Note 258 — Chapter VIII · Gothic in the Midi (continued 2)

There is another cloister at Montmajour, four miles from Arles. Its transverse ribs are caught along the wall on corbels carved with grotesques. Nothing at Montmajour pre-dates A.D. 1000. In the monastery church appeared (in the transept) some early diagonals; the crypt (middle of the XII century) is of a peculiar plan: a circular chapel in the middle of its apse with chapels radiating from the passage round it. From each arm of the transept projects an apse chapel. Under a hillock is a small shrine remade in the XIII century. In 1369 a tower of defense was added to the abbey. The curious chapel of the Holy Cross, in a meadow near by, is not of the time of its foundation, 1019, but a reconstruction of the XII century, probably intended for the chapel of a graveyard. Montmajour once rose from the sea marshes that for centuries came up to the gates of Arles. J. M. Trichaud, Les ruines de l’abbaye de Montmajour-lès-Arles (Arles, 1854); Congrès Archéologique, 1876, p. 362; and 1909, p. 154; Chantelon (Dom), Histoire de Montmajour (1890); L. Royer, L’abbaye de Montmajour-lès-Arles (Abbeville, Paillart, 1910).