Timeline

Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The Saint Vincent de Grignan Chapel is a Roman Catholic religious building located in the Grignan Cemetery, Drôme. Built in the late 12th or early 13th century, it was first mentioned in 1105 in a pontifical bubble confirming the possessions of Saint-Philibert Abbey of Tournus. Originally a cemetery chapel, it became a parish church between 1250 and the end of the 15th century, requiring the addition of a span to accommodate the faithful. Its small limestone walls and arches are characteristic of Romanesque architecture.

The chapel has been listed as historical monuments since 13 July 1926. Its elongated plane, about 30 meters, includes a single nave covered with a broken cradle and a semicircular apse arched in cul-de-four. The pentagonal bedside, built in stone-cut chains, has been redesigned in an indefinite period. The facade, topped by a bell tower-wall with a bay, preserves a Romanesque door in the middle of a hanger decorated with a frieze of lance wires.

The contemporary stained glass windows, created by Belgian artist Ann Veronica Janssens and inaugurated in 2013, replaced the 19th century old stained glass windows. Inside, there is a statue of the Immaculate Conception (19th century), two banners of procession and a painting of the Virgin to the Child. A tombstone used in the façade bears the GEORGIVS inscription. MAN, perhaps linked to Georges Manchin of Campobasso, noble present in Grignan in the 16th century.

Until the 19th century, another chapel dedicated to Notre-Dame-de-Beaulieu, in ruins since 1836, was nearby. She was associated with a medieval hospital on the way to Donzère. The chapel of Saint Vincent, for its part, served as a meeting place for the Penitents of Grignan in the seventeenth century, and was then maintained by the winegrowers society under the name of Saint Vincent.

Successive restorations modified certain elements, such as the expansion of the 19th century windows or the laying of a stone slab in 1866. Despite these developments, the chapel retains its Romanesque character and its initial function as a cemetery church, testifying to the religious and architectural history of Grignan.

External links