Jean-Louis de Cordemoy

The Abbé Jean-Louis de Cordemoy (1655–1714) was a French architectural historian, prior of St-Nicolas at La-Ferté-sous-Jouarre (Seine-et-Marne), and a canon at St-Jean-des-Vignes, Soissons (Aisne). His Nouveau Traité de toute l’architecture was amongst the first studies of ecclesiastical architecture, wherein he praised the Gothic style for its clear expression of structure. Influenced by Michel de Frémin and Claude Perrault his ideas of ordonnance, disposition and bienséance as expressions of integrity to nature and structure were early precursors of the modern concepts of functionalism and truth to materials. He had a considerable influence on 18th-century architectural theory, especially Antoine Desgodetz, Marc-Antoine Laugier, de la Hire and Boffrand. He also participated in an acrimonious debate with the engineer Amédée-François Frézier regarding sacred architecture in the Jesuit periodical Mémoires de Trévoux, a skirmish in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns.

Little is known of the early life of Jean-Louis de Cordemoy, the architectural theorist. He was one of the five sons of Gerauld de Cordemoy (1626-1684), philosopher and historian, member of Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet’s Petit Concile, author of the Discours physique de la parole (Paris, 1668), upheld by Noam Chomsky as a founding text of linguistics. Gerauld de Cordemoy was author also of the Histoire de France, finished off after his death and published in two volumes, 1685 and 1689, by his eldest son, Louis-Gerauld de Cordemoy, abbot of Feniers, a Cistercian foundation, in the Auvergne. Gerauld de Cordemoy’s other children were Joseph-Charles, seigneur of Tournelles at Sery, in the diocese of Soissons, and of l’Epine-aux-Bois (Aisne); Jacques, abbot of Narcé, in the parish of Faye-la-Vineuse, near Richelieu (Indre et Loire); Jeanne-Marguerite, chatelaine of Ailleval, near Roucy, east of Soissons in the Aisne valley; and Adrien, seigneur of La Saulsaye (Sauldaye) and of Nueil, described as “lecteur ordinaire du dauphin”. The Cordemoy family was established in Paris, successively in the rue Brantôme, the rue du Maure, and in a two-story house in the cul-de-sac Beaubourg (later des Anglais), clearly visible on the Turgot map of Paris, now absorbed into the rue Beaubourg. This tiny precinct was inhabited by several architects, among them Libéral Bruant, Pierre Le Maistre and André Perrault.

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