Notre-Dame de Nantilly Church: Difference between revisions

Notre-Dame-de-Nantilly Church is a Roman Catholic church in Saumur, France.^[1] It was made a monument historique in 1840.^[1] To the right of the choir is the statue of Notre-Dame-de-Nantilly.

The site is first mentioned as an annexe to a Gallo-Roman villa in a diploma of Charles the Bald. The history of the Abbey of Saint-Florent mentions the parish of Santa Maria de Lentimiaco, specifically when Absalon brought Florentius‘ relics to the town. A 1003 papal bull of pope John XVII, sent to abbot Robert, mentions the “fiscus Lentiniacus” with the “church of St Mary and chapels of Saint Hilarius and Saint Vincent” as abbey lands. Other 12th century bulls in the Codex Rubeus mention the same lands. The oldest part of the church is the Romanesque nave built by William VIII of Aquitaine, count of Poitiers, probably in 1120 and definitely after the great fire of Saumur in 1067. This makes it the oldest church in the town

A bull of pope Urban IV dated 28 January 1263 took the church and priory of Nantilly from the abbey to establish two canons there, but this bull was never acted upon. Urban’s successor pope Clement IV gave full possession of the priory back to the abbey.^[2] After his death at Dinant on 23 April 1266, Gilles of Saumur, archbishop of Tyr, was buried in the choir of the church – his tomb was rediscovered and opened on 2 December 1614, closed, rediscovered again in May 1699, and finally desecrated during the French Revolution – all that survives from it is his crozier.^[3]

Louis XI pierced the south exterior wall of the existing nave to add a parish church on that side and also rebuilt the transept. The oratory acted as a baptismal chapel. A 1699 memoir by Thomas Hue de Miromesnil, intendant of the généralité de Tours, showed that the church was served by ten Oratorian priests.^[4]

In 1793 it was used to imprison Vendéan prisoners and two years later an Altar of the Fatherland was erected in the middle of the choir. In 1851 it was restored to designs by Charles Joly-Leterme, then in 1893-1909 to designs by Lucien Magne, and finally in 1996-1998 by Gabor Mester de Parajd, chief architect of ‘monuments historiques’.^[5]

The choir and apse both date to 1150-1200. They seem to have been built after the nave and before the transept crossing. The column capitals in the apse are close in style to those in the nave, with the latter dating to the 1140s. The choir has a barrel vault and the apse is lit by five semi-circular-topped windows and vaulted with a cul-de-four.

These date between the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th century.