The Abbey of Aulne Thuin, Belgium
September 5, 2018
History is one of my interest, i studied English literature when all my family advised me to be an English teacher but i refused because i really love to know about ancient cultures and how they lived. Today i’ll take you to one of most ancient place in Belgium( The Abbey of Aulen).
The abbey of Aulne was founded in 657 by Landelin. Since then, it has not stopped growing and taking one importance until its destruction in 1794.
Today, the ruins are one of the tourism place give you a glimpse of what life was like here. The place located in city of Thuin in Belgium.
The cloister, composed of galleries covering an inner courtyard, has several functions in the abbey. In the first place, it centralizes the traffic between the different buildings: you cross the cloister to go from one place to another. But it is equal- S common and a place conducive to the world, symbolizes the divine order. a place of burial, reading meditation. Its enclosed garden, removed from the usual, the cloister is located south of the abbey church, so to the right of the entrance of the church, and not left like Aulne.
If the abbey is an exception to this use, it is probably because of site-specific topographic constraints. The abbey church was established in the highest and most stable area. Conventual buildings, requiring the evacuation of waste, took place near the river, so north of the church. Several water supply pipes were found in the cloister.
The hypothesis that a water point occupied the center of the walled garden exists, but the evidence is lacking to support it. A sink was to be placed near the refectory, in the north gallery (the gallery in front of it). this). The location is uncertain. ABBEY D’AULNE born Exploration of the pipes has shown that funerary slabs have been used to repair the coverage of some of the underground tunnels.
The monks have several mess rooms. Travelers of the first half of the eighteenth century describe three separate refectories: the mayor’s refectory for ordinary days, the refectory of fat for the days when meat was allowed, and finally the refectory of the symposium, the only one where it was allowed to speak. Originally, the refectory of fat does not exist. It was not until 1485 that the Cistercian monks got the right to eat meat.
Indeed, in this year, a Definitory authorizes them to consume meat three times a week. This authorization is probably intended to regularize an existing situation. It undoubtedly gave rise to the construction of the refectory of fat, inaugurated in 1507. During the reconstructions of the eighteenth century, these three refectories are replaced by two new buildings, the large refectory and the small refectory.
The refectory of the symposium has not been reconstructed.
Today, only the large refectory remains. Built by the abbot Praying between 1740 and 1753, it is part of the imposing ensemble formed by the quarters of the elders and the prior. The arches on the eighth century have that,These pendants rest on Tuscan columns. The small refectory resembled the large one, but in less imposing proportions, with one bay less than one at the Great refectory before its restoration in 1897.
The oldest visible remains of the chitre go back to the Cistercian occupation of the site, during the construction of the abbey church started in 1214 by Father Gilles de Beaumont. In order to guarantee the communication between the cloister and the church, no door is arranged between the two, in the gallery on your right. This phase of construction of the XIII century knows a turnaround of project. It is decided to build a bigger cloister. The enlargement of the cloister encroaches on part of the transept of the church. A new opening between the church and the cloister is created, it is surmounted by a broken arch animated by deep grooves. Other vestiges of the XIII century are visible in the south gallery, on your right. The two arched niches to the right of the church door could serve as an armarium (for the storage of books).
The gallery located along the church is a common reading place each evening. The trilobed door giving access to the nave of the church is reserved for convers. The eighteenth century is marked by the reconstruction of a large number of buildings, including the cloister. The new galleries modify the medieval layout: the cloister is detached from the church, leaving a space with no apparent function between the two structures. This modification of plan can be explained in two ways: a concern for symmetry for the cloister, or the need to ensure the lighting of the church following the reconstruction of the galleries in higher proportions. The dimensions of the new cloister are impressive: the vaults reach 8 m and the top of the arcades is 2.5 m higher than that of the old Gothic bays. Each gallery of the cloister is animated by an apse in half-octagon.The reconstitution of the gallery dates from 1985-1940. Under the direction of the architect Herman Lemaire, two bays of a XVIII century cloister are rebuilt.
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