l'arbre et la chaise
 Jumièges is a French village in Normandy along the Seine River, best known as the site of the Jumiège Abbey. The abbey has two decapitated towers outlined on the horizon and flanking a gable with no roof. This is still one of the main images of the region, a picture that remains in the mind's eye.
Fontenelle and Jumieges are less than two leagues apart and their destiny was similar. Indeed, it did not diverge until recent times. There is no religious community in Jumieges. Where could they live anyway? Ashistorian R. de Lasteyrie puts it, the abbey is nothing more than "one of the most admirable ruins in France".
Notre-Dame was once one of the finest Romanesque churches ever built in Normandy; now all that remain are the two towers 43 metres (140 ft.) high flanking the west front, the three-storeyed walls of the nave and the west wall of the lantern-tower, a gem of harmony and balance. The remainder of the lantern-tower was blown up with dynamite so that the demolition work would be completed more quickly. St. Peter's (eglise Saint-Pierre), Saint-Wandrille's "twin", was built in the 10th Century then reconstructed in the 13th in the Gothic style but it has not been spared. Only the site of the cloisters can be seen. The undercroft and chapter house had already lost their roof by the time the picks and pickaxes were stilled in 1824. Only the 14th-century gatehouse, the abbot's lodgings (a fine 17th century construction in the middle of lawns), and the monumental staircase linking the two levels in the park were left standing.
The apartments have been turned into a museum containing, most notably, the famous recumbent statue of the "Unnerved of Jumieges" about which so much has been written and said and the tombstone of Agnes Sorel. The "Lady of Beauty", Charles VII's mistress, died nearby at Les Vignes Manor. She was buried beneath the pavement of St. Peter's. |
