Two remarkable model books, one anonymous, the other by the polymath Ademar de Chabannes together with several loose sheets of drawings survive from the first third of the eleventh century. These, together with a repetitive of a stock of images by different sculptural workshops throughout Francia occidentalis suggest that sketches were widely diffused and relied upon for the transmission of imagery and motifs in the early Romanesque period. The correspondences between sketches and architectural sculpture are particularly significant because their date overlaps the period of the re-emergence of figural sculpture following its six-hundred-year hiatus since Antiquity. The representational tricks and authoritative visual language of graphic models were important, in this period when access to religious imagery outside the confines of monasteries was limited.
The two "co-cathedral" churches in the small episcopal city of Saint-Lizier-en-Couserans each display great heterogeneity in the plan and construction of their different parts, which have long awaited a global and comparative stratigraphic study. This study underscores the conservation of pre-Romanesque constructions throughout the elevation of each church. The choir of Notre-Dame de la Sede, attached to the fifth-century rampart, thus appears to be the east end of a much smaller church with a single nave, which was then rebuilt with a Romanesque nave and the previous openings were then vaulted. The choir of the church of Saint Lizier, situated outside the walls, is considered to be contemporary and was enlarged with a transept having oriented chapels and a burial vault, probably well before the first vaulting of the choir and the enlargement of the nave in the Romanesque period. The comparison with the neighboring Comminges, better known archeologically, proposes the hypothesis of two paleo-christian churches built shortly after the foundation of the fortified city during the fifth century, which are partially preserved today.
Often mentioned as an important ancient stronghold in local historiography, the logis of Serveau remains relatively unknown. The rediscovery of its archives, preserved in the charter collection of Dorides, and a study of the construction of the logis has renewed our knowledge of the medieval manor, which was largely transformed and fortified during the Wars of Religion by a man who had attracted the favors of the king. The logis is now in a very heterogeneous state, reflecting several medieval and post-medieval construction campaigns. The defensive additions to the site at the end of the 16th century reflect a larger phenomenon in the Bas-Poitou, but with a more ambitious program for this type of seigneurial residence.
A miniature in Avranches, ms. 50, painted around the year 1000, has heretofore been considered the oldest witness to activity in the scriptorium of Mont-Saint-Michel. The recent attribution of the miniature to the Loire Valley constitutes a major epistemological advance for the history of art, as well as for history. The attribution is the fruit of a re-examination of the codicology, palaeography, iconography, and physico-chemical make-up of the manuscript, undertaken by the EMMA (Etude Materielle des Anciens manuscrits du Mont-Saint-Michel) at the University of Caen, with help of the CRC (Centre de Recherche sur la Conservation) for the chemical imagery. The use of an X-ray fluorescence scanner allowed the identification of the donor who offers a book to St Michel on the full-page frontispiece. He is Gelduin II the Younger, lord of Saumur, who at the end of his life took the monastic habit at Saint-Laumer de Blois. While not authorizing formal conclusions, the material study of the parchment and pigments determined the place of production of the manuscript, namely Saint-Laumer de Blois, or more probably Saint-Mesmin de Micy. This localization led the authors of the study to link the representation of St Michel crushing a heretic with doctrinal deviancies which in 1022 resulted in the execution of a group of canons from the Cathedral of Orleans, who were close to the royal court. On a broader scale, it is worth considering the effect that these polemics had on the creation of demonstrative historiated capitals on the tower-porch of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire and in the nave of Saint-Germain-des-Pres.
