Chapel of Saint-Jean du Liget

The chapel of Saint-Jean du Liget, or chapelle Saint-Jean-du-Liget or chapelle du Liget, is an ancient chapel located in the commune of Sennevières, in the Indre-et-Loire department of France. It was probably built around the middle of the 11th century, although this dating is still debated to within a few decades, which maintains the uncertainty as to which monastic order, Benedictine or Carthusian, founded it. Similarly, its dedication to Saint John, which could apply to another monument, is disputed. Until the French Revolution, it was attached to the Liget Carthusian monastery, when, already in ruins, it was sold to private owners and then to the State. The latter undertook its restoration in the 1860s, after it was classified as a monument historique in 1862. The chapel has been owned by the commune of Sennevières since 2007. Its unique initial layout (rotunda preceded by a nave) is reminiscent of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, as discovered by the first Crusaders. The interior walls of this chapel's rotunda - the only part of the monument to have been preserved, which also had a nave - were covered with Romanesque polychrome frescos, the surviving ones depicting figures of saints and major biblical scenes from the Marian cycle. These frescos are among the best-preserved medieval frescoes in the Indre-et-Loire region, although they are tending to deteriorate. It is for this reason that the chapel is closed to the public, except on exceptional occasions.

The chapel is located on the border between the communes of Chemillé-sur-Indrois and Sennevières, but on the territory of the latter. It is less than 900 m south-west of the Chartreuse du Liget, of which it was a dependency, and 150 m south-east of the D760 (route from Loches to Montrésor), these distances being expressed as the crow flies. Until perhaps the 17th century, this road took a different route, passing to the south of the chapel. The chapel is located in the heart of the Loches forest, in a clearing with a former tile factory, also attached to the Carthusian monastery; all these buildings occupy the bottom and slopes of the same Vallon. A fountain near the chapel was the object of pilgrimage until 1870. The building is oriented from south-west (the former nave) to north-east (the rotunda's "axial" bay). The origin of the toponym "Liget" is not attested for the Touraine chapel and chartreuse; it appears under the name Ligetum in a charter of 1172. However, Albert Philippon, citing an older document in 1934, suggests that Liget may be a deformation of the word lige, indicating a form of dependency between this land and the mother abbey of Villeloin, to which it originally belonged. The church's dedication to St. John remains a matter of debate. It is based on the interpretation of a 14th-century text, but another reading envisages that the dedication actually applies to the Corroirie church; the representation of Saint John in the chapel's decor is far from attested. Nevertheless, in common parlance, this round chapel remains the chapelle Saint-Jean.

The circumstances surrounding the founding of the Carthusian monastery and the construction of the Liget chapel are still debated, due to the many possible interpretations of the sources. The history of the chapel, as presented here, is that towards which the most recent and comprehensive studies tend; it remains a proposal, subject to refinement or contradiction in the light of subsequent work.

Church data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).