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Moissac is a town and commune
Communes of France

The commune is the lowest level of administrative divisions in the France. The French word commune appeared in the 12th century, from Medieval Latin Medieval commune, meaning a small gathering of people sharing a common life, from Latin communis, things held in common....
 of the Tarn-et-Garonne
Tarn-et-Garonne

Tarn-et-Garonne is a French departments of France in the southwest of France....
 département, in southwestern France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
. It is on the ancient pilgrimage route of Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela

Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous communities of Spain of Galicia and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Located in the north west of Spain in the A Coru?a , it was the "European City of Culture" for the year 2000....
. It is famous world-wide mostly for the artistic heritage handed down by the ancient Saint Peter's Abbey.

Saint-Pierre abbey
Abbey

An abbey , is a Christianity monastery or convent, under the government of an Abbot or an Abbess, who serves as the spiritual father or mother of the community....
 in Moissac has a 12th century tympanum
Tympanum (architecture)

A tympanum is the semi-circular or triangular decorative wall surface over an entrance bounded by a lintel and arch. It often contains sculptures or other ornaments....
, portico statues (including the famous trumeau figure of the Prophet Jeremiah) and cloister
Cloister

A cloister is a covered walk with an open colonnade on one side, running along the walls of buildings that face a quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cathedral or church usually indicates that it is part of a monastic foundation....
 (which has a later 15th century roof structure).






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Encyclopedia


Moissac is a town and commune
Communes of France

The commune is the lowest level of administrative divisions in the France. The French word commune appeared in the 12th century, from Medieval Latin Medieval commune, meaning a small gathering of people sharing a common life, from Latin communis, things held in common....
 of the Tarn-et-Garonne
Tarn-et-Garonne

Tarn-et-Garonne is a French departments of France in the southwest of France....
 département, in southwestern France
France

France , officially the French Republic , is a country whose Metropolitan France is located in Western Europe and that also comprises various Overseas departments and territories of France....
. It is on the ancient pilgrimage route of Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela

Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous communities of Spain of Galicia and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Located in the north west of Spain in the A Coru?a , it was the "European City of Culture" for the year 2000....
. It is famous world-wide mostly for the artistic heritage handed down by the ancient Saint Peter's Abbey.

Monuments

The Saint-Pierre abbey
Abbey

An abbey , is a Christianity monastery or convent, under the government of an Abbot or an Abbess, who serves as the spiritual father or mother of the community....
 in Moissac has a 12th century tympanum
Tympanum (architecture)

A tympanum is the semi-circular or triangular decorative wall surface over an entrance bounded by a lintel and arch. It often contains sculptures or other ornaments....
, portico statues (including the famous trumeau figure of the Prophet Jeremiah) and cloister
Cloister

A cloister is a covered walk with an open colonnade on one side, running along the walls of buildings that face a quadrangle or garth. The attachment of a cloister to a cathedral or church usually indicates that it is part of a monastic foundation....
 (which has a later 15th century roof structure). There is also a Centre of Romanesque Art with important documents on medieval sculpture, illumination and wall-paintings. The Saint-Pierre abbey church and cloister are listed among the World Heritage Sites of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France
World Heritage Sites of the Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France

In 1998, several sites in France were added to the UNESCO World Heritage Sites under the description: Routes of Santiago de Compostela in France....
.

History

Le Moulin De Moissac Arnaud Saint Germes
According to legend, the abbey was founded by Clovis
Clovis I

Clovis was the first King of the Franks to unite all the Franks under one king. He succeeded his father Childeric I in 481 as King of the Salian Franks, one of the Frankish tribes who were then occupying the area west of the lower Rhine, with their centre around Tournai and Cambrai along the modern frontier between France and Belgium, in an...
 (the Frankish king), but from historical information it was founded by Saint Didier
Didier of Cahors

Saint Didier, also known as Desiderius was a Merovingian royal official of aristocratic Gallo-Roman extraction.He succeeded his own brother, Saint Rusticus, as bishop of Cahors and governed the diocese, which flourished under his care, from 630 to 655....
, bishop of Cahors in the middle of the 7th century. The establishment of the monastery was difficult because of raids by the Moors
Moors

