Église Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption

English translation

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History

The three churches of the village of Reillanne, Saint-Denis (church at the top of the castrum), Saint-Pierre (disappeared church situated at the foot of the castrum) and Sainte-Marie (church outside the walls which became Notre-Dame de l'Assomption) are confirmed in the temporal possessions of the abbey of Montmajour in 1114 and placed under the authority of the priory of Carluc shortly after (around 1118-1119). These three churches formed a cure priory or simple priory which was not intended to accommodate religious men. Attested in 1226, it was probably one of the richest dependencies of Carluc. These churches were subject both to the power of the abbot of Montmajour, to that of the archbishop of Aix and to the prior of Carluc. Numerous documents demonstrate the stormy relations between the priory of Carluc and the prior of Reillanne according to the periods. At the end of the 15th century these three churches suffered the impoverishment of their parent priory and experienced a degradation which led to the successive suppression of the churches of Saint-Pierre, then of Saint-Denis, as parish churches. The church of Notre-Dame is erected as a parish church in 1558 at the time when the priory becomes the benefice of a secular prior who held it in commendam. It is then enlarged with its two aisles and surmounted by a bell tower (disappeared). The nave, the transept vaulted with a transverse barrel vault, the pentagonal chevet and the south absidiole were preserved during this building campaign. These elements can be dated, by analogy, to the end of the 12th century or the beginning of the 13th century. In the south absidiole, the engraved representation of an eagle on a capital, a technique associated with full-round sculpture, is quite exceptional for this period. During the 17th century, four projects for enlargements (1632, 1641, 1669, 1681) will be successively abandoned. Only the west (1645) and south (1685) portals are realised. At the beginning of the 19th century the erection of a new bell tower, envisaged at the location of the south absidiole, came to nothing.... An earthquake in 1887 almost proved fatal to the parish church, since the commune considered its demolition at first. Lacking funding to build a new church, major restorations are undertaken in 1908 on the old church: removal of slate roofing from the transept, the apse and the absidiole which are replaced by industrial flat tiles; replacement of round tile roofing of the nave, the chapel of the Virgin and the sacristy, with the same type of industrial tiles; renewal in concrete of the foundations, consolidation of the masonry and the vault of the chapel of the Virgin (to the north); renewal of the pillars of the nave in dressed stone. The vaults of the nave are replaced by brick vaultings, and coated in cement and lean concrete.