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Heritage classified

Key figures

Origin and history

The church of St. Peter found its origins in 740, when the Benedictines of St.Martin d-Autun founded a monastery near the Roman Way of Autun in Bordeaux, on a land offered by Queen Brunehaut. This strategic site became a priory in the ninth century, confirmed in 1164 by a bubble of Pope Alexander III as a dependency of the abbey of Saint Martin. In 1180 Archambault de Bourbon enriched the priory, and in 1234 the church was erected as a parish. The claustral buildings, destroyed in 1910, give way to a structure combining primitive Romanesque (nef, south side) and Gothic (north side rebuilt after a fire between 1164 and 1221).

The church is inseparable from the epic of Jeanne d'Arc: in November 1429, when Saint-Pierre-le-Moûtier was captured by the troops of Alain d'Albret and the English, the Pucella invoked a "company of 50,000 angels" to win. Saving the city from looting, she prayed in the church before leaving for Charity. This episode inspires all the modern decoration of the building, including the stained glass and mosaics of the Mauméjean brothers (XX century) illustrating his words and divine protection.

Ranked a Historic Monument in 1886, the church combines remarkable architectural elements: a western gate in the middle of the hangar (XII-XIII centuries), a north porch with carved capitals evoking heavenly Jerusalem, and lateral chapels pierced in the 15th-XVI centuries. The square bell tower, built on the transept, houses the bell of the old belfry. Inside, the vaulted nave in a cradle, the choir raised above an crypt, and classified furniture objects (leaving from the 14th century, statues of the 15th to 16th centuries) testify to its rich monastic and parish past.

The outstanding priors included François Rapine (1642), chaplain of Marie de Medici and councillor established by Louis XIII, or Helin de Lamaonion (1569), Abbé de Bellevaux. The Romanesque capitals, inspired by Cluny's school, combine stylized foliage, fantastic animals and biblical scenes like Daniel in the lions' den, reflecting Burgundy and Auvergne influences. The modern stained glass windows and the chapel dedicated to Joan of Arc perpetuate the memory of her miraculous passage.

The building, a communal property, also retains traces of its social role: 16th century tombstone, neo-Gothic paintings, and a virtual organ. Its 12th century tympanum, representing Christ in majesty surrounded by the tetramorph, and mosaics reminiscent of the "brothers of paradise" looking after Jeanne, make it a place where history, art and spirituality interlace.

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