A case study on the revival of stone quarrying in the late eleventh century: St. Florent,Saumur and Notre-Dame,Noyers

One aspect of the late eleventh-century economic expansion in the west of France was that the abbeys of the region embarked upon an ambitious program of construction. Many houses decided to rebuild their abbey church, while the numerous small chapels and churches they received from the newly emerging class of castellans were rebuilt to serve as priories. All this required large amounts of building stone, which was difficult to obtain. For the abbeys of St. Florent, Saumur (Maine-et-Loire) and Notre-Dame, Noyers (Indre-et-Loire) texts survive that throw light on the intricate social and economic relationships that ultimately provided the abbeys with sources of building stone. One finds that the exploitation of quarries was intimately associated with the proliferation of towns and that the abbeys depended upon secular bequests of both towns and quarries to carry out their construction programs.