Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The church of Saint-Front de Mézangers, located in Mayenne in the Pays de la Loire, is dedicated to Front de Périgueux, bishop represented in the building. Her employer's feast is celebrated on October 25. The archives also mention various denominations such as Notre-Dame de Mézangers (1568) or Saint-Étienne de Mézangers (1688), reflecting successive local devotions. The inventory of church property took place on 12 March 1906, under the laws of separation of churches and the state.

The primitive Romanesque building included a nave with double buttresses, a forearm tower with Romanesque bays, and an apse illuminated by three windows in the middle of the hangar. In the 14th century, a seigneurial chapel was added to the north, dedicated to the lords of the Rock, with an ogival window and a Pietà now preserved in the sacristy. The symmetric southern chapel was built only in 1880, during a major restoration, which also saw the addition of two apsidioles and the discovery of a masonry grave in front of the choir.

The interiors reveal traces of past devotions: Gothic bas-reliefs of the apostles, moved to the entrance of the choir, and armorial shields of the families of Foix, Bouillé, and Laval, initially scattered in the church. Saint Stephen and Saint Catherine were worshipped locally, with chapels founded in 1446 and 1498. In 2024, the Association Saint-Front de Mézangers was created to preserve and animate this heritage.

The architecture thus combines elements Romanesque (nef, apse), Gothic (northern chapel) and Neo-Gothic (remediation of 1880). The 19th century altars, now gone, once masked the apse and apsidioles. The stained glass windows, like that of the Pietà, and the tombs, including that of Renée de Laval, bear witness to the seigneurial and religious history of the place.

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