Église Saint-Georges

English translation

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History

The church of Saint-Georges at Limans, a town situated 10 km north-east of Forcalquier, is attested in 1155, when its revenues are assigned to the canons of the co-cathedral of Sainte-Marie at Forcalquier. From the 12th to the 13th century, two churches are mentioned at Limans: Saint-Pierre and Saint-Georges. In the texts, these two churches are each associated with two distinct sites, on the territory of Limans: a lower castle and an upper castle which the church of Saint-Georges depended upon. This pairing of churches and castles is open to question. It may have been brought about by a pre-existing ecclesiastical network. The bipolar layout of castles can also be explained by the existence of a joint lordship. It could also be a matter of the same castle with a seigneurial space "superiore" (or noble) completed or not by a castle chapel, and a castle space "inferiore" constituted by a residential site with its parish church, dependent on an independent religious institution. This latter case would correspond to the topography of the present village and would explain the eccentric situation of the parish church. At the end of the 13th century the church of Saint Pierre is detached from the ecclesiastical complex, the church of Saint-Georges becomes the sole holder of the parish, it benefits from a vicar, its prebend will remain the benefit of the chapter of the co-cathedral of Forcalquier until the end of the Ancien Régime. The present church reveals several periods of construction: - The presence of a portal with round arch on the north façade and a small arched opening in the western façade and a barrel vault on the nave, are characteristic of a construction from the end of the 12th or the beginning of the 13th century. - A second building campaign is signalled by the decorative vocabulary of late Gothic: engaged columns profiled with a fillet, almandine ogives, prismatic bases, corbels of capitals tending to become thinner. It concerned the enlargement of the nave, and the construction of the chevet and the south chapel. - The north chapel was opened in 1735. - The west portal was rebuilt in 1888. The church preserves elements of a chancel (and an ambo?) from the Early Middle Ages belonging unquestionably to the same complex but whose provenance has not been established. Discovered in 1955 they were classified - partially - as movable objects in 1956 and 1957. They have since been reused as an altar table, antependium, and tympanum. These liturgical elements in reuse constitute, at the present time, one of the oldest testimonies of the beginnings of Christianity in Upper Provence.