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Origin and history

The Chapel of the Sacred Heart of the Feuillants, located in Poitiers, is a neo-classical religious building built between 1818 and 1829 by architect Pierre Couteault for the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary. It replaces an old chapel destroyed during the Revolution, on the site of the Feuillants convent, a Cistercian order founded in 1615 at the request of Richelieu and dissolved in 1791. The site, bought by three Chobelet sisters, became a novitiate and a school under the impulse of Mother Madeleine Louise Sophie Barat, founder of the Congregation of the Sacred Heart.

The first stone was laid in 1818, and the building was blessed in 1829 by Bishop de Bouillé. The bell tower, erected in 1844, houses two bells, one dedicated to the founder. Between 1858 and 1860, major works transformed the chapel: zinc cover, installation of the high altar, organ, and first figurative stained glass windows, such as those representing Saint Paul or the Holy Family. Consecrated in 1860 to Saint Francis Xavier, it was renamed the Chapel of the Sacred Heart in 1920 after Sister Josefa Menéndez's mystical visions.

The 20th century marked a turning point with the expulsion of the nuns in 1904 and the separation of the Church and the State in 1905. Countess Aubaret bought the premises in 1905, allowing their reopening in 1913. After the closure of the boarding school in 1962, the chapel, classified as a historical monument in 1997 for its rare neoclassical architecture and its unique frame inspired by Ledoux, fell into disuse. In 2011, the convent was sold to a retreat group, and in 2018 the association Le Chant des Feuillants acquired the chapel to restore it and make it a cultural place.

The architecture of the chapel, in stone and stone, is inspired by the expiatory chapel of Paris, with a central dome and semi-hemispheric domes. Inside, five spans delimited by pilasters frame stained glass windows with floral or religious motifs, including that of the Sacred Heart added in the 20th century. The structure, a legacy of the Enlightenment and unique in France, is now threatened by infiltration. The chapel stands out as the only neo-classical religious building in Poitiers, protected for its woodwork, stand and stalls.

The site is inseparable from the history of the Feuillants, a Cistercian order established in Poitiers in 1615 by Louis XIII. Their convent, destroyed during the Revolution, gave way to a flourishing school under the Sisters of the Sacred Heart. The visions of Sister Josefa Menéndez in 1920-1923, describing messages of the Sacred Heart, reinforce the spiritual dimension of the place. Today, the chapel, an associative property, embodies an architectural, historical and mystical heritage, witness to the religious and social upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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