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Origin and history

The church Saint-Pierre de Châteloy, located in Hérisson in the Allier (Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes), is a Romanesque building built in the 12th century, modified in the 15th and 16th centuries. Former Benedictine priory dependent on the abbey of Saint-Cyran-en-Brenne, it became parish church in the 13th century under the secular college of Saint-Sauveur. Its architecture combines a Romanesque nave vaulted in a cradle, a bell tower reinforced with bow-buttons, and a seigneurial chapel added in the sixteenth century by the Villelume, local lords.

The Châteloy site, a rocky spur overlooking the Aumance Valley, houses a Gallo-Roman oppidum excavated since the 18th century. The local legend combines the church with St.Principin, a cephalophorous martyr of the fourth century, whose martyrdom is represented in a 14th century fresco rediscovered in 1971. This fresco, unique of its kind, illustrates in six paintings the saint's torture, from his beheading to the burial of his head, carried miraculously to the church.

Ranked a historical monument in 1909, the church was sold as a national property during the Revolution before being restored by the commune from 1852. His murals, dated from the 14th to the 16th centuries, include a Christ in majesty in the choir, surrounded by the tetramorphic and angel musicians, as well as a seigneurial liter decorated with the weapons of the Villelume. These decorations, restored since 1969, make Saint-Pierre a major stage in the route of the Bourbonnais painted churches.

The building, at risk in the 20th century, owes its safeguard to the Festival de Musique en Bourbonnais, created in 1975 to finance its restoration. The works brought to light sarcophagi, a liturgical vault of the 15th century, and a statuary from the 13th to the 16th century, including a Virgin with the Child polychrome and a patron saint Christophe of 1580. Now a communal property, the church remains attached to the parish of the Good Shepherd of Moulins.

Its interior architecture reveals peculiarities such as a historic capital representing Eden, baptismal fonts integrated into a cruciform pile, and an apse adorned with blind mitre arches. The nave, flanked by a north side supporting the bell tower, ends with a bedside embedded in the cemetery. The wooden arrow, redone in the 19th century, crowns a square bell tower on three levels, marked by sculptures in re-use, including a bas-relief of acrobat.

The site, linked to the oral tradition of St.Principin and the Dukes of Bourbon (whose necropolis is in Souvigny), illustrates the artistic and religious influence of the medieval Bourbonnais. Archaeological excavations, however, did not confirm any occupation of the Châteloy site beyond the first century BC, apart from some Latin and Merovingian coins. The church, symbol of the transition between Romanesque and flamboyant Gothic, today embodies a heritage that is both sacred, seigneurial and popular.

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