Un Saint-Sépulcre à Beaulieu-Iès-Loches

According to its foundation story, the abbey church of Beaulieu-Ies-Loches was dedicated to the Dominicum Sepulchrum when Fulk Nerra, count of the Angevins and founder of the monastery, returned from his second pilgrimage to Jerusalem with a fragment of Christ's Tomb. Because it lacked a centralized ground plan, the church at Beaulieu is seldom considered an architectural copy of the edifice in Jerusalem. While it is not an explicit copy of the Holy Sepulchre, I argue that the abbey church shared more than its dedication with contemporary Holy Sepulchre monuments. This paper focuses on aspects of the church that evoked the Holy Sepulchre: The spatial arrangement of the crossing, its liturgy, its dedication on the heels of pilgrimage, its function as a burial site, and suggestive links with other local monuments that refer to Jerusalem.