The church Saint-Jean-Baptist of Crupies

Established on a Gallo-Roman site above the course of Roubion, it appears in the texts in 1107, but its origin is much older (perhaps this was a baptismal church), as the fragments employed again above the door prove it.

Y are carved in flat part of the branches of vine, with the very cut out sheets, that picore a bird, work préroman, even pre-Carolingian. Church depending on the priory of Bourdeaux, itself depend on the Benedictine abbey of Savigny, close to Arbresle (the Rhone), the building was in ruins after the wars of religion.  Replacing in XVIle and XVIlle centuries the church Holy-Catherine of the perched village of Vialle, it was transformed into Protestant temple of 1806 to 1904, closed down, then restored in 1960.

The single nave includes/understands two spans, whose walls are reinforced arches relieving in full-clotheshanger.  The transoms which receive the latter are made of two cavets superimposed or a surmounted cavet of a torus, not very frequent mouldings in the vicinity.  At the time traditional, one made disappear a splash plate with the pilasters, rebuilt the vault and the frontage, opened large windows.

The small russet-red sandstone hardcore apparatus of the gouttereaux walls of the nave contrasts with thinner bases, where mix with the hardcores Roman limestones, of the Eastern part of the building: the connection is seen well outside with the second span, in the south.

The church was in work when I came in the country.

Contrast appears also Net inside, when one arrives at the span of chorus, vast and strange, deprived of relieving arches. Two high pilasters, laid out slightly in oblique for corresponding well to the buttresses and carrying decorative sizes, mark the entry of the span. Like those of the apse, they are surmounted by a transom which decorates, only luxury of the building, a plank of two or three spirals, to which can be added half. The reason, derived from the rinceau, meets at the time Carolingian and two of the planks preserve, between spirals, the deformed memory of a small sheet of which the significance any more was not perceived. In the hemicycle of the apse, striking it also by its nudity, is noticed a hardcore base supplemented by bricks. In the south in the span a door old, contiguous opens with the one of the very massive buttresses, built partly with the same apparatus as the building, which proves that this one was arched as of the beginning.

Span and apse appear contemporary, or little is necessary oneself some, of the installation of the monks of Savigny in several churches around Comps, and in particular in Bourdeaux, since 1031. The simplicity of the structures, the release of volumes due to the nudity of the walls, the use of the small apparatus, the archïsme of decoration do not contradict this dating; the reason for the spirals is found in re-employment with Comps. As for the nave, with its modénature, it appears to go up in Xlle century.

http://www.centcols.org/les_rendez-vous/damian/monuments_romans.htm