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Origin and history

The church Saint-Germain-d'Auxerre de Vault-de-Lugny, located in the Yonne, is a religious building built between the 15th and 16th centuries. It is distinguished by its unusual size for a village, with a width almost equal to its length, reflecting a local population of about 1200 inhabitants at the time of its construction. The church replaces a more modest Romanesque building, probably built by the Hospitallers of Pontaubert. His works, initiated around 1500 by Aubert de Jaucourt, were interrupted at his death in 1527, then taken over by his son Hardy and completed before 1554.

The church houses an exceptional set of 13 murals dating from the mid-16th century, depicting scenes from the Passion. These works, restored between 2012 and 2014, were the subject of a thorough study by Henri Mitterand, a native of the village. The building combines various stylistic elements: a choir and ogival spans (early 16th century), a Renaissance-style northern chapel (1538, funded by Jehan Rolley), and neo-Gothic additions such as the high altar and pulpit (1878).

The history of the church is marked by troubled periods: after 1554, the coexistence of Catholic and Calvinist cults until the revocation of the edict of Nantes (1685), then its transformation into a temple of the Reason Goddess during the Revolution. An unreadable inscription on the door attests to the passage of the conventional Pierre Bourbotte, native to the village. Classified as a Historic Monument in 1908, the church also preserves remarkable elements such as a funerary liter (XVI century), a polychrome wood Christ, and a slab composed of tombstones prior to 1750.

The church's heritage also includes the Rolley Chapel, home to a baptismal tank probably from the previous Romanesque building. Recent restorations have made it possible to highlight these riches, supported by local publications and the Association of Friends of the Church. Its architecture and decor make it a unique testimony of religious art in Burgundy between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

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