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Origin and history

The chapel of Saint John of the Faouët, located in Morbihan, is a religious building built in the 4th quarter of the 16th century. It adopts a Latin cross plan with a wide transept and a bedside illuminated by flamboyant style berries. Its sober architecture, marked by portals in the middle and broken arches, contrasts with an interior in rubble. The chapel once housed a 16th-century granite pietà and polychrome statues from the 17th and 19th centuries. It was surrounded by a placister, a enclosed space typical of Breton parish enclosures.

The chapel was the seat of an establishment of the Hospitallers of the Order of St John of Jerusalem, mentioned in the archives from the 17th century under the name of Saint John Guénan. The stained glass windows, now missing, used to carry the weapons of Malta, the Duke of Brittany and the Baron du Fauët. In 1617 Commander René de Saint-Offange described the outbuildings of the chapel, while in 1697 Leonor de Beaulieu de Belthomas reported his maintenance by local alms. In the 18th century, a sketch depicts it with three altars and a Western portal, but it fell into disuse in the following century, as the Commander Jean-François du Bouilly deplored in 1750: "this chapel is poor and without foundation".

The enclosure of the chapel, including the placister, has been inscribed in historical monuments since July 22, 1944. The preserved furniture includes a 16th century Virgin of Mercy, stone benches along the walls, and a bentier using an older octagonal pile. The campanile, added in 1865, overcomes the western gate. The archives also reveal links with the command office of La Feuillé, on which mills and villages were dependent in tenure.

Architecturally, the chapel illustrates the transition between the flamboyant Gothic (beds of the bedside, broken arches) and later elements, such as arches in the middle of the north transept. The differences in modeling between the arms of the transept suggest reshaping. The exterior trim, in large granite apparatus, contrasts with the inside in rubble. Despite its simplicity, the building bears witness to the influence of the Hospitallers and Breton religious art of the 16th-17th centuries.

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