Aujourd'hui Aujourd'hui (≈ 2025)
Position de référence.
Heritage classified
Church vestiges: portal, fire, ossuary; Saint Queen's Fountain (AW 26): Registration by Order of 21 March 1988
Key figures
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The source text does not mention any names.
Origin and history
The church of Saint-Clément, located in Pradelles in the Haute-Loire, is an ancient priorial church mentioned in the 11th and 12th centuries. It then depended on the archpriestry of Sablières and, secondaryly, the church of Notre-Dame de Pradelles. The parish persisted until 1832, when it merged with Pradelles, after which its stones were reused to rebuild the local church. Today, only remains remain, including a vaulted ossuary and a semicircular apse, witness to its medieval past.
The ruins of the chapel Saint-Clément, located near a road of Compostela, mark the location of an ancient 12th century prioral enclosure. The ossuary, accessible by a narrow window with wood hardness, houses a four-metre deep pit. Nearby, a broken cradle vault protects two stone sarcophagi, while a fountain named Sainte-Reine, surrounded by other sarcophagi, completes the funeral complex.
The church suffered major damage in the 20th century due to archaeological excavations carried out at the dynamite, compromising part of its integrity. Despite this, its remains, including the portal, the fire, the ossuary and the Saint-Reine fountain, were protected by an inscription to historical monuments on March 21, 1988, thus preserving a heritage linked to the medieval religious and funeral history of the region.
The site also reveals the traces of a possible priory-secure, located below the ossuary, in the form of a rectangular building. The latter, although partially erased by time and human intervention, evokes the local ecclesiastical organization and the role of this place as a spiritual stop on the pilgrimage routes, especially towards Santiago de Compostela.
