The church and the crypt of Saint-Parize




The church


Built in Xllth century, the church of Saint-Parize-le-Chatel undoubtedly replaced the oratory of the old abbey built three centuries earlier on the spot where Saint-Patrice had evangely=ise.
The donation of the church prieurale of Saint-Parize agreed in 1113 by the bishop of Nevers to his chap�tre, proposes an invaluable reference mark for the chronology of the building.
Built consequently all at the beginning of Xl�me century, this one consists of a nave single of very modest size, remade in near total at last century and equipped with a broad transept whose square supports a turn-bell-tower massive.  The chorus of two short spans ends in an apse with half dome very restored under which the crypt extends that we will see in one moment.


The Western gate opens in semicircular arch in a avantcorps shouldered by flat half-buttresses, under a encircled archivoite of a beautiful plank of palmettes.  The small capitals offer decorations often met: on the left, two heads of monsters vomitting of the foliages interlaced and finished by palms; on the right, a monster is on the point of devouring a character.




The crypt

- the crypt monopolizes all the interest.  Served by modern staircases arranged on both sides entry of the chorus, it is divided into three equal naves of three spans by two lines of strong columns installed on square base, and is completed by a not very deep apse with half dome.

The vaults, to compartments of edges enough frustes, fall down to the walls on short columns with not decorated capitals, themselves heightened by a continuous base. Elements fun�rairesdu average age, stelles and sarcophagi, decorate the crypt.

Daylight, parsimoniously distributed by narrow very splayed openings, cherishes with breast height the capitals of the six central columns, massive with very thick trenchers, and whose baskets received a decoration of an incomparable imagination and a liveliness.

At the right side

First column



- a bearded sciapode, the air amazed at its prowess, holds with two hands its enormous foot above its head.


- an acrobat, very near to that which carries out its number at the top of the large tympanum of the Madeleine de V�zelay, coils himself in hoop.


- a centaur archer has just wounded of an arrow a stag subsided on its rear-axle unit and which turns the head to look at it.

With the angles, an owl and a tortoise.

Second column

Four heads of angle vomitting of the bonds finished in broad sheets whose ends are rolled up on themselves.  One will bring closer this capital that, �trangement close which decorates the frontage March-on-To combine.

Third column


- Sheets of acanthuses furnished with the angles with thick sheets and pine cones.

With with dimensions the left


First column
- short and stiff Sheets from where emergent of the volutes meeting with the angles and against which two rosettes appear and two wheels with six rays.

Second column


Animals musiciens.Un monkey playing of a string instrument and a pig gripping a toothing-stone.

An enormous snake with language fourchue.
A worrying horned creature, with tail of snake seems to whisper with the ear of a man who holds a purse.  It acts obviously of the topic of miserly and the demon.
A siren, rather near to that of the tympanum of Vézelay, holds its two
openly raised tails.
A bearded character turns a monstrous spoon in a suspended pot to a hook.

Third column

Eight lions sitting on their rear-axle unit, opposed two to two with the angles and the head behind them.

Their mouths vomit bonds which are interlaced and end in single and broad palm.

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