space for its renunciation of the world, whilst at the same time affording it a place to exist. An apparent contradiction that Thoronet Abbey resolves masterfully. A masterpiece of Provençal Romanesque architecture and the pinnacle of Cistercian asceticism, it is remarkable for its harmony with the site and the skilful minimalism of its architectural expression.

Thoronet traces its origins to Mazan Abbey, the first Cistercian settlement in Languedoc in 1120, and its ‘daughter’ Notre-Dame de Florielle, founded in 1136. The latter decided to relocate in 1157, having encountered difficulties in expanding. The new site, situated some twenty kilometres to the south, complied with the Benedictine rule’s requirement to live in seclusion from the secular world, with terrain that was difficult to access, surrounded by the wilderness of a dense forest, and remote from the nearest villages, several kilometres away. The site nevertheless possessed the essentials for self-sufficiency, with a spring and two streams to the north and west.

Although the terrain is rugged, the site also offers rock of sufficiently good quality for its limestone to be used in the construction of the abbey complex. Construction began as early as 1175 with the church and the eastern cloister of the monks’ wing, continuing until 1250 when the lay brothers’ wing was completed. Situated in the centre of the site, the Cistercian abbey follows the Benedictine model established by the St Gallen plan in the^9th century: four blocks of buildings grouped around the open space of a cloister, forming the cloistered square where the monks’ religious activities took place and where they interacted with the lay brothers – monks not bound by the Rule who devoted themselves to manual labour.

 

 

Beyond this, ancillary buildings such as the tithe barn are situated amongst the gardens and the cemetery. The complex is surrounded by a boundary wall which provides both symbolic and physical protection for the community. A small building, the gatehouse, controls entry and exit. The guesthouse, adjoining the gatehouse, is set apart from the rest of the complex, as it is dedicated to the temporary accommodation of passing travellers, who must not interfere with the monks’ daily lives.

The cloister, formerly multi-storeyed but now single-storey, forms the spatial and symbolic heart of the abbey, and is bounded by a gallery punctuated by arcades whose design evokes a pure and unadorned Romanesque style, with its semicircular arch featuring a twin-arched window surmounted by a tympanum with an oculus. A space dedicated to meditation yet providing access to each of its wings, it demonstrates at Le Thoronet the flexibility of a design that adapts to the site’s rugged topography. By adopting the shape of an irregular parallelepiped, it allows the east and west wings to remain perpendicular to the slope. Similarly, the gallery takes account of the slope of the ground by regularly adjusting the height of the capstones on some of its piers.

 

 

All around, we find the building blocks characteristic of the Cistercian style. To the north is the monks’ refectory and to the west, the storeroom. To the east, the row comprising the monks’ hall, the parlour and the chapter house – surmounted by the monks’ dormitory – is directly connected to the north transept of the abbey church to facilitate the monks’ access to services. Usually situated to the north in the earliest Cistercian abbeys, the church is situated to the south here to better shield the cloister galleries and its garden from the sun. This is a sign that the Cistercian system, whilst regular, is by no means rigid, and is capable of adapting to local circumstances.

The complex thus adheres to the Cistercian typology, which organises the spaces to enable the monks to observe the customs and traditions of the order, but does so within a contextual approach that adapts this typology to the site’s specific characteristics. Its formal and architectural vocabulary clearly expresses the order’s austerity, whose rules promote the absence of ornamentation: a text by Saint Bernard, in the *Apology to William*, directly condemns the profusion and opulence of ornamentation in religious buildings.

 

 

Consequently, it is the architectural and structural dimensions that are emphasised. The resulting architectural austerity is made possible by the mastery of building techniques possessed by the monks who acted as master builders. For example, the very narrow joints in the stonework result from the bevelled cutting of the stone blocks, which allows the gap between two blocks to be filled thoroughly with mortar. Thus, the narrowness of the joints does not compromise the structural stability of the buildings.

For the Cistercians, it is the ideal of the Rule that adorns the buildings, not ornamentation; it is the task of architecture to serve as a discreet yet omnipresent showcase for this ideal. At Le Thoronet, this ideal is reduced to its very essence: the ‘skilful, correct and magnificent interplay of volumes assembled in the light’, so dear to Le Corbusier.

 

 

Yves Esquieu, Vanessa Eggert, Jacques Mansuy, Le Thoronet: A Cistercian Abbey, Montpellier, Editions Actes Sud, 2006.

Nathalie Molina, The Abbey of Le Thoronet, Paris, Editions du Patrimoine, 1999.

Fernand Pouillon, *Les Pierres sauvages*, Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1964 – reprinted 2006.

Henry Bauchau, *La pierre sans chagrin – Poèmes du Thoronet*, Editions de l’Aire, 2013.