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Origin and history

The church Notre-Dame-de-l'Assumption de Sauneres is a religious building located in the department of Saône-et-Loire, Burgundy-Franche-Comté. It is distinguished by its still adjacent cemetery, a rare feature for churches of this time. The present building is the result of a reconstruction in the eighteenth century, following the destruction suffered in 1636 by the Austro-Comtois troops of Lamboy, Lieutenant General Gallas, in the context of the Thirty Years War.

The plan of the church is organized from east to west: an elevated choir, a transept salient to the north and south, and a nave surmounted to the west of a bell tower covered with dardoise. The entrance is made by a side door opening onto the transept, arched in the middle of the hanger. The choir, probably spared during the devastations of 1636, has a vault in broken arches and ends with a flat bedside, while the nave, partially vaulted and partially capped, bears witness to the postwar reconstruction phases.

Among the remarkable elements, the altarpiece, carved and painted at the end of the seventeenth century, dominates the space. It frames a central table representing the Assumption of the Virgin, flanked by two Corinthian columns. The church also houses an open communion grid, a Louis XVI-style curial chair with a baldaquin, and two 16th-century funeral slabs re-used as altar tables. Only the transept windows, attributed to the workshops of the chalonese master glassmaker Besnard, bring a colorful touch to the building.

The church depends on the diocese of Autun and the parish of Saint-Jean-Baptiste-des-Trois-Rivières, whose seat is in Verdun-sur-le-Doubs. It remains an active Catholic place of worship, managed according to the provisions of the 1905 Law on the Separation of Churches and the State. Its history reflects both the upheavals linked to the European conflicts of the seventeenth century and the architectural adaptations that resulted from it.

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