Church of Saint Michael en Savoie

Timeline

Key figures

Origin and history

The church of St Michael of Thollon, mentioned from the twelfth century, is a place of Catholic worship whose first written traces date back to 1153. On that date, although integrated into the diocese of Geneva, it belongs to the abbey of Saint-Martin and Ainay. The rights to the building then oscillate between this abbey and the Congregation of the Grand Saint Bernard: an act of 1191 attributed to the latter, but Ainay recovered his rights in 1250, before Pope Honorius IV definitively confirmed them at the Grand Saint Bernard in 1286. In 1324, Count Édouard de Savoie endorsed this membership, sealing its status for the following centuries.

In 1617 Bishop François de Sales observed the state of disrepair of the church and its cure during a pastoral visit. The building, represented on the Sardinian map of 1731, traverses the centuries before being completely rebuilt between 1819 and 1825, marking its present form. This 19th-century work is part of the renovation of post-revolutionary places of worship, although local sources do not specify the exact reasons for this reconstruction.

The church occupies a central square in the village of Thollon, located in the immediate vicinity of public buildings such as town hall and school. Its history reflects the medieval ecclesiastical tensions between abbeys and congregations, as well as the challenges of preserving the religious heritage in Savoy. The municipal bulletins of the years 2010-2012, cited in the bibliography, in particular deepen its reconstruction and its role during the French Revolution.

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