The Crypt

We are at the heart of the building, in front of the hollowed pillar where the coffer which held the relics of the patron of the place, saint Benedict, was laid. Without him, there would be nothing here. From this central pillar splays the double vault of the double ambulatory carrying the weight of the upper sanctuary. The whole church works outwards from this obscure crypt. The relics were put there in 1108 at the time when the high altar was consecrated.

Why should anyone bury a saint whom they want to venerate? They believed in those days that the dead wait for the resurrection in the ground. But a saint has to be honoured. So there has to be a crypt at once a tomb and a church, to allow us to draw near to the holy body, a source of power and blessing.

"As we come to ask of the relics of the saints for the healing of this or that infirmity, it is as if he breaks from the everlasting shadows which have been hoarded by these old walls in order now to melt the night which envelopes each one of us and dissolve the clamorous deafness in the silence of the Good News. Inside, the pillars, by the proportion of their spacing seem to bring to bear on us at every step the measure by which their placing was ordered. They guide us, a rank of witnesses and a choir to accompany them. A space to walk in the half-light, avenues full of silence where grace may more easily catch us by surprise. " Claudel