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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The Notre-Dame-de-Verité chapel, located at the place called Kerbley (or Nelhouët) in Caudan in Morbihan, dates mainly from the 4th quarter of the 16th century. Its architecture combines a rectangular nave and a north side bottom added at the beginning of the seventeenth century, with a dissymmetric facade marked by a mid-Gothic gable, mid-Renaissance. The late flamboyant southern door features a braided pattern, sleek cabbages and uneven pilasters. Outside, a stone bench was standing beside the wall to welcome the pilgrims, while inside, a jube of 1612, decorated with eight polychrome panels representing the Apostles and the Passion of Christ, disappeared during the Second World War. The chapel still houses remarkable statues, including a Christ on a cross, a Virgin with the Child and a Saint Corneli.

Combined with a fountain of devotion built in 1765 at about 100 meters, the chapel was a medieval place of divine judgment, as evidenced by the ancient wheel of justice which would have earned him his name. The fountain, nicknamed the Kerblaye Fountain, was renowned for healing children's fevers. Every second Sunday in July, a pilgrimage takes place there, during which a Breton song of thirty-eight verses celebrates the miracles attributed to Notre-Dame-de-Verité. The site, also known as the Nelhouët Chapel (in Breton an elhouët, "the angel of the forest"), draws this nickname from a gargoyle representing an angel with deployed wings.

Ranked a historic monument since March 20, 1934, the chapel has undergone several architectural changes: addition of the north side to the seventeenth century, partial reconstruction of the west façade, and addition of a sacristy in the nineteenth century. The north wall preserves traces of an old porch, visible on the cadastre of 1818. The fountain, dated 1765, bears the inscription OUR DAME OF VERITE MDCCLXV and remains surrounded by a stone-cut enclosure. Today, the chapel belongs partly to the municipality and to private owners, perpetuating its spiritual and heritage role in Brittany.

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