Created Thursday 06 March 2014
St-Génèse de Sarrazac is a church in the eponymous hamlet that briefly served as the base of of a nunnery where Immena of Turenne lived and became abbess. This was established in some sense by 823, when she was given there (Beaulieu CLXXXV) with the proviso that Immena's father's kindred should always be protectors of the nuns. The nunnery was yet to be actually built in 844, however, when Countess Aiga made a grant for its endowment (Beaulieu XXXIV). By 856, moreover, Archbishop Raoul of Bourges was using the church as part of the endowment of his own monastery of Végennes (Beaulieu XVI) and then in 859 using it again for St-Pierre de Beaulieu (Beaulieu XXXIII). See Jane Martindale, "The Nun Immena and the Foundation of the Abbey of Beaulieu: a woman's prospects in the Carolingian Church" in W. J. Sheils and Diana Wood (edd.), Women in the Church: papers read at the 1989 Summer Meeting and the 1990 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society, Studies in Church History 27 (Oxford 1990), pp. 27-42. In total the church appears in Beaulieu CLXXXV, XXXIV, XVI & XXXIII.