Saint-Riquier : une restitution nouvelle de la Basilique d'Angilbert

Abstract

The previous restitution of the Carolingian church of Saint-Riquier's dates back to 1912. Proposed by W. Effmann, it was founded on the testimony of two Latin sources : Angilbert's Institutio (IXth century) and Hariulphe's Chronicle (XIth century) enriched with comparisons with the surviving westwerk (late IXth century) of the Corvey Abbey (Westphalia). Nowadays, and given the latest 1988 discoveries, we are able to propose a renewed vision of this important monument, actual «model monastic facility», which served as a prototype for many religious buildings all over the Carlovingian Empire. Relying on archaeological excavations carried out on Saint-Riquier's site since 1959, enlightened by M. Heitz's liturgical study published in 1963, with due mention of unpublished comparisons with many mediaeval buildings displaying similar features, a new reading of W. Effmann's sources leads us to the following restitution : two bulky buildings built along a centered plan (eight- and sixteen- sided concentric polygons), one on the western side (the Saviour's Tower), connected by a system of naves, completed on the eastern side by what definitely looks like a martyrium girded by the corridor of a crypt reworked and widened in the XIth century. This remarkable basilica has the same dimensions as the present day abbey-church built along the same structures. It was bounded on its southern side, as early as the VIIIth century, by a wide rectangular area -which will become the mediaeval cloister- along which the claustral buildings are articulated.