Le Vieil-Artins

EGLISE SAINT-PIERRE

The old church of St. Peter, was the parish church of Artins until the 19th century. The centre of the village having moved towards the hamlet of the "Plat d'Etain", a new church was built and that of the Old Artins would have been razed if it had not been bought by an archeologist from Le Mans in 1905.

The church consists of an aisleless nave and a chancel with a flat chevet both built in the 12th century but altered in the 16th century. The chevet is pierced with a round-arched window and its Gothic tracery and the north and south walls have pointed-arched windows. Massive buttresses support the chancel. In the nave, the small round-arched windows have been walled up. The pointed arched west door is decorated with an archivolt whose recessed moldings are adorned with roses, sawteeth and checkers. An antefix cross surmounts the west gable

Left: foundations made of flint stones, which might date back to the 3rd century **** - Right: a cavity which does not communicate with the interior of the church and cannot have been a leper's squint or window. It might have been a leper's holy water stoup

On the site of the primitive church was a temple dedicated to Jupiter, made famous in the 3rd century, by the miracles of St. Julian, first bishop of Le Mans. One day, St. Julian went to Artins, entered the temple and toppled the idol. Threatened by an irate crowd of pagans, he performed a miracle and converted the populace. Thus, the former temple became one of the first Christian sanctuaries. Some of the foundations of the present church, made of irregular flint stones and cement may be the vestiges of the chapel built by St. Julian on the ruins of the pagan temple

THE WALL PAINTINGS

In 1907, wall paintings were discovered: on the south wall of the nave, a combat scene with horsemen wearing hauberks and conical helmets and carrying shields with their coats of arms, probably dating from the 12th century, judging by the horsemen's costumes. On the north wall, the vestiges of a Romanesque Last Judgement with the Resurrection of the Dead. Other, more recent paintings, above trompe-l'oeil draperies, represented the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, the Flagellation, the Crucifixion and the ......... In 1937, the battle scene and probably other paintings were reputedly removed by an antique dealer who had bought the church and were sold abroad

One of the only fragments of wall paintings spared by the vandalism of the antique dealerSketch of a small part of a combat scene (south wall), which was about 12ft long and 4ft high. The horsemen are wearing hauberks and conical helmets. They carry long spears and shields with their coats of arms (12th century)

The Abegg foundation at Riggisberg (Switzerland) "owns" a rather unusual Stoning of St. Stephen, the figure of an angel and a representation of the martyrdom of St. James-the-Less, which might come from the church of Artins

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