In the Spanish language, the term for Moors is Moro; in Portuguese language the word is mouro. There seems to have been some confusion about the relationship of the word moro/mouro to the word moreno , both from Greek language ma?ros, i.e....
 and the Norsemen
Norsemen

Norsemen is used to refer to the group of people as a whole who speak one of the North Germanic languages as their native language. The meaning of Norseman was "people from the North" and was applied primarily to Nordic people originating from southern and central Scandinavia....
. The 11th and 12th centuries witnessed a first golden age, the result of Moissac being affiliated to the Burgundy abbey of Cluny
Cluny Abbey

The Abbey of Cluny is an abbey in France.It was founded in AD 910 by William I of Aquitaine, Count of Auvergne, who installed Abbot Berno and placed the abbey under the immediate authority of Pope Sergius III....
 and its accepting the famous Reformation, under the guidance of Durand de Bredons
Durand de Bredons

Durand de Bredons was a French Benedictine and bishop of Toulouse from about 1058. He was from Bredons in the Auvergne .He was from about 1048 Abbot of Moissac, a Cluniac reformer there....
 who was both the Abbot of Moissac and the bishop of Toulouse. This outstanding era witnessed the major abbots Dom Hunaud de Gavarret, and Dom Ansquitil; who had the doorway and tympanum built. In the 13th century, Raymond de Montpezat and then Bertrand de Montaigut, abbots and builders, ruled the abbey. Aymeric de Peyrac, writing his Chronicle in the 15th century in the castle of Saint Nicolas de la Grave reveals us those events.

The 15th century saw a new golden age with abbots Pierre and Antoine de Caraman, whose building programme included in particular the Gothic part of the abbey church. The 1626 secularization of the abbey caused the Benedictine
Benedictine

Benedictine refers to the spirituality and consecrated life in accordance with the Rule of St Benedict, written by Benedict of Nursia in the sixth century for the cenobitic communities he founded in central Italy....
 monks to leave the cloister which had been a centre of Benedictine life for nearly 1000 years. They were replaced by Augustinian canons, under commendatory abbots including well-known cardinals such as Mazarin
Jules Cardinal Mazarin

Jules Mazarin, born Giulio Raimondo Mazzarino was an Italy cardinal, diplomat and politician, who served as the prime minister of France from 1642 until his death....
 and de Brienne
Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne

?tienne Charles de Lom?nie de Brienne was a France churchman and politician....
. In 1793, the French Revolution
French Revolution

The French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudalism for the aristocracy and Roman Catholic Church clergy, underwent radical change to forms based on Age of Enlightenment principles of cit...
 put an end to monastic life in Moissac. In the middle of the 19th century, the laying of a railway track threatened the cloister but it was saved (though the refectory was demolished to facilitate the railway cutting) and listed as a historic monument. Even though the outlying buildings have suffered a lot and the appearance of the abbey has changed, this inheritance is nowadays the object of intense care as the south-west portico tympanum and trumeau statue of the Prophet Jeremiah, renowned amongst the greatest works of the European Romanesque, and the oldest and one of the most beautiful cloisters in France, can still be admired.

Waterways


There are important waterways in Moissac: the Tarn River
Tarn River

The Tarn River is a long river in southern France , right tributary of the Garonne.The Tarn River runs in a roughly westerly direction, from its source at an altitude of 1,550 m on Mont Loz?re in the C?vennes mountains , through the deep gorges and canyons of the Gorges du Tarn , to Moissac in Tarn-et-Garonne, where it joins the Ga...
 flows through the centre of town, as does the Canal de Garonne (formerly Canal latéral à la Garonne), the extension of the Canal du Midi
Canal du Midi

The is a long canal in Southern France . The canal connects the Garonne River to the on the Mediterranean Sea and along with the Canal de Garonne forms the joining the Atlantic Ocean to the Mediterranean....
 from Toulouse to Bordeaux. Together, these two canals are sometimes known as the Canal des deux mers (lit. canal of the two seas) connecting the Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean

The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions; with a total area of about 106.4 million square kilometres . It covers approximately one-fifth of the Earth's surface....
 with the Mediterranean Sea
Mediterranean Sea

The Mediterranean Sea is a sea or Ocean off the Atlantic Ocean surrounded by the Mediterranean region and almost completely enclosed by land: on the north by Europe, on the south by Africa, and on the east by Asia....
.

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