Psalmodi and the Architecture of Carolingian Septimania

Abstract

Excavations in the 1970s and 1980s at Psalmodi uncovered a pre-Gothic church of two building campaigns. The date of church A, the first campaign, has been disputed. Formal and textual evidence, however, confirms church A as Carolingian, rather than Romanesque, and church B, the second campaign, as dating to about 1000. Indeed, the correlation between church A's plan and the distinctive plan type tied directly to Benedict of Aniane-seen, notably, in the excavated Carolingian church at Aniane-in tandem with documentary evidence for Psalmodi indicate that church A dates no later than the early ninth century. Church A, then, provides rare testimony to monastic architecture in colonial Septimania. The importance of this Carolingian past-remembered as a fabled time-is documented in later texts in which Psalmodi's pedigree is reinforced and even enhanced. Reverence for this past may be reflected in the preservation of much of church A in church B and, moreover, in the tenth-century churches of Saint-Genis-des-Fontaines and Saint-André-de-Sorède, which, with their clear formal affinity to Psalmodi and Aniane, perhaps present pointed reference to, rather than the persistence of, the distinctive, local, Carolingian plan type.