Book Series Medieval Monastic Studies, vol. 9

Saint-Pierre d’Orbais

Social Space and Gothic Architecture at a Benedictine Monastery

Kyle Killian

  • Pages: approx. 275 p.
  • Size:156 x 234 mm
  • Illustrations:78 b/w, 10 col.
  • Language(s):English
  • Publication Year:2025


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  • ISBN: 978-2-503-61386-4
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Integrated art historical, anthropological, and archaeological approaches offer avenues of investigation into a particular iteration of Gothic style in and around Orbais at the end of the twelfth century that speaks to the aspirations of the brothers who built and lived in the monastery as well as their relationship to the world around them.

BIO

Kyle Killian (Department of Art History, Florida State University) specializes in archaeology, history of architecture, and cultural heritage studies with a primary focus on the Middle Ages. His scholarship covers a range of geographic and cultural areas including Gothic France, Byzantine Cyprus, and Native North America. He has also worked for several years in cultural resource management in the United States. He directs the Archaeological Field School for the Art History Department, which gives students the opportunity to learn the basics of archaeological and architectural recording in the field. He teaches Art Appreciation and undergraduate courses in medieval art and architecture, and graduate courses in Cultural Heritage management and theoretical approaches to Medieval Architectural History.

Summary

The fragmentary remains of the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Pierre d'Orbais in northwest Champagne preserves a particular iteration of Gothic style and technological achievement as well as the built environment of a community deeply embedded in the world around them. Through their architecture, successive generations of monks of Orbais, whose institutional life stretched from the end of the seventh century to end of the eighteenth century, were constantly seeking to clarify their position in the changing physical and social landscapes they inhabited. Although connected by a shared site, the architectural evidence from Orbais preserves remnants from several episodes of use and reuse. The site is treated thematically, starting with the boundaries that define the site, then the resources that shaped monastic life in this particular location, followed by the monastic landscapes that shaped the community as an institution. These categories reflect both the nature of our evidence for the contexts of building construction and the types of landscapes that were most active for the monastic community at Orbais over the long life of the site. The final chapter resituates the architectural history of the monastic church in light of these interrelated landscapes, contextualizing existing scholarship that treats it as a specifically Gothic monument, and providing lines of connection to medieval built environments more broadly.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter One. Introduction

Chapter Two. Borders

Chapter Three. Resources

Chapter Four. Monastic Life

Chapter Five. Architectural Landscapes

Appendix. Transcription and Translation of Abbot William's commemorative document from 1180

Bibliography

Index