L'ancienne église de Saint-Pierre-l'Estrier à Autun

Abstract

Christian Sapin, The old church of St.-Pierre-l'Estrier at Autun. Located along the inner perimeter of the Autun (Department of Saone-et-Loire) cemetery, the old church of Saint-Pierre-l'Estrier was partially destroyed and modified by work carried out in the 18th and 19th centuries. In spite of these radical changes in its superstructure and substructure, it still contains considerable elements belonging to the different edifices that followed on the same site. Recent archaeological work has made it possible to set up for this complex, which had never been studied, a relative chronology that stretches from the 2d to the beginning of the 11th century in the case of the oldest periods. It would appear that the structure of the 9th century church rests in part on constructions from the Lower Empire that at the time played some funerary role. Although it is not yet possible to determine their outline in full, a number of elements point to their monumental character. As was the case in identical circumstances noted at other funerary sites in Europe, these early constructions were determinant as to the site of cult buildings that were often rebuilt a number of times. There is evidence of these stages in the superstructure. The last of these stages indicates the extent of this project in the Carolingian tradition, with sculptural work the like of which is to be found nowhere else in Burgundy. It was in what would remain of this edifice that much later the tombs of the early bishops of Autun would be erected, whose mausoleums, close to Saint-Pierre, were to be destroyed in the 18th century.