Le couvent des Cordeliers fondé au XIIIe siècle est l’un des rares édifices franciscains médiévaux conservés en France. Malgré une histoire mouvementée, il subsiste des éléments architecturaux remarquables.
A religious order is a group of people bound together by solemn vows governed by observance of a Rule. In Roman and Western forms of Christianity, there is a strong tradition of religious orders which began to develop in the East in the 4th century AD, taking the form of eremitic and cenobitic monasticism. Monasticism of the Benedictine type was first seen in the West in the 6th century AD.
This mendicant order was founded by Francis of Assisi circa 1210 and devoted itself to the task of spreading the Gospel to the new urban populations - the Franciscans preached penance and earned a living both from their work and from alms. In the 13th century, the Church, influenced by monastic knowledge, saw the Scriptures as a group of writings so rich in symbols that only trained clerics could master their hidden meaning. Saint Francis was an innovator and rejected this allegorical interpretation, setting out instead to imitate the life of Christ. Trusting in public generosity to provide for their daily needs, the Franciscans moved into the towns and cities which were growing quickly at the time.
The Rule of the Order of the Friars Minor was promulgated by Pope Honorius III in 1223. Unlike other monks, these brothers did not live in solitude - they offered free hospitality to travellers or the poor and handed out weekly alms at the gates of their monasteries.
In around 1250, the city of Charlieu was flourishing thanks to large-scale trade. The town was in a prime location, at the junction of two very busy roads - the “grand chemin” from Paris to Lyons and the axis of the Saône and the Loire. Things were at a tricky juncture when the Franciscans arrived in Charlieu in around 1250 as the townspeople were at odds with the Benedictines. As a result, Pope Alexander IV gave them permission to set up a monastery in the town in around 1255. This was probably the citizens’ doing, they may have wanted to put pressure on the Benedictines by bringing in one of their competitors.
The Benedictine monks threw their lordly weight around and rejected the plan out of hand. The Franciscans were banned from Charlieu and so, in around 1260, they moved a little further away, to a place known as La Cordelière (Saint-Denis-de-Cabanne).
The monks from the abbey chased them away and destroyed their camp although the Abbot of Cluny was excommunicated in response to this attack. Under the Concordat of Cluny, of 14th May 1280, Pope Nicholas III gave the Benedictines no choice but to allow the Franciscans to move in, although there was on one main condition: the Benedictines allowed the Franciscans to set up home on land belonging to the priory of Charlieu, but it had to be outside the parish of Charlieu. As a result, the Cordeliers moved into the parish of Saint-Nizier-sous-Charlieu and began work on building the monastery.
During truces in the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), there were bands of demobilised mercenaries known as the “Tard-Venus” (latecomers) laying waste to the area. Following the Brétigny peace treaty (1360), they attacked Charlieu in January 1362. Although the town managed to repel them, almost the whole of the Couvent des Cordeliers was destroyed.
After the monastery was destroyed in 1362, the Franciscans took advantage of the restoration of calm and the donations which poured in to rebuild it. In around 1390, Hugues de Châtelus, Lord of Châteaumorand, became the main benefactor by financing three-quarters of the new cloister. The church was also rebuilt in a simple, austere way. There is a huge single nave, designed to accommodate a whole neighbourhood of the town.
The violence of the Wars of Religion at the end of the 16th century reached Charlieu which was threatened, besieged and ransacked on several occasions. The monastery had no protection so the Cordeliers had no choice but to abandon it.
Once the Wars of Religion were over, the Cordeliers’ financial position improved, with their religious work financing their community life. They contributed to the parishes’ spiritual lives and appeared prominently in the town’s processions, albeit after the Benedictines. Relations between the two religious communities in the 17th and 18th centuries were excellent.
In February 1790, the ecclesiastical committee of the constituent Assembly voted for the end of religious orders - members of them had to choose between living in a community and returning to civilian life. There were three already elderly Cordeliers by the names of Claude Sichet, François Huguenin and Michel Janin still living at the monastery, and they rejected the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. They remained at the monastery while the land and buildings were being sold in 1791. The following year the municipality decided to evict them; they left Charlieu without leaving any traces behind them.
The buildings fell into disuse or were destroyed after their departure - inside the church, the rood screen was knocked down so it could be converted into a barn, and the chapels in the south of the church and the other parts of the monastery were turned into houses.
In 1910, the owner, Ferdinand Dolliat, sold the land on which the cloister stood to Jacques Seligmann, an influential Parisian antiques dealer with a high-class clientele. The materials were quickly sold on to riche Americans who wanted to use them to decorate their tennis courts in California. By the time the scandal hit the headlines in the press, two of the cloister’s galleries had already been dismantled and packed into crates, but the cloister was saved thanks to the intervention of the Société des Amis des Arts de Charlieu (Charlieu Friends of the Arts Society, founded in 1908), along with various regional celebrities and influential politicians. On 19th November 1910, the Ministry of Fine Arts entered it upon the list of Historic Monuments, and then its compulsory purchase was ordered. The cloister was reassembled before the First World War and then the Couvent des Cordeliers was run by the Société des Amis des Arts until 2010. Nowadays it is owned by the Department of the Loire which handles its management and conservation.