The Romanesque church of Espondeilhan: Notre-Dame des Pins
Dedicated to Notre-Dame des Pins (“Our Lady of the Pine Trees”), the church of Espondeilhan, a small village near the city of Béziers in the département of Hérault (region of Occitania, southern France), has been standing just outside the village, near the cemetery, since before Year 1000.
According to tradition, its dedication comes from the name of a Roman “villa” (a large agricultural and cattle-raising domain, not unlike a modern-day hacienda) which was named ad pinis, probably because there were many pine trees around. This story is quite likely, much more than the undocumented one according to which this church was one of the forty founded by Emperor Charlemagne... What is for sure is that it is already mentioned in Ansfred II’s Handbook from around 875, and also that a paleo-Christian, Wisigothic sarcophagus from the 4th or 5th century was found nearby —there may have been some kind of archaic oratory very early on in this locale.
Listed as a Historic Landmark on Prosper Mérimée’s very first list of 1840, it was, quite astoundingly and for reasons I haven’t been able to trace, “unlisted” in 1885 (never have I encountered such a mishap before!) and then listed again in 1907. Officially built from 1120 in two distinct campaigns, it was also fortified during the Hundred Years War. In 1852, the bell tower that threatened to collapse was razed (that’s how they “restored” at that time...) and replaced by a short pinnacle, which was in turn destroyed in 1971 within the framework of a works campaign that presumably aimed at rebuilding the old bell tower but was never completed. The result of all that is that the church has had no bell tower of any sort for decades, one solitary bell being stored in a corner of the nave, hoping for better days...
The lovely apse of the church in its bucolic setting.
The Romanesque church of Espondeilhan: Notre-Dame des Pins
Dedicated to Notre-Dame des Pins (“Our Lady of the Pine Trees”), the church of Espondeilhan, a small village near the city of Béziers in the département of Hérault (region of Occitania, southern France), has been standing just outside the village, near the cemetery, since before Year 1000.
According to tradition, its dedication comes from the name of a Roman “villa” (a large agricultural and cattle-raising domain, not unlike a modern-day hacienda) which was named ad pinis, probably because there were many pine trees around. This story is quite likely, much more than the undocumented one according to which this church was one of the forty founded by Emperor Charlemagne... What is for sure is that it is already mentioned in Ansfred II’s Handbook from around 875, and also that a paleo-Christian, Wisigothic sarcophagus from the 4th or 5th century was found nearby —there may have been some kind of archaic oratory very early on in this locale.
Listed as a Historic Landmark on Prosper Mérimée’s very first list of 1840, it was, quite astoundingly and for reasons I haven’t been able to trace, “unlisted” in 1885 (never have I encountered such a mishap before!) and then listed again in 1907. Officially built from 1120 in two distinct campaigns, it was also fortified during the Hundred Years War. In 1852, the bell tower that threatened to collapse was razed (that’s how they “restored” at that time...) and replaced by a short pinnacle, which was in turn destroyed in 1971 within the framework of a works campaign that presumably aimed at rebuilding the old bell tower but was never completed. The result of all that is that the church has had no bell tower of any sort for decades, one solitary bell being stored in a corner of the nave, hoping for better days...
The lovely apse of the church in its bucolic setting.