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Origin and history

The Church of St. Clement of Arpajon, dedicated to Pope St. Clement, is a Catholic parish church located in the Essonne department in Île-de-France. Its current location, near the city centre and the Remarde Valley, makes it a central monument in local history. The present building, built mainly in millstone and sandstone, succeeds a first church attested from the beginning of the tenth century, entrusted in 1006 to Benedictine monks of the Abbey of Saint-Maur after its ruin. This place of worship was the scene of a drama during the Hundred Years' War: in 1360 the besieged inhabitants of Arpajon took refuge there, but Edward III of England set fire to it, causing the death of eight hundred people.

The reconstruction took place in 1510, financed by the local lords, the Montagu and Graville families, whose coats of arms still adorn the key vaults. The church then adopted a Latin cross plan, with a nave of five spans and a vaulted choir in sexpartite warheads. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin installed a lightning rod on the steeple arrow in 1782, a symbol of the scientific advances of the time. Between 1847 and 1849, the portal was redone and two chapels added: that of the Virgin and the baptismal fonts, marking a last major phase of transformation.

The interior houses remarkable elements, such as the high altar in red marble offered by Napoleon I and Josephine in 1806, or the bell Antoinette (1643), classified as a historical monument. The bell tower, covered in slate, dominates the landscape with its two floors marked by a frieze in steel teeth. Ranked as historical monuments since 6 March 1926, the church bears witness to nearly a thousand years of history, between tragedies, reconstructions and artistic enrichments.

Archaeological sources reveal traces of the 11th century construction, such as a walled door in the middle of the north wall, whose base is lower than the current ground. The liturgical furniture, such as the marble baptismal fonts (1697) or the wooden pulpit (1742), completes this heritage, while funeral slabs in the choir remind local lords, such as Pierre de Chastres and Louis d'Arpajon.

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