La fondation royale des Dominicaines d'Aix-en-Provence

Abstract

Notre-Dame of Nazareth, Dominican nuns' convent, is settled in 1292 in Aix-en-Provence by the Count of Anjou and Provence, king of Naples and Jerusalem. The results of several archaeological excavations, led on a part of the former domain, in combination with pieces of information brought by the written sources, offer a glimpse of the way of life in this original institution. Royal convent, of an apostolic Mendicant Order, but for nuns living a contemplative cloistered life, this monastic complex, described as huge, closed and prestigious, is at the same time outside and inside the world. Attractive pole of devotion for the women, it is also used as an educational establishment for girls of good families. As a place of consenting (sometimes simply temporary) confinement, it even partakes of the control over women’s life by men. The cloister is associated with a seclusion which here has to adapt nevertheless to the male presence within the monastic enclosure: in addition to the religious brothers who manages the convent, which takes episodic functions as a royal residence, and which is on the other hand dedicated to almsgiving and hosting people in need, an important profane attendance is generated, which provides employment to numerous servants of both sexes. The convent can be considered as an original and dynamic place, a refuge from the world, by its status, its prestige and its high walls, but where the world enters, and where it was possible to leave from, to follow a laic way of life. It also plays a political role, as an exercise, in the religious part, of the royal power of the Angevin dynasty, which strengthens this way its bearings and its authority, in the city of Aix, on the lands of Provence.

Keywords

• convent
• dominican nuns
• cloister
• Provence
• Anjou