23 June 2012 – Lembras
Today we visited St Emilion, a village
known for 2 features, a subterrainean church and wine. 60% of the
the buildings in the town house wine merchants and 60% of the rest
are restaurants. The village is surrounded by vineyards, many “grand
crus”, growing merlot, cabernet savignon and cabernet franc grapes.
However we passed the tempting tastings to tour the mediaeval heart
of the village. St Emilion was a Benedictine monk who decided to
become a hermit here in the 800s. Previously he had worked as a
trusted worker in an estate in Brittany, but had been cought stealing
bread to give to the poor. Fortunately his first miracle was to turn
the bread into pieces of wood when he was apprehended, thus avoiding
an unpleasant punishment, but decided to head for the hills after
this. He ended up living in a cave above the Dordogne river and was
credited with further miracles of healing. This became a place of
pilgrimage and the village became a commercial centre, first for
wheat and then for limestone. In the 1200s a wealthy local decided
to build a church by hollowing out the hill and selling off the
resulting limestone blocks so that the creation of the church was
profitable. The resulting cave is huge considering the technology of
the time. Height 11m, width 20 m and length 35m. Previous to this a
series of catacombs had been dug in the area and these run for some
200m. Later a bell tower was built over the church. Since this
weighs 4,500 tonnes it has caused structural problems in the columns
in the church itself. All decoration from the church has been lost
due to the deterioration after the French Revolution, but the church
is still impressive. A fascinating example of mediaeval commerce and
engineering.
Nowadays the cave digging is for wine
storage and we were told there are 200km of tunnels in the area.
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