ABSTRACT
205The monastic church of Christ (St-Sauveur) at Charroux was one of a number of buildings in the Latin West that were intended to evoke the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. This is clear both from the unusually precise correspondences between the respective rotundas, and the important christological relics the rotunda at Charroux was designed to enshrine. The main building campaigns probably date to the 1060s and 1070s, but in a strikingly simple and effective modification, the rotunda was remodelled within a generation at most by the insertion of a crypt. Historically, this is most likely to have coincided with the consecration of the high altar by Pope Urban II on 10 January, 1096, some six weeks after the Council of Clermont and in the course of a journey which went on to see important consecrations of altars dedicated to the Holy Cross at Marmoutier, Vendôme and Moissac. Charroux was not alone in recreating Jerusalem in the West, but it is remarkable in realizing a church of such symbolic potential at a moment of religious anxiety.
