Châtel-Montagne - Notre-Dame

In 1082 some Seigneur Dalmas and his wife Étiennette gave all the properties they owned in "Castrumin Montanis", including a church, to Cluny. This legal act was important enough to get an official approval from Pope Urban II in 1095.

A priory was set up - and a small church was erected. Parts of this church can still be found in the church seen here, built 1100 - 1200. The priory never really flourished, the community of monks was small - and already from 1462 on, the church was used as a parish church.

The church is quite large for a remote village of a population well under 500 (today). When it was planned during the boom of pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostella, Châtel-Montagne was ideally placed on one of the many "Chemin de St-Jacques" in France.

As seen already, not only the architectoral structure is built from granite, the carved capitals are carved from this extrem hard stone as well. So they cannot be that fine and detailled as sandstone-carvings can be. They do have a certain kind of roughness.

A very flexible atlant, a bit like the merman/atlant seen before, bit this one has a very strange face. I agree with Bernard Craplet, who describes this as an atlant "with the head of an ape". Well, the feet are pretty ape-like as well, and as apes are very flexible - the atlant seen here probably is an ape.