Abbaye de Saint-Papoul

Saint-Papoul

Tradition makes Papoul a hermit who came to evangelise the region, a disciple of Saint Sernin for some, an envoy of Saint Peter for others. It shows him tied to a tree, beaten, kneeling with his hands joined, at the place called l'Ermitage, and beheaded by a sword stroke that sliced off the top of his skull; a spring, legend says, gushed forth at that spot, where a chapel was built. The hermits who kept his memory are said to have founded the abbey in the 8th century; at any rate it appears in the capitulary of Louis the Pious among the abbeys of the third class, became a place of pilgrimage in the 11th century, and the saint's body was discovered there in 1265. It is first the chevet that must be seen: Romanesque, dated to the late 12th or early 13th century (the Mérimée database takes the choir back to the 11th), it is capped with a roof of stone slabs cut like fish scales, and its capitals and modillions are attributed to the Master of Cabestany, a sculptor of the second half of the 12th century, whose work the former refectory presents in casts. In 1317 Pope John XXII raised the abbey to a bishopric: the abbey church became a cathedral, and remained so until the Revolution, which made it a parish church. The cloister, from the early 14th century, is Languedoc Gothic: round arches, double capitals on paired colonnettes, most often of octagonal bricks, a decoration of foliage, griffins and monsters, and on the pillars a few narrative scenes, the Adoration of the Magi and Herod.

Wikipédia — Abbaye de Saint-Papoul ↗

Getting there : 5 place Monseigneur-de-Langle, 11400 Saint-Papoul. Admission charged (€3 for an adult, €1 for a child according to the Occitanie regional tourist board, to be checked); seasonal opening, times to be checked with the abbey (abbaye-saint-papoul.com). Permanent exhibition devoted to the Master of Cabestany in the former refectory.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound