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Origin and history

The Carmes Temple, located in Montauban, Occitanie, is a 17th-century Protestant building. Originally, it was a Catholic chapel built by the decal Carmelites, a monastic order that settled in Montauban in 1277. After being expelled during the Wars of Religion, the monks returned in 1631 thanks to the edict of Montpellier and rebuilt their convent and church, consecrated in 1682. The convent buildings were completed in 1717, but the French Revolution led to their expulsion and the sale of the building as a national property.

In 1791 the Protestant merchant Antoine Bernard Lauzet bought the old chapel. Thanks to the intervention of the deputy and pastor André Jeanbon Saint-André, Protestant worship was officially authorized, and the first office was celebrated on 20 January 1793. The temple then became a symbol of the Protestant community of Montalban, strong since the 16th century. The organ was installed in 1850, and the presbytery was built in 1887. Ranked a historic monument in 1971, the temple preserves a typical brick architecture, with a nave with dogive crosses and a vaulted choir.

The history of the temple reflects the religious tensions of Montauban, a major Protestant city since 1561, where three temples were built before being destroyed in the seventeenth century. After the tolerance edict of 1787, the Protestants, who remained numerous, were again able to practice their worship. The Carmes temple, the only monastery of the seventeenth century preserved intact in the region, also illustrates the persistence of Gothic styles (voûts, warheads) in a classical period construction. Today, there remains an active place in the united Protestant parish of France.

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