Saint George and Saint-Ode Collegiate Church: A Medieval Collegiate Church in Amay, Belgium
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.3
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Belgium
- Primary era
- Medieval
- Eras represented
- Classical, Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Carolingian, Holy Roman Empire, Merovingian, Roman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page16 sections
History
Saint George and Saint-Ode Collegiate Church is a Roman Catholic church in Amay, Belgium, built and enlarged through several medieval phases in the Ottonian-Mosan Romanesque tradition. Dedicated to Saint George and Chrodoara of Amay, later venerated as Saint Ode, it preserves evidence of religious activity at the site from the Gallo-Roman period through the Middle Ages and into the modern era.
Early foundations
Excavations beneath the church uncovered part of a Gallo-Roman building, including a hypocaust, an underfloor heating system used in Roman buildings. Beneath the present structure are also foundations belonging to churches of the Merovingian period, the early medieval era associated with the Frankish Merovingian dynasty, dating from the sixth and seventh centuries. Further building phases belong to the Carolingian period, from the late eighth to the early eleventh century, and to a pre-Romanesque church constructed around AD 1000.
Tradition attributes the foundation of the church in the early seventh century to Chrodoara, a Merovingian noblewoman associated with the early history of Amay. She was later venerated as Saint Ode of Amay. A late-Merovingian limestone sarcophagus found beneath the church in the late 1970s was identified as her burial sarcophagus, reinforcing the connection between the early religious site and the saintly figure preserved in local tradition.
The collegiate chapter
In 945, the church became collegiate through the creation of a chapter of nine secular canons. A collegiate church is served by such a chapter rather than by a monastic community. At Amay, the canons held both religious and administrative authority over the town, and the chapter retained this spiritual and temporal role until the end of the eighteenth century. After that period, the building continued as a parish church.
Romanesque rebuilding
The present church was probably rebuilt and enlarged during the episcopate of Prince-Bishop Henry I of Verdun, who held office from 1075 to 1091 and maintained a residence, or domus, at Amay. The work was probably completed under Bishop Henry II of Leez, whose episcopate lasted from 1145 to 1164. The resulting building belonged to the Ottonian-Mosan form of Romanesque architecture, combining the architectural tradition associated with the Ottonian dynasty with the regional artistic culture of the Meuse valley.
Early-modern changes and later conservation
The church was substantially altered between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. In the sixteenth century, the central section between the western towers was raised and the nave received a vault in place of its earlier flat ceiling. During the seventeenth century, the choir was rebuilt, the nave’s square piers were replaced with round columns, and the fourteenth-century cloister was reconstructed. Further changes in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries included rebuilding the aisles, creating a transept with chamfered corners, enlarging the nave windows, and adding porches to the north and south entrances of the westwork. A clock was installed in the southern tower in 1774.
The church cemetery was cleared in 1857. Later work was less extensive, but included strengthening the central tower with buttresses and altering the southern entrance steps. Restoration took place between 1998 and 2001. In 2017, the shrine of Saint Ode was moved to the restored chapter house. The church was protected as a listed monument in 1933 and the collegiate complex, except for the organ, was included in Wallonia’s exceptional heritage in 2016.
Remains
Romanesque structure
The surviving medieval building is organized around a western tower complex, a high nave with two aisles, a transept, and a choir ending in a rectangular apse. Its westwork, a substantial western entrance and tower arrangement, has two lateral towers flanking a lower central structure. The towers and the high nave belong to the Romanesque phase, as do the nave’s Lombard arcades, bands of small blind arches used as exterior decoration. Wooden elements in parts of the roof trusses have been dated by dendrochronology, which uses tree-ring patterns, to approximately 1100 to 1125.
Later architectural fabric
The sixteenth-century raising of the central volume changed the appearance of the westwork, while the new nave vault replaced the earlier flat ceiling. A painted section above the organ in the central tower retains scrolling foliage. The seventeenth-century rebuilding of the choir and replacement of the nave piers introduced round supports into the interior. The reconstructed cloister, dating in its present form from the seventeenth century but originating in the fourteenth century, lies to the east of the church, an unusual arrangement within the collegiate complex.
