La deuxième fille de Cluny: Grandeurs et misères de Saint-Martin-des-Champs by Alain Mercier (review)

This large and lavish book is the first comprehensive history of the Parisian priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs from its foundation in the mid-eleventh century to its dissolution in the French Revolution. The Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, originally founded in 1794, was established in the priory buildings four years later, and this volume is intended as the first of a three-volume set commemorating that institution. It is intended for an educated lay audience rather than for scholars; and yet it has much to interest the scholar, including hundreds of color images of Saint-Martin's buildings, architectural features, artwork, and archival documents—the latter usually not seen in art books. There is an extensive bibliography, which includes an impressive list of manuscript sources (although the secondary works are all in French), a good starting point for any future histories of the monastery.

The book begins with the Merovingian-era sanctuary and sarcophagi recently found under Saint-Martin-des-Champs. Quickly, however, it turns to King Henry I of France and his decision to found a Benedictine house in 1059, establishing it on the ruins of the old sanctuary, and to Henry's son Philip I, who soon gave the house to Cluny. The account then proceeds chronologically, prior by prior, discussing especially building programs and grants of property and rights. The focus is more on architecture and recent archaeological discoveries than on the monks themselves.

Mercier's specialty is not medieval history, and his description of the social milieu in which the priory began is very old-fashioned: feudal anarchy, a papacy plotting dominance, Cluniac monks seeking to expand. He relies for much of the early narrative on works written in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. It is not even clear that Saint-Martin really was Cluny's second daughter, as the title suggests, because the Burgundian priories of Paray-le-Monial and La Charité had already been established. (Mercier mentions La Charité but not Paray.)

Mercier seems to comes into his own when he reaches the late Middle Ages and the early-modern period, when the house lost most of its monks and much of the regularity of its life. Still very wealthy, it fell under the control of commendataires, secular clergy, or even laymen who took control of the house's property and possessions, in spite of intermittent efforts at reform. Not until the seventeenth century did the house, under the direction of Cardinal Richelieu, return to a strict observance of the monastic life, and then the monks spent much of the eighteenth century rebuilding and expanding, little anticipating the coming destruction of the French Revolution.

The book is beautifully produced. Mercier's own photographs of architectural detail illustrate many of his points, and century-old photos show what the buildings looked like before the most recent round of renovations. One of the book's chief strengths is that it traces the evolution of the priory buildings from the eleventh century to the twenty-first. Mercier clearly knows the structures intimately. The historical narrative is in some ways just an excuse to discuss lovingly all the details of the buildings and the priory's artwork and manuscripts. For the reader who has never been to the museum of Arts et Métiers, it is, shall we say, striking to see pictures of, for example, the gothic nave turned into an expo center for early automobiles (p. 99).