11 juin 2007
The church Saint Wolf of Penol
In
the church Saint-Wolf of Penol, only the apse and the absidioles go up
in the Middle Ages and can be dated from second half of the XII ème
century. The church is classified Historic building for the apse and is
registered with the additional inventory of the Historic buildings for
the nave and bay of the bell-tower.
The interest of this monument lies in the rich person decoration of the columns at capitals. Its
gate of XIème century, strongly projecting, is remarkable. It is
composed of 2 cylindrical columns with capitals with sheets of acanthus
and volutes accompanied by masks grimaçants (I would say the
representation of the spouting out verb) supporting an arcade in
semicircular arch. 
3 bays clarify the chorus their columns show the same characteristics as those of the gate. 
Another
explanation for the sculptures of the capitals: they pourait to be
indications when to energies of the place. One often finds the numbers
2, 3 and 8, represented by the petals of the pink, the horizontal
features between the sheets, the bonds enclosing what leaves the mouth
of the “monsters”.
Moreover,
which fate finishes in volutes. Thus I would say two faults, three
rivers and two chimneys cosmo-telluric. More one crowned network, which
gives 8. The presence of the éclatoirs shows us well that energies are
important here.
In
the church, a grid protects a cavity being on the right chorus. It is
known as in the village which the building was built on an old cemetery
and which the cavity is one of the tombs. It seems to to me that the
old ones avoided this kind of sites for their places of worship. On the
other hand, an old mithraïque crypt will not displease to me.
Work revealed a paved ground of mosaics. The church would thus have been built on the ruins of a Gallo-Roman villa. Or of an old temple.
The
title of Saint-Wolf, well-known out of Champagne, was also given to
some churches of the area From the Dauphine, like that of Penol and
that of the tiny parish of Uriol, initially placed under the protection
of Saint Michel (frequent term in the raised places, the archangel
being supposed to connect the ground and the sky), who remains until
the Revolution.
Saint Wolf, (bishop of Troyes from 426 to 470), resulting from a family of the Gallo-Roman aristocracy, was initially married. At the end of six years of common life, the husbands decided, by mutual assent, to separate: it, to become moniale; he, to enter to the abbey of Lérins. It is there that one sought it to place it at the head of the Church of Troyes. It had soon to go away from its diocese, into 429 to accompany the Germain bishop by Auxerre in England where the error of the pelagianism prevailed. Passer by in Nanterre, it had the occasion to bless there a small girl who will become Sainte Genevieve. Later, it dared to face the terrible Attila whom it managed to move, thanks to its nobility of soul.
“…
In this time, flowered the happy Saint-Wolf, bishop of Troyes. When
Attila attacked this city, happy Loup required top aloud of him the
door which it was to come to melt thus on them. ” I am, answered him
it, Attila, the plague of God. “The humble prelate retorted to him with
moaning: ” And me I am Loup; alas! I devastate the herd of God and I
need to be struck by the plague of God. “And at the moment it made open
the doors. But God plugged the enemies who passed from a door to the
other, without seeing anybody and any evil. The happy Germain took with
him Loup and left for British Isles where the heretics pullulated…”
(the Golden Legend, Jacques de Voragine XIIIè century) “
The stoup seems old, as well as the traces outside a sundial and of an old filled door.
