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Origin and history

The church of Saint John of Narosse was founded in the early 13th century, when a chapel was erected around 1220 in the hamlet of Narosse (now Santenay-le-Haut). Equipped with a two-collateral nave in late Romanesque style and a flat choir topped by a combed bell tower, it became parish church around 1270. This first, modest building marks the beginning of a rich architectural history, anchored in the Burgundian religious landscape.

In the 15th century, around 1480, a profound reshuffle transformed the church: the choir and the original collaterals were demolished to give way to a new choir flanked by two side chapels, consecrated on October 7, 1490. This period also saw the erection of the current bell tower and the restoration of the vaults of the nave and the lower side. A mural, depicting St. Michael's terrasing the dragon, adorns the left collateral, while a statue of Italian Renaissance style (circa 1510) decorates the left chapel.

The seventeenth century brought a new artistic contribution with the command, by local bourgeois Denis Jonchapt, of a statue of the Virgin made in 1660 by Jacques Besullier. The walls of the church also bear the traces of a funerary liter, a black band welcoming the weapons of the deceased lords, including those of Jacques Philibert Parigot, Marquis de Santenay, who died in 1783. The French Revolution enriched its furniture with polychrome wooden statues of the 15th and 16th centuries, saved from the destruction of the chapel Saint-Martin-des-Champs.

The church, closed to worship on 27 October 1892 after the construction of Notre-Dame du Rosaire in Santenay-le-Bas, was classified as a historical monument on 21 January 1928. Several restoration campaigns, until 2004, restored its 15th century appearance. Its Latin cross plan, its square bell tower, and its interior decorations (frescoes, statues, funeral liter) testify to its architectural evolution and its central role in Burgundy parish life.

Today, the church of Saint John of Narosse, located away from the village in a wooded setting with its adjoining cemetery, offers a remarkable example of a religious building transformed over the centuries. Its wooden porch protecting the Romanesque portal, its roofs covered with lavas, and its bays with various shapes (full hanger, broken arch) illustrate the superimposition of styles and epochs, from the Middle Ages to the modern era.

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