Église Saint-Sulpice de Saint-Sulpice-de-Favières: A Rayonnant Gothic Pilgrimage Church in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page22 sections
History
Église Saint-Sulpice de Saint-Sulpice-de-Favières is a Roman Catholic parish church in France, dedicated to Saint Sulpicius of Bourges and begun in the mid-thirteenth century in the Rayonnant Gothic style. Rayonnant Gothic is a later medieval mode known for slender supports, extensive glazing, and geometric window tracery. The church was built to serve an important pilgrimage associated with the relics of Saint Sulpicius, a seventh-century bishop of Bourges also remembered as Sulpice the Pious. Its exceptional scale made it one of the principal Rayonnant Gothic buildings of the region.
Origins and thirteenth-century construction
A parish church at Favières is recorded in 1100. A predecessor was built around 1170 to 1180, and its former choir survives as the Chapelle des Miracles. The present church replaced that building during a major campaign lasting approximately twenty to thirty years. Construction probably began in the middle of the thirteenth century and included nearly the entire church, including the bell tower.
The rebuilding responded to a pilgrimage already associated with Favières during the thirteenth century. Pilgrims came to venerate relics of Saint Sulpicius, and several miraculous healings were associated with the shrine during the reign of Saint Louis, or Louis IX, king of France from 1226 to 1270 and later a canonized saint. Royal interest probably helped account for the church’s ambitious dimensions. It may also explain why the parish remained attached to the Diocese of Paris rather than joining the neighboring dioceses of Sens or Chartres.
The church’s design reflects familiarity with important royal building campaigns. Similarities have been identified with the Sainte-Chapelle of Saint-Germain-en-Laye and with other prestigious Gothic monuments. The first campaign probably ended around 1280 to 1290, when funding was exhausted. The nave remained unfinished in its upper parts, while a later fourteenth-century campaign concentrated on the western facade.
Parish wealth and medieval disruption
Under the Ancien Régime, the parish belonged to the deanery of Montlhéry and the archdeaconry of Josas within the Diocese of Paris. Income from the pilgrimage made it the wealthiest rural cure in that diocese during the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. In 1205, it was taxed at 200 livres, compared with 20 to 25 livres for other cures in the deanery.
The prosperity associated with the shrine did not protect the parish from the crises of the Hundred Years’ War, the long conflict between the French and English crowns and their allies from the fourteenth to the fifteenth century. Parish life nearly disappeared. Seven houses were inhabited in 1458, the village had thirty inhabitants in 1467 and forty-six in 1468, and no resident priest served between 1447 and 1472. Masses and the sacraments were generally unavailable during this period.
Fire, restoration, and renewed pilgrimage
Local tradition connects the collapse of the nave vaults with a fire in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. A later and more precisely dated disaster occurred in 1652 during the Fronde, a series of rebellions and civil conflicts in France between 1648 and 1653. Troops commanded by Turenne, the title used by the marshal Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, set fire to the presbytery. The resulting blaze brought down the roof structure and vaults over the four western bays of the nave, while the church walls apparently survived. A replacement roof structure was installed after 1681.
The church had already become seriously dilapidated when François Bouvier became parish priest in 1672. He financed much of the restoration from his own resources, spending 40,000 livres, and received assistance from Guillaume I de Lamoignon, president of the Parlement of Paris. After Lamoignon’s death in 1677, support continued through his son Chrétien-François de Lamoignon. Their intervention is commemorated by the Lamoignon arms and the date 1684.
In 1685, Bouvier and the Archbishop of Paris founded the Confraternity of Saint-Sulpice for parishes that regularly joined the pilgrimage. Two years later, the regular abbot of Saint-Sulpice Abbey in Bourges sent relics of Saint Sulpicius at Lamoignon’s request, probably replacing relics dispersed during the Wars of Religion. The pilgrimage grew during the eighteenth century. By its middle, the confraternity reportedly included about 500 affiliated parishes and approximately 28,000 people. The annual observance began on 27 August, the feast of Saint Sulpicius, and continued into September, with especially strong support from the parish of Saint-Sulpice in Paris and from Clamart.
Bouvier served the parish for forty-four years, leaving his fortune to it when he died on 26 April 1716. His funerary slab remains in the north aisle, although it is not at his burial place.
Revolution and modern restoration
The French Revolution severely affected the church and its religious furnishings. The treasury was looted, the silver reliquary bust of Saint Sulpicius was melted down, bells were sent away for melting, and statues were damaged or removed. The lower registers of the western tympanum were hammered and covered with plaster, while parish archives were partly dispersed or burned.
In 1791, the parish priest Chauvot and his vicar refused the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, the revolutionary measure that placed the French Church under state regulation and required clergy to swear an oath to it. Religious worship was restored under the Concordat of 1801, and the churchwardens’ council was re-established. A public subscription collected 453 livres from 150 inhabitants to compensate for the loss of parish property. Étienne Le Roy’s mother secretly preserved the relics of Saint Sulpicius after the reliquary was removed, and they were returned to the parish in 1817.
