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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Manerbe Church, located in the Calvados department in Normandy, is a Catholic religious building built between 1513 and 1525 to replace an earlier Romanesque church. It is distinguished by its flamboyant Gothic style, with a unique nave of six spans, a four-storey tower extended by a portal, and an "extremely high and pointed" arrow. The Louis XIV style portal comes from Val-Richer Abbey, as well as some elements of interior furniture. The building is surrounded by a cemetery and its bedside adopts a pentagonal shape.

The church has been listed as a historical monument since 17 July 1926. Its construction was carried out by local craftsmen, including Guillaume Vitet, Richard Lévesque and Robert Lévesque, under the patronage shared between the seigneur of Manerbe and the bishopric of Bayeux. Originally, the parish had three medieval churches (Saint-Jean-Baptiste, Saint-Sauveur, and Notre-Dame), but only this building remains today. The current stained glass windows, dated 1920, are the work of master glassmaker Charles Lorin and painter Lionel Roger, while fragments of Renaissance stained glass were reported by Arcisse de Caumont.

The interior furniture includes a polychrome wooden altar (1694-1698) adorned with a altarpiece housing a painting by Claude II de Fontenay (1684) representing Saint John the Baptist in the desert. Three statues (Saint John the Baptist, the Savior, and a saint monk) complete the whole, alongside a floral antepedium linked to the abbey of Val-Richer. The organ, built by the factor Allen, was used during the 1997 WYD in Paris. Since 2010, the association Manerbe Patrimoine has been working for its preservation, with recent restorations in 2021 (clocher) and 2024 (nef and arrow), including the addition of a ceramic top.

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