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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The Notre-Dame-Truvée chapel, located in Pouilly-en-Auxois (Côte-d'Or, Bourgogne-Franche-Comté), is a religious building built in the 13th and 14th centuries on the foundations of an earlier building. According to legend, his name comes from a statue of the Virgin, found intact after a Norman raid, becoming from the Middle Ages an object of devotion and pilgrimages. Until the 18th century, a relic called "milk of the Holy Virgin" (white dust of the Bethlehem cave) was venerated there, and the chapel was known for "reviving the dead babies in the time of baptism". Stolen in 1980, the painted wooden statue (XIIth–XIIIth century) was classified as a Historic Monument since 1907.

The building, in the style of "school of Burgundy", is distinguished by its simplicity and its plan in "L retourn", rhythmic by foothills to jumps. Built in two countrysides (mid and late 13th century), it was restored in the 18th and 20th centuries, especially after its classification as a Historic Monument in 1897. Its exterior has three doors adorned with carved tympanums (including a Saint Peter's representative), a cornice with head-angle, and a small bell tower made of lava stone. Nearby, a cross with pulpit to preach served on pilgrimages.

The interior consists of a two-span square nave and a rectangular choir, dogive vaults resting on a massive central column and beam pillars. The vault keys and capitals are decorated with heads and foliage. A mural niche, near the altar of the Virgin, once housed the dead children without baptism. The furniture includes classified statues (holy Catherine, Saint Nicholas, etc.), a sculpted group of the "Sepulchure of the tomb" (1521), and a 15th century hexagonal pulpit, accessible by a staircase on a "meunier ladder".

The chapel, originally a place of pilgrimage, became a parish church temporarily after the destruction of St Peter's church by lightning in 1790, until the consecration of the new church in 1867. The restorations of the 20th century (led by Charles Switzerland) preserved its medieval tympanum and its original structures. Today, it bears witness to both Burgundy Marian devotion and the rural religious architecture of the Middle Ages.

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