St-Etienne (Vaux-sur-Mer)
The Roman Catholic parish church of St-Étienne is located in Vaux-sur-Mer in the Charente-Maritime department in France . It was originally built as a Benedictine monastery church and has been classified as a monument historique since 1913 .
history
The church, consecrated to the holy arch-martyr Stephen , was built in the Romanesque style in the 12th century as a monastery church for the Benedictine abbey founded in Vaux-sur-Mer in 1075, which was settled from the Maillezais abbey .
After destruction in the course of the Huguenot Wars (1562–1598), only the Romanesque choir area with the apse and parts of the square crossing tower with the accompanying round stair tower have survived from the earlier abbey church . The choir and apse show a two-storey structure with a completely unadorned lower level, which is only structured vertically by semi-columns, and an upper floor surrounded by blind arcades - the apse window with its set columns is the only connecting element between the two zones. Both the larger half-columns and the smaller columns show rich capital decorations and below the eaves there is a partially figurative console frieze . The original crossing tower was stabilized and rebuilt in unadorned forms, the ruins of the nave walls were torn down in the 19th century. There are four Romanesque capitals in the church choir; one shows the stoning ( Acts 7.54-60 EU ) of St. Stephen, the church patron.
literature
- Le Patrimoine des Communes de la Charente-Maritime. Flohic Editions, Volume 2, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-84234-129-5 , pp. 789-791.
Individual evidence
- ↑ St-Étienne in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
- ↑ histoirepassion.eu
Web links
Coordinates: 45 ° 38 ′ 44.2 " N , 1 ° 3 ′ 45" W.