Collégiale Notre-Dame de Montréal

What you will see

Outside, look at the wide portal with its flower-carved columns and multi-lobed arches, its 12th-century iron hinges, and the eight-spoked rose window above, which Viollet-le-Duc compared to the west rose of Notre-Dame de Paris. Inside, the nave has rib vaults while the aisles keep Romanesque groin vaults. Over the entrance, a stone gallery with a late 12th-century altar was probably reserved for the lord's family. In the choir, the stalls carved between 1530 and 1550, attributed to the Rigolley brothers of Nuits-sur-Armançon, show Bible scenes, foliage and misericords that are all different. Look too for the 15th-century alabaster altarpiece from a Nottingham workshop.

History

The lords of Montréal ruled a prosperous fortified town on this hill. In 1068 Anséric II founded a chapter of ten canons here. When Bernard of Clairvaux preached the Second Crusade at Vézelay in 1146, Anséric III took the cross and vowed to build a new church if he came home alive. Work began around 1150 beside his castle, and his son Anséric IV finished it. In 1521 King Francis I presided over the Estates of Burgundy at Montréal, and his gift to the canons is thought to have paid for the carved stalls.

During the Revolution the village was renamed Mont-Serein and the church became a temple of the Supreme Being: the tympanum was hammered off and painted with republican slogans that can still be made out. In the 19th century the building was close to ruin. Viollet-le-Duc, then restoring Vézelay, praised it in his writings, the church was listed in 1846, and repairs costing more than 100,000 francs saved it. In 1971 thieves took four panels of the alabaster altarpiece.