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Origin and history

The chapel of the Seven Saints, located in the eponymous hamlet of the Old Market (Bretagne), is dedicated to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, holy figures shared by Christians and Muslims. Built between 1703 and 1714 under the impetus of Yves Le Denmat, it replaces an earlier building that had become too small to accommodate pilgrims. Its originality lies in its crypt-dolmen, a megalith of the third millennium BC reused as an underground oratory, classified as a historical monument in 1889. The chapel, from plan to Latin cross, integrates this dolmen under its southern transept, while 18th century Sulpician statues represent the seven saints in anachronistic costumes.

The site is linked to a seven-channel wash source, probably an ancient pagan place of worship, and a 17th-century Breton gwerz evoking the miraculous sleep of the saints. The pilgrimage, which fell into disuse in the 20th century, was revived in 1954 by the Orientalist Louis Massignon, who saw there a bridge between Christianity and Islam via Surah 18 of the Koran (the so-called Cavern). Since then, an annual Islamic-Christian pilgrimage has united the two religions around processions, a tantad (fire of joy), and Koranic readings near the sacred fountain. In 1965, the chapel received a bell offered by the former cathedral of Algiers, symbol of unity.

Ranked a historic monument in 1956, the chapel retains modest architectural elements (a "vulgar" masonry according to Luzel) but a remarkable furniture: statues of the saints in boots with a shield, a Saint Michael burying the dragon, and an altar dedicated to Saint Isidore, patron of the plowmen. The dolmen crypt, described by François-Marie Luzel in 1878, houses seven primitive stone statuettes, objects of particular devotion. The site thus illustrates the superposition of historical layers: megalithic, pagan, Christian and Islamic, while at the same time testifying to cultural exchanges between East and West via tin roads.

The origin of the cult of the Seven Saints in the Old Market remains hypothetical. Ernest Renan and Luzel saw it as an introduction by Greek monks accompanying the Dítain merchants in the third century, while the Breton gwerz, sung in procession, claimed that the cave would date "from the creation of the world". Pardon, set for the fourth weekend of July, now includes interreligious symposia and a Muslim ceremony at the fountain, where Surah 18 is psalmodiated. This unique syncretism in France makes it a place of living memory, between Oriental legend and Breton tradition.

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