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Chapelle Saint-Gilles-des-Prés

Langourla

Dimensions
In the meadows, about a kilometre and a half south-west of the village, near the village of Le Plessis: a rectangular chapel with a canted chevet, beside the old route to Boquen.
Period
Original chapel perhaps of the mid-15th century; rebuilt from 1911 and blessed on 7 September 1919.
What stands there
The chapel marks, tradition says, the passage of the funeral cortege of Gilles de Bretagne on its way to the abbaye de Boquen.

Away from the village of Langourla, amid the meadows, the chapelle Saint-Gilles-des-Prés is a small rectangular building with a canted chevet. What can be seen today is a reconstruction: the chapel was falling into disrepair in 1911, and it was rebuilt and blessed on 7 September 1919. Into it were placed the altar, floor and balustrade of the old chapelle Saint-Eutrope in the village, a shield bearing the arms of the du Parc family, and a statue of Saint Gilles carved in 1786 by a workman from Gausson named Caro. The place owes its fame to an event of 1450: Gilles de Bretagne, brother of the duke, died at the château de la Hardouinaye, in Saint-Launeuc, smothered between two mattresses according to the accounts, and his body was carried to the abbaye de Boquen. Tradition holds that the chapel was raised beside the route followed by the cortege, and that an ox from the team left the print of its hoof on a stone known as 'le pas de saint Gilles'. The parish service on the Sunday following the feast of Saint-Gilles had been celebrated there since time immemorial; in 1837, for lack of space, the rector had two high masses sung, one in the village, the other at the chapel. InfoBretagne, which repeats the tradition, remains cautious: the 15th-century foundation holds only if the tradition is well founded, and the position of the hoofprint would suggest rather the oxen's return towards la Hardouinaye than their outward journey to Boquen. The pardon was revived in 2003 by the association Les amis de Saint-Gilles.

InfoBretagne — Langourla, la chapelle Saint-Gilles-des-Prés ↗

Further reading

Getting there : South-west of the village of Langourla, towards the village of Le Plessis (to be checked). The surroundings are open access; the chapel is open at least during the pardon in early September (to be checked). The stone of the 'pas de saint Gilles' is said to lie 500 or 600 metres away, near the ruisseau de la Tingaie (to be checked).

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

See it on the map OpenStreetMap Directions

Ambient sound

Chapelle Saint-Gilles-des-Prés
NegroTruc · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

In the same department

All places — Côtes-d'Armor (81).