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Origin and history

The Church of Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs de Cuverville, located in the Calvados department in Normandy, is a religious building built from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. The nave, of Romanesque style, and the north facade, marked by murderers and modillons, bear witness to its medieval origins. The choir, although originally novel according to Arcisse de Caumont, was enlarged and modified in the 15th and 16th centuries, reflecting the architectural and liturgical evolutions of the time.

The term Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs refers to the cult of the Mater dolorosa, a Marian devotion centered on the sufferings of the Virgin. The tower, dated from the 13th–XIVth centuries by Caumont, remained unfinished, adding a special character to the building. A chapel, built in the 15th to 16th centuries, served as a burial place for the local lords of Cuverville, illustrating the close link between the church and the Earth aristocracy.

In the 17th century, the southern wall of the nave was rebuilt, while tombstones and an inscription of this period, now missing, attest to its funeral use. The building, whose patronage belonged to the convent of Charity of Caen in the 18th century, was inscribed in historical monuments on 13 April 1933. Its history thus combines religious architecture, seigneurial memory and post-medieval transformations.

Historical sources, including the works of Arcisse de Caumont in his monumental Statistique du Calvados (1850), highlight the church's rich heritage, despite the losses suffered during the French Revolution. The successive changes, from medieval murderers to Renaissance additions, make it a composite testimony of Norman history.

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