The aisles and transept reflect later alterations, including the transept’s chamfered corners and the enlarged nave windows. The north and south entrances of the westwork have porches added during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Inside, eighteenth-century stucco decoration accompanies furnishings made between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, including Baroque and Rococo altars and fittings.
Choir and chapels
Choir screen and furnishings
The choir screen, made in 1685, originally divided the choir from the nave. It was moved beneath the central tower in 1774. Four pilasters with Ionic capitals support its composition, which includes an openwork wooden door, replacement bas-reliefs, and a balustrade topped by a painting of an angel. Medallions from the late eighteenth century show King David playing the harp and Saint Cecilia playing the organ.
The seventeenth-century main altar has an unusually architectural design for the Meuse region. It is arranged in three bays, with the altar in the centre and concealed passages in the side bays. Entablature, niches, pilasters, pediments, friezes, rosettes, scrolls, acanthus leaves, fire pots, statues, and paintings imitate the elements of a building. Statues attributed to the workshop of Jean Delcour include a seated Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child on a cloud and a crucified Christ attended by two kneeling angels.
Paintings and liturgical fittings
Four large choir canvases date from 1725 to 1729. Jean-Baptiste Juppin painted their landscapes, while the figures are attributed to Englebert Fisen or Théodore-Edmond Plumier. Other furnishings include a black-and-white marble pedestal from 1729, an eagle lectern from 1786, and Neoclassical choir stalls made in 1785.
Side chapels
The north and south chapels date from 1771. Wrought-iron grilles enclose them, and their bas-reliefs are by Mélotte, a sculptor from Liège. Nineteenth-century additions include communion benches, confessionals, a pulpit, and cupboards associated with confraternities. Fifteenth-century funerary slabs remain in the north and south transepts and in the cloister.
Saint Ode and the early burials
Chrodoara’s sarcophagus
The late-Merovingian limestone sarcophagus discovered beneath the church is decorated with relief work and was identified as the burial sarcophagus of Chrodoara. Its discovery provides a physical focus for the tradition linking the early church at Amay with the woman later honored as Saint Ode.
Shrine of Saint Ode
The shrine of Saint Ode is a Mosan goldsmith’s work made between 1245 and 1255. It combines gold, gilded copper, silver, enamel, brown varnish, and cabochons. Repoussé silver figures, formed by hammering the reverse of a metal sheet to raise the decoration, appear on the gables as Saint Ode and Saint George. Twelve similar figures on the long sides probably represent the Apostles. The roof is divided on each side into three panels showing episodes from the lives of the two saints.
The shrine contains the bones of a woman traditionally identified as Saint Ode and a box holding the remains of a wooden staff, possibly the staff represented on Chrodoara’s sarcophagus. Two twelfth-century Spanish textiles once kept inside the shrine are now displayed in the treasury of Liège Cathedral. The shrine was transferred to the restored chapter house in 2017.
Objects and archaeological collections
Beneath the central westwork tower, ecclesiastical and liturgical objects include a Crucifixion from around 1500, sixteenth-century statues of Saint Vincent and Saint Margaret, seventeenth-century statues of Saint Barbara and Saint Roch, an eighteenth-century statue of Saint Michael, and a nineteenth-century Neo-Baroque sunburst monstrance, a vessel used to display the consecrated Eucharistic host.
The cloister houses the Municipal Museum of Archaeology and Religious Art. Its collections include fragments of Roman frescoes, objects from Merovingian inhumation graves such as damascened belt buckles, glass, and ceramics, and artefacts found in and around the collegiate church. A fifteenth-century crucifix formerly located on Rue de l’Hôpital in Amay is also preserved there. Together with the church and chapter house, the cloister retains religious and archaeological collections connected with Amay and the Hesbaye-Meuse region.
