11 juin 2007
The church Notre-Dame d' Agonges
The
church of Agonges was built on a central mound, in the middle of a
series of worked hillocks make of hand of man or work observation posts
of defense. Depending until the revolution of the diocese of Bourges,
possession of the abbess of Saint-Menoux, this parish is mentioned for
the first time in 1138 pennies the term “Sanctae Mariae de Agongis”.
Built
at the end of XIIth century and the beginning of XIIIth, the current
building belongs to the Roman style of transition. Indeed, if it is
Roman by its general plan ,the ornamentation of her gates and its
capitals, its narrow openings in semicircular arch, its apse and its
absidioles arched in half dome, it is Gothic by the vault of its nave.
Moreover,
built with the crossroads of three dioceses (Bourges, Autun and
Clermont), this construction underwent at the same time the influence
of the Burgundian schools, from Auvergne and Berry.
The
external walls present a stone marriage of size and hardcores of varied
colors passing from the gray and white at the pink and the yellow. The
stones of gray or pink colour are out of sandstone of the country, the
others out of limestone with phrygranes of the valley Allier.
The
southern side door is bored in a very projecting pediment, covered of a
glazing whose entablature is supported by modillons with carved
heads or chips. The bay is framed by three archivolts in arc slightly
broken which receive from share and others three columns whose torus is flated and with very simple capitals decorated with scales, foliages
and heads.
The
western gate does not make not covered on the pinion. Its oven walls
are decorated of a post engaged between two barley grains, and
internally framed column at Roman base and capital with foliage.
The northern wall of the nave carries the trace of a door in gothic arch which was walled. With the top of this old door, one can see a stone corbel. They are probably the indices of an old vault.
A cord of billets runs around the apse by circumventing the windows. The wall of this apse is reinforced by two flat buttresses.
The pinions of the low-transept seem to have been elevated at one
unspecified time. Holes of rolls are still visible in the northern
pigon and on the northern wall. let us modilloons of the apse are with
simplified chips, those of the building are only grooved.
The
sacristy, old vault built subsequently, (probably in XVth century),
present of the ogival veins less rudimentary than those of the nave and
the more projecting buttresses.
The
bell-tower, of Burgundian Roman style, rises of only one jet on the
side of the nave. Its higher part present, on each face, three stages
of blind arcades or windows. Blind blind arcades formed of three Roman
arches and four windows on the higher floor, separated by two simple
columns and two twin pillars. The face is presents only two stages of
bays and the northern face that only one.
The
southern face of the bell-tower presents under the blind arcades, a
series of stones of apparatus decorated with low-reliefs of a very
popular invoice: characters blowing in a horn, current dog and animals.
The
style of these sculpture is to be brought closer that the characters
and animal observers on the arcs of the transept and certain capitals.
The presence of this unslung bestiary, Eastern origin, could be
dependent on the distance of the episcopal capacity, and more facility
to be able to transmit a message.
The church is made of a single nave with four spans and of an arched transept of warheads
which
open on an apse in the same way plane, of a vault which prolongs the
southern arm of the transept (currently sacristy) and a square
bell-tower established on the southernmost side.
The
apse, arched in half dome, decorated internally with a blind arcade
on colonettes made up of three Roman arches under which the windows
open and which two small arcs in blind mitre separate. This type of
blind blind arcades “in mitre”, also known as “in pediment”, are found
in Bagneux, Montilly, Franchesse, Louroux and Chateloy.
On the
internal face of each arc of the transept is archstones decorated with
16 figurines representing of the heads of monsters or faced animals, of
the squatted characters or on the back.
The
capitals are more interesting: feuilages interlaced, heads of men and
deer, characters dancing. We thus have the initiate, laid down on the
ground, impregnated its terrestrial and animal part, which is rectified
to reach the sky.
It is in Agonges that the history of Notre-Dame of the Round began. Indeed, it is from here this black virgin comes. It is now in the vault of Chazeuil. (See Chazeuil and the legend of the black virgin low)
Notre-Dame vault Of the Round of Chazeuil
On
a monticule which skirts the Allier and the railroad, at some
steps of the castle of Chazeuil, rise the antic chappel of the
Round, dating from XIth century. A legend is attached to it: a statue
of the virgin appears first of all initially in the church of Agonges
close to Souvigny.
One
day, the inhabitants wanted to replace it by a more elegant statue, and
the first was relegated in an obscure corner. The following day, the
ancien image of the virgin had taken again her throne of honor, while the
new statue lay with ground. The sexton restores one and the other in
their place, locking up the first statue in a cupboard of the sacristy.
This
time still the virgin thwarted the project of the men and went to take
refuge in the hollow of a young elm which one sees still today. A
shepherd discovered it in this place, and soon the faithful ones
reinstalled it in the church of Agonges, in the place which it occupied
formerly. But the Madonna still disappeared, and this time, without
return, of the country of Agonges, for reparaitre well later on the
hill of the Round close to the castle of Chazeuil.
Frightful
plagues afflicted this inhospitable region then. Despear was with
its roof, when one day it was learned that a shepherd of the forest of
Briailles, close to Saint Pourçain, seven or eight miles from there,
had found a statue of the Blessed Virgin in the middle of the spines.
The inhabitants of Chazeuil hastened to build a vault to him on the
mound of the Round, and those of Agonges, repenting, came every
year, during long century, to make him honourable fine.
The
miraculous statue was hidden during the revolution, and was brought
back later to its vault. In 1866, Mr. the Count de Montagnac, owner of
the castle of chazeuil, took the initiative of a complete restoration.
Every year, the Easter Monday, as well as first Sunday of October, the
faithful ones are made very many there.
The statue is a virgin in wood majesty strengthened, polychrome, 76 cm height. The dress of the virgin is green, that of the child is red. She is dated from XIIth century.