“Wonderful Middle Ages” in Lyon: a resurrected abbey

North of Lyon (Rhône), on the Saône, a small bucolic island always attracts walkers: Île-Barbe. For more than ten centuries (from the 5th to the 18th), an abbey, which has now disappeared, played an important role for the city. Between 2016 and 2022, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and geographers worked to gather clues to accurately reconstruct the history of this mecca of religious life. The exhibition at the Lyon Gadagne History Museum offers to revisit these traces.

This monastery is mentioned from the 5th century, making it one of the oldest in Gaul, with those of Lérins (Alpes-Maritimes) and Ligugé (Vienne). “They operated in a network,” explains Charlotte Gaillard, archaeologist at the city of Lyon. Here, the water of the river that surrounded the monks symbolized their separation from the world, even if they did not literally live “in the desert”.”

In the 9th century, when the Benedictine rule was adopted, a scriptorium was installed. The route allows you to admire some manuscripts produced here.

The scientific work coincides with the museum’s desire to exhibit its superb collection of lapidary remains of the monastery: griffins, lions or dragons, sculpted on reliefs, and which testify to the high quality of Romanesque art of the 12th century. “This fantastic bestiary is found in the literature of the period, but also in the illuminations and fabrics of which we present examples,” explains Cécile Gotterand, collections manager at the museum.

Surprising Egyptian altar

A model recreates the plans of the vast abbey which included several churches. “We found ten burials of men around what was the Saint-André funeral church, at the tip of the island,” says Charlotte Gaillard. While a Marian church – which has survived – welcomed the numerous pilgrims. An animated video also shows the day of a pilgrim who came from Lyon by boat, in the 15th century. Opposite, a window displays small objects found, linked to these devotions.

More surprising, a 16th century drawing proves that the abbey had a black stone altar decorated with hieroglyphs, a vestige of ancient Egypt. However, one of the historians has just found this altar at… the National Library of France, which was unaware of its origin. This is one of the very beautiful pieces in the exhibition. This ends with “medievalism”, this fascination with a partly fantasized Middle Ages which, since the 19th century, has permeated works of art, television productions, puppets, video games… Enough to nourish the imagination as well as historical knowledge.