Collégiale Saint-Bonnet et ses momies

Saint-Bonnet-le-Château

Built from 1372 on the growing wealth of a town of cloth merchants, the collegiate church of Saint-Bonnet-le-Château raises its Gothic mass at the highest point of the Forez. Beneath the choir, a lower chapel built to make up for the slope preserves a set of wall paintings from around 1400: musician angels and correspondences between the twelve signs of the zodiac and musical instruments, a learned image of the harmony of the world. The church also keeps a library assembled in 1717, which held more than 2,000 volumes at the Revolution and still preserves some 2,250, including several incunabula. But its fame rests on what workmen brought to light in 1837, in the course of building work: a walled-up vault filled with bodies piled together, desiccated, the skin stretched over the bones. The accounts gathered by Dr Parcelly speak of around 159 remains "pell-mell", of which only some twenty were still in good condition at the time of his visit in 1890. Local legend saw in them Huguenots massacred during the Wars of Religion, victims of the Baron des Adrets in 1562, or even prisoners forgotten in an oubliette; carbon-14 dating carried out in Lyon in 1995, however, points to burials after 1650, and the soberest hypothesis remains that of a family of local notables. The mummification would have been natural, due to the dryness and constant temperature of the vault, perhaps helped by the alum and arsenic present in the soil.

Le Bizarreum - Les momies de la collégiale de Saint-Bonnet-le-Château ↗

Getting there : At the top of the village of Saint-Bonnet-le-Château (42380), in the Forez, 35 km south-west of Saint-Étienne. Parking below, then a walk up to the collegiate church. Coordinates taken at the building, in a small village: precision to the nearest neighbourhood. The vaults are no longer directly accessible; the guided tour now offers a virtual-reality experience. Check opening times with the tourist office.

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

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