VIENNE EN VAL
and NEUVY EN SULLIAS Loiret,
France.
Vienne en Val is a village ca. 20 km
SE of Orléans and 7 km S of Jargeau, on Route Nationale 751; this road is built over an ancient route that followed the Loire, on the edge of the frequently flooded Val region and the Sologne.
The foundations of a Merovingian church were discovered in 1968 on the Place de l'Eglise. This church had
been replaced in the 13th c. by another, slightly farther
N, which was torn down in the early 20th c. after the
present church, E of the Merovingian sanctuary, was
built. The Merovingian foundations were largely composed of reused blocks from a Gallo-Roman monument,
many of them carved in the round or in relief. The most
important of those carved in the round are:
1) A headless statue of Jupiter on horseback, borne
by a recumbent giant. The god's accouterments include
a cylindrical cuirass, similar to a Greek type of cuirass,
and a short cloak that forms a square on the back and
falls on the chest in two rectangular panels; the horse's
harness is like that of the horse ridden by C. Romanius,
whose funerary stela (in the Strasbourg museum) dates
from the period of Claudius or Nero. The statue must
have been carved around the middle of the 1st c. A.D.
Also recovered were the shaft of a column, covered
with scales, and a Corinthian capital that probably
crowned it, but the capital is too small to have supported
the group. Since another fragment, the hindquarters of a
horse on a larger scale, has been preserved, there must
have been at least three statues of this type in the
sanctuary.
2) The statue of a male lion, without a mane, sitting
on its hindlegs and holding in its mouth a small human
figure. This is the largest representation of a man-eating
monster discovered in Gaul. In attitude it resembles the
Etruscan lions with which the type originated, and it may
be dated from the 1st c. A.D.
3) Fragments of several statues of Minerva.
4) A headless female torso, probably
Gallia, clothed
in a tunic that leaves one breast bare, and wearing a
torque.
Among the bas-reliefs is a rectangular block carved
on four sides, probably the base of a Jupiter column.
The front of the block has a carving of Jupiter striking
down a giant, above an inscription. The same text appears in slightly different order on the opposite side beneath a front-view image of Mars, naked, with helmet and spear. The right side shows Venus standing, naked,
with Eros beside her. Paired with her is Vulcan, his foot
on a ship's prow. To judge from style and epigraphy, the
monument may be dated from the third quarter of the
2d c.
There are also two altars, carved on four sides but
without epigraphs. On the first one are Mars, Vulcan,
Virtus (represented as an Amazon, after a statue in the
Capitoline Museum sometimes attributed to Phidias
and sometimes to Kresilas), and a goddess with a cornucopia, probably Fortuna; the second shows Apollo, Hercules, Minerva, and Sirona. These two altars may be dated from the period of the last Seven.
Another altar, now in several fragments, had Jupiter
on one side, a goddess, probably Juno, sitting beside
an altar on another, and an eagle on another. It may be
dated from the last Antonines. An elongated base, larger
in proportion, was made of at least four blocks, only
one of which has been recovered. Hercules, Minerva,
and Mercury can be made out on the lower section.
Another elongated base showed putti hunting birds,
after a Neo-Attic model. Various emblems of the Gallo-Roman Apollo are included: the tree, spring, birds, snake, etc. The carving may have been executed in the first half of the 2d c.
Also noteworthy are a block representing a putto sitting at the top of a ladder, with a dedication to Sulevia,
a Celtic goddess of springs comparable to Minerva; a
stela showing an armed goddess, not Minerva; and another stela representing a bull. All these sculptures probably came from a large sanctuary consecrated primarily to Jupiter Taranis: the majority of the gods of the Gallo-Roman pantheon are subordinate to him, grouped according to their functions. First come the gods of war—Mars, Vulcan, Venus, Virtus, and Fortuna. A similar grouping can be seen on the pillar of the Eglise St. Landry in Paris; it is borrowed from Roman religion and
may possibly derive from a monument dedicated by
Caesar. The gods dispensing riches and fertility include
Apollo, Minerva, Hercules, Sirona, and Mercury, who
is relegated to a secondary role.
The most important clue as to the organization of the
sanctuary is in the dedication by Perpetuus and Maternus, which mentions a curia Ludn. Unfortunately this
institution remains a mystery. It seems unlikely that it
refers to a municipal curia; more acceptable is the suggestion that in Gaul curia might sometimes be equivalent
to pagus. Another curia, probably of the same type, appears in a dedication engraved on the base of a bronze
statue of a horse found at Neuvy en Sullias in 1861, in
a cache containing a rich collection of bronze ex-votos.
Neuvy en Sullias lies ca. 20 km E of Vienne en Val, on
the same road following the Loire. The question arises
whether the treasure found there, valuable and worthless objects piled together, was not removed from the Vienne en Val sanctuary to a safe place when the building was destroyed.
There are good reasons to suppose that in the region
of these two sites stood the federal sanctuary where the
annual convocation of the Druids was held. In any event,
Vienne en Val is the most important of the extra-urban
Gallo-Roman sanctuaries and of the whole territory of
the Carnutes.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
C. Jullian,
Histoire de la Gaule (1908-26) II, 97-98; Neuvy en Sullias: A. Grenier,
Manuel
d'archéologie gallo-romaine IV, 2 (1960) Villes d'eaux
et sanctuaires, 727-30; Vienne en Val: J. Debal,
Rev.
Arch. du Centre 7 (1969) 211-20; G. Ch. Picard, ibid.
195-210; id., “Le Sanctuaire Gallo-Romain de Vienne en
Val,”
CRAI (1970) 176-91.
G. C. PICARD
