The Saint Jacques church of Villefranche and the SainteThorette source

It is Archambauld VI of Bourbon and his wife Agnès which established in 1138 the charter of frankness authorizing creation, with the doors of the chapter of Montcenoux, of a frank city protected by the lord from Bourbon and where the canons renonçaient to exert their seigniorals rights.

The charter granted at a community of inhabitants a whole of freedoms and guarantees thus supporting the installation of a trade arrangement without obstacles, creating a place of meetings and permanent transactions between the merchants  and those of the close seigniories, and this in substituent the principle of freedom to the seigniorial constraint of the common right.

The granted privileges were confirmed by the charters which followed and the commune became a prosperous shopping centre.

The church Saint Jacques the Major one dates from the foundation of the city in XIIth century. Placed on one of the routes which led to St Jacques de Compostelle, this roman church of vast proportions was started out of pink sandstone, continued out of red coal-bearing sandstone, raised and altered at the beginning of the Gothic time out of yellow sandstone, which gives him an unquestionable personality.

The passage of the Protestant troops devastators in XVIth century cost him two or perhaps even three spans of which there remain still some traces on the ground of the place.

The bedside in the east, the gate and the rosette in the south are remarkable as well as the statue of St Jacques the Major one which is outside on the western frontage. Inside, of paintings on the vault and the walls of the apse, the various tables, the mounting containing the effigy of Sainte Thorette.

Thorette was a humble shepherdess who lived in Nouzillers, hamlet of Villefranche, in XIth century. It made many miracles and was regarded as sainte by the local population of alive sound. Its lying occupies the vault of the northern transept. One calls upon it for the protection of the goods and the people.

Oratory of Thorette

It is located at the exit of the city, at the bottom of the small valley of Montcenoux. 

It was built in 1946 in homage to the small shepherdess who, since her birth, has several times protected the town of dangers which threatened it.

Very close a source is to which the pilgrims on the way for Compostelle came to draw water to which they added a little crowned rock that they had recovered by scraping of the stones of the native house of holy or to those of the church as testify some the still visible cups on the western gate.

The source is much older than it does not appear to with it, and my faith, is well accompanied. An owl accomodated us there, but it was not alone.

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