The pilgrimage declined and ended in 1870, probably in part because of the church’s poor condition. The building approached ruin around the same time. Restoration of the choir began in 1874 under Juste Lisch, followed by work on the nave and aisles by the Monuments historiques service. In the late 1930s, the parish priest Fernand Boulard restored the appearance of the choir and reinstated the Chapelle des Miracles. The church was classified as a Monument historique in 1840, among the first five monuments protected in the present département of Essonne. The pilgrimage was revived in 1912 by Father Martin Ferret. The church remains an independent parish, with Avrainville, Mauchamps, Saint-Yon, and Souzy-la-Briche forming a parish grouping with it.
Remains
The church has an irregular orientation, with its choir directed toward the northeast and its western facade toward the southwest. Its plan consists of a central vessel with aisles, a four-bay nave, a two-bay straight-ended choir, and a five-sided apse. The two-bay Chapelle des Miracles is aligned with the north choir aisle, while the first bay of that aisle supports the bell tower. A sacristy runs parallel to the chapel. The nave and choir are each 9.52 metres wide, and the aisles retain the same width and height through their 32.80-metre length.
Central vessel and aisles
Nave and choir supports
Large pointed arcades divide the central vessel from the aisles. Their lozenge-shaped piers have engaged slender shafts, creating supports unusually narrow in relation to the spans they carry. The choir capitals display broad hooked leaves, while the nave capitals become increasingly elaborate toward the west, with curled foliage representing chestnut, maple, oak, ivy, and holly.
The central elevation has the large arcades, an intermediate level, and an upper window level. In the nave, the intermediate zone is formed by plain walls, while the first two choir bays contain blind wall arcades and the area toward the apse has glazed openings. The nave now has a plastered false barrel vault. The rest of the church retains rib vaults, with heights of 11.10 metres in the aisles and 22.80 metres in the choir. The second-order choir capitals stand 17.50 metres above the floor.
Aisle windows and passages
The aisles are complete along their full length and end in flat chevet walls. Their window sills carry three blind arcades in each bay, and four in the sixth bay, resting on detached shafts. Trefoiled heads and quatrefoils fill the spaces above the arcades. Windows occupy almost all the outer wall surface between the piers, with a narrow wall passage behind them for circulation and maintenance. Openings through the internal buttresses connect these walkways.
The aisle windows have elaborate tracery derived from the upper windows of the church. Each arrangement includes two principal lancets and quatrefoils in the secondary network. The first five bays are similarly proportioned and barlong, while the sixth is half again as deep and continues into the five-sided apse. The stair turret and the Chapelle des Miracles adjoin the north wall beside the fourth to sixth bays.
Choir, apse, and bell tower
Choir and apse
The choir and apse contain extensive glazed surfaces. The apse is arranged in three superimposed levels, with blind arcades at the base and an openwork gallery, or triforium, above. A triforium is an interior gallery or arcaded passage above the main arcades, while an openwork version allows light to pass through. Each of the apse’s five sides contains three arcades. In the lower chevet windows, the central lancet is narrower and taller than those beside it. The upper tracery combines lancets, trefoils, an oculus, and a six-lobed rose. Six ribs radiate from a central boss across the apse vault.
Three single-flight flying buttresses support each side of the choir’s two straight bays. Their drainage channels end in gargoyles. The apse is strengthened by strongly projecting, stepped buttresses. Its upper windows have shafts and capitals, and a wall passage runs before them. These structural arrangements support the extensive glazing while preserving the tall, open character of the choir.
Bell tower
The bell tower rises above the north aisle and scarcely exceeds the choir roof. It has a saddleback roof and a belfry with two paired trefoiled sound openings on each face, framed by slender shafts. At ground level, reinforced supports, an additional arch, and six more shafts distinguish the tower from the ordinary aisle bays. A later opening was cut through the southern vault web to provide access for a bell. A bronze bell dated 1773 remains in the belfry.
Western facade and portals
The western facade belongs to the fourteenth-century campaign and is lower than the nave walls, ending near the height of the aisle eaves. Its half-gables and upper nave wall are built of sandstone rubble and ashlar, while the thirteenth-century work uses other materials. The buttresses have water-shedding sloping courses, capstones, and gargoyles. The southern corner buttresses preserve the only surviving evidence of a former flying-buttress support.
Central portal and Last Judgment
The central portal has a double pointed arch decorated with foliage cords. Beneath canopies stand eight and ten musician angels. The pointed gable contains quatrefoils and small bellows-shaped openings. Its tympanum originally presented the Last Judgment in three registers. The upper register survives substantially intact, showing Christ as redeemer and judge. He holds a chalice and raises his right hand in blessing, while angels bearing the Instruments of the Passion flank him and the Virgin and Saint John kneel at the sides.
A statue of Saint Sulpicius once stood on the central dividing pier. It was decapitated during the Revolution, buried in the nave, and reinstalled by the Monuments historiques service in 1935. Four statues formerly placed in the side niches were destroyed or broken. Small reliefs on the base preserve episodes from the life of Saint Sulpicius. The richly decorated inner face of the portal has four lower lancets with trefoiled heads, slender shafts, pinnacles, and a central statue base. The door leaves occupy two central arcades beneath steep gables decorated with quatrefoils, trefoils, and bellows-shaped openings.
Side portals and roof structure
The north and south portals are simpler than the central entrance. The north portal retains a tympanum whose relief has been completely hammered away. The small south-aisle portal is normally used. Over the four western nave bays, a five-sided wooden barrel roof has tie beams and king posts and is closed by lightly lime-coated lath. A semicircular, unmoulded transverse arch dated 1684 separates this roof from the choir.
Chapelle des Miracles and earlier church
Surviving twelfth-century choir
The Chapelle des Miracles is the former choir of the earlier church, dating from the last quarter of the twelfth century. This Early Gothic structure has two bays, rises 9.50 metres, and carries rib vaults whose profiles consist of a hollow between two rolls. Excavations in 1939 showed that the earlier church had a three-bay nave, giving it a probable total length of about 30 metres and a width of approximately 6.50 metres. Its foundations and lower walls survive beneath the present floor.
The present church slightly encroaches on the chapel’s interior, and the earlier south wall became the north wall of the new building. Part of an earlier transverse arch survives in the chapel’s east wall, indicating a former apse whose remains were later found beneath the street. The present window is later than the chapel and may incorporate fragments from rebuilt apse windows.
Relic watch space and well-like feature
The chapel’s north wall is made of small rubble stones set in mortar. Two narrow openings resembling loopholes lead toward an adjoining space. Traces of a vertical iron bar, a peephole or closing device, and small stone seats suggest that the chapel or its relics could be watched. The precise purpose of this arrangement remains uncertain. It may have helped guard relics, house recluses, or shelter sick pilgrims.
A well-like feature near the chapel’s southwest corner was discovered in 1939. It has been interpreted either as a baptistery, because of similarities with examples at Fréjus and Poitiers, or as a sacred well connected with miraculous practices and the preservation of the chapel.
Furnishings, sculpture, and stained glass
Choir furniture and sculpture
Twenty-two choir stalls from the late fifteenth century remain in the church. Their misericords show biblical and Gospel scenes, decorative compositions, birds, angels holding a shield that formerly bore a fleur-de-lis, and grotesque or picturesque figures on the armrests. The eighteenth-century churchwardens’ bench remains in its original position in the nave. An eighteenth-century pulpit came from the chapel of Versailles.
The Chapelle des Miracles contains a 100-centimetre marble Virgin and Child from the late fourteenth century, a 140-centimetre polychrome wooden Saint Barbara from the last quarter of the fifteenth century, a 120-centimetre polychrome wooden Saint Sulpicius of Bourges from the seventeenth century, and a 65-centimetre polychrome wooden Saint Giles from the sixteenth century. An eighteenth-century gilded wooden Virgin and Child, 95 centimetres high, stands in the south aisle. At the entrance to the apse is a 165-centimetre seventeenth-century wooden Crucifix, repainted in the nineteenth century.
Reliefs, funerary slabs, and candlestick
Above the entrance to the Chapelle des Miracles are two adjoining fourteenth-century stone reliefs showing Saint Sulpicius healing disabled people. A further fourteenth-century relief shows a kneeling bishop, probably Saint Sulpicius, and may be a fragment of the former high altar. Two engraved funerary slabs are set on the reverse of the western facade. One commemorates Isabelle de Labroce, wife of Pierre Le Conin, who died in 1316. The other commemorates Gilles du Coudrier, squire and master of the Waters and Forests of the County of Dreux, who died in 1611, and his wife Françoise de Baudouin.
A 170-centimetre seventeenth-century painted and partly gilded wooden paschal candlestick stands in the Chapelle des Miracles. Its base has three claw feet, the letter S, and a Trinity symbol with rays. The shaft is decorated with acanthus leaves and a fluted Ionic column section, which supports two superposed knots and a circular plate for the candle.
Medieval stained glass
The axial apse window combines scenes from the Passion of Christ with the death and burial of Saint Sulpicius. Nine panels date from the fourteenth century, one from the fifteenth century, and the four lowest panels are modern reconstructions made from medieval fragments. The late thirteenth-century window in the south-aisle chevet illustrates the life of Mary and the childhood of Christ in thirty medallions. It consists of three lancets surmounted by a rose and two small trefoiled windows.
