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Origin and history

The chapel Saint-Éloi is a Romanesque building from the 11th and 12th centuries, located in the former commune of Fontaine-la-Soret, now integrated in Nassandres sur Risle (Eure, Normandy). Originally dedicated to St Lambert, it was offered in 1126 by William of Tibouville to the Abbey of Bec, which founded the priory of Saint-Lambert. The ceremony of solemn remission took place in 1139, in the presence of Abbé Thibaut (future Archbishop of Canterbury) and local lords like William of Bigars. The chapel became a place of worship under the name of Saint Eloi from 1495, before being transformed into a leprosy in the late 16th century.

After the Revolution, the chapel was sold as a national property in 1794 and became a local pilgrimage site. In 1833 it was acquired by Charles Lenormant, an archaeologist whose son, François, was involved in a controversy around false Merovingian runic inscriptions supposedly discovered on the spot. These "discoveries," published by Edmond Le Blant, were later exposed as a deception by a departmental commission. The chapel, now privately owned, preserves a 14th century Virgin with Child and a 16th century statue of St Lambert.

From an architectural point of view, the chapel presents an elongated plan with a 12th century choir and an apse in the hemicycle of the second half of the 11th century. Its facades combine stone, brick and flint, with Romanesque foothills and curved or broken arched bays. A spring comes out in front of the entrance, feeding a square tank accessible by steps. The building, inscribed in the Historical Monuments since 1936, illustrates the influence of the Bec Abbey in Normandy and the local cultural evolutions, from St Lambert to St Eloi.

The chapel once bordered the southern boundary of Fontaine-la-Soret, near a wood and the Risle valley, halfway between Brionne and Beaumont-le-Roger. Its geographical isolation, far from the village, reflects its initial use as a monastic retreat, then as a leprosy. The adjacent priory, mentioned in the 12th century, disappeared after the Revolution, but the chapel remained a spiritual and heritage landmark, despite the archaeological transformations and polemics of the 19th century.

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