Church Notre-Dame d' Avenas

The village is located on an old Roman way going from Lyon has Autun, not far from the forest close to the collar Barrel in Avenas (760 m).

This way is known under the name of Shoed Chemin or Way of the Romans. One knows by the Romans whom the area was inhabited at the time of the invasion of Gaule but there only exists very little of vestiges of this past.

At the beginning of the Middle Ages, between 880 and 910, the cistercians monks melt a monastery and build a church of Roman style between 1088 and 1150. The village named then Avenacum. Located at the sources of Grosne, river which sprinkles Cluny, the village had also a source with the healing virtues, sovereign for the fevers.

A legend speaks about the origins of the construction of the church: “The Christians wanted to build a church on the ruins of the monastery of Pélage, that the invaders buckwheats had destroyed. the tradition reports that the craftsmen and workmen found, each morning, while returning on the building site, their tools and materials dispersed by a mysterious hand. Then the master of work thought that God wanted, for its sanctuary, another site. It decided to launch its hammer in the air towards the small valley, and that where it would fall, the church would be built. The hammer was gone from there to choir with 1200 meters of the Collar, in a bush of hawthorns, close to the crowned pagan fountain, in Avenas…”

Us here is the hawthorn, crowned druids plants , close which several black virgins were found. This plant is also called the tree with the fairies… And our hammer, attribute of Thor, come well by the way… We are in full druidism, conveyed by our good monks.

The church, modest by its size, caused several assumptions for its origin, between the Carolingian time and the protective intervention of the king Louis VII who controls Mâconnais. The remarkable carved and classified furnace bridge, with its Christ in majesty surrounded of the twelve apostles and the representation of the foundation of the church by king Louis (?), one of the wonders of the Romanesque clunisian art, finishing the XIIth century does of them.
This small Roman pink stone church was dedicated to the Virgin. She is directed approximately south-eastern 20°, to make it possible the networks to pass in her center and to connect Was it of Avenas.

The church was restored at the 20th century: the turret with 8 faces and the sacristy go back to this time.

The interior, very simple, has a nave of 15 by approximately 5,50 meters, covered out of frame, with projecting transept, cupola on horns with crossed and apse in half dome decorated with pilasters.

The baptismal funds, simple tank out of stone, have a lid drink some on which is a cross that one can compare with the templar cross of the “hip of Chartres”, being used as standard master for the building.

http://notes.romanes.free.fr/images/rhone/avenas/photos.htm
http://www.aucoeurdubeaujolais.fr/article.php3?id_article=176
“Of dolmens in menhirs” of Serge Barnoud, with the editions of the cosmogone