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Origin and history

The church Saint-Pierre-ès-Liens de Brangues, located in the Isère department, replaces a former medieval building mentioned in 1225. This first church, dedicated to Saint Pierre and surrounded by the village cemetery, housed chapels (Notre-Dame, Saint-Jean, Saint-Antoine) and a bell tower. It was demolished in 1847 for being outdated and because of a tragedy within it, and was replaced by the current building, blessed on November 9, 1847. Its façade features statues of Jeanne d'Arc and Saint Peter, offered by Eugène Berthet in repair of a family sacrilege.

The Berthet case, which occurred in July 1827, deeply marked the history of the church. Antoine Berthet, a former seminarian, shot his ex-masteress, Madame Michoud, during Mass in the old church. This crime, committed during communion, inspired Stendhal for Le Rouge et le Noir (1830). Berthet was sentenced to death for sacrilege — a law repealed in 1830 — and executed in Grenoble in February 1828. The trial and execution, which were widely publicized, linked the monument to this tragic event.

The new church, built in 1847, preserves symbolic elements of its past. One of its bells comes from the old building, while the other was added after the floods of the Rhône in 1860. Located on a hill overlooking the Sava valley, it remains an active place of worship, attached to the parish of Saint-Pierre du Pays des Couleurs (diocese of Grenoble-Vienne). Its architecture and history bear witness to the social and religious tensions of the nineteenth century in Isère.

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