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Origin and history

The Abbey of Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul de Beaulieu-lès-Loches was founded around 1007 by Foulque Nerra, Count of Anjou, on his return from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The original building, dedicated to the Holy Trinity and sheltering relics of the Holy Sepulchre, was consecrated between 1007 and 1012 by the legate of Pope John XVIII. Its Romanesque nave, 14 meters wide, collapsed partly after a hurricane, requiring reconstruction with stone vaults and a division into three ships. The son of Foulque Nerra, Geoffroy Martel, completed a second church around 1052 to house his father's tomb, making Beaulieu one of the largest abbatiales of the eleventh century in France.

In the 12th century, a 61-metre bell tower was erected against the north wall, with frames dated by dendrochronology between 1163 and 1164. The Abbatial suffered repeated destruction: looted in 1359 during the Hundred Years War, burned in 1412 by the English troops, then partially rebuilt under the abbatiats of Guillaume III Moreau de Beauregard (1442–1458) and Hugues III de Fumee (1485–1494). The tower-lantern of the transept, overthrown by a hurricane in 1451, was restored thanks to Jean de Cignory, local priest. Louis XI granted privileges to the abbey in 1463, and the abbey obtained the title of Baron of the city in 1480.

In the 16th and 17th centuries, the abbey was the victim of the wars of Religion (pillage in 1562) and hurricanes (1598, destroying the roof of the nave). Louis Voyer d'Argenson introduced the reform of Saint-Maur in 1662. After the Revolution, the church became parish under the name Saint-Pierre-Saint-Paul. Ranked a Historic Monument in 1862, its current façade (1902–1905) replaces a medieval portal, and its bell tower, restored between 2016 and 2018, found its bells in 2018. Today, it embodies a revamped Romanesque heritage, marked by a thousand years of monastic and political history.

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