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Origin and history

The church of Saint-Thibaud (or Notre-Dame-de-Saint-Thibaud) is a Romanesque church located in Braageac, Cantal, Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Built in the 11th and 12th centuries, it has been a historic monument since 1862 and is one of the most beautiful examples of Romanesque art in the region. Its origin dates back to a monastery founded in the 7th century by Saint Til, a noble Saxon freed by Saint Eloi, who settled as a hermit in the gorges of the Auze before establishing a Benedictine community there.

Around 635, St.Til (or Tillo), a noble Saxon captured and then freed by St.Eloi, withdrew to the gorges of the Auze after a mission of evangelization in Gaul Belgium. He founded a monastery there, Brajecte (now Braageac), which welcomed thirty Benedictine monks before returning to Solignac, where he died in 707. The first oratory, destroyed in 732 by the Saracens, gave way five centuries later to the present church, built at the hinge of the 11th and 12th centuries.

The present church is linked to the foundation of a monastery of Benedictine women in 1100 by the brothers Guy and Raoul d'Escorailles, knights of the first crusade. These bring from the Orient the relics of Saints Como and Damien, still venerated in the building. Until the Revolution, the church served as both parish and abbey. Its Romanesque architecture, marked by alternating coloured stones and carved capitals, makes it an exceptional testimony of medieval art auvergnat.

The Romanesque bedside, composed of a central apse and two apsidioles, is reinforced by flat buttresses and pierced with limousine windows. Inside, the naves and transept houses various sculptures (griffons, lions, interlaces) and historiated column bases, preserved by the extension of the ground over six centuries. The cupola of the transept cross, although modern, retains an octagonal passage of origin.

The church houses a remarkable heritage, including a reliquary containing the skulls of Saints Como and Damien, as well as the oldest bell of Cantal (1466). Ranked in 1862, it illustrates the transition between primitive hermitage, monastic life and the central role of the Church in local medieval society. Its square bell tower, cradle vaults and stone decorations make it a major site of auvergnat religious heritage.

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