Saint-Martin-of-Queyrières

Geography

History

The hamlet of Prelles.

With the Middle Ages, many were the travellers who traversed the area; in Briançonnais, the best certificate of the passage of the pilgrims going to Saint-Jacques-with-Compostelle by borrowing the Via Domitia is in the vault Saint-Jacob de Prelles. They are frescos of XVIe century reporting the Legend of the hang-depended pilgrim.

The commune of Saint-Martin-of-Queyrières.

Between 1050 and 1079, the mentions “sancti martini of carery”, then in 1118 “capellam of ecclesiam caireria” in the Cartulaire of Oulx, informs about the presence of a place of worship with Saint-Martin-of-Queyrières as of XIe century. In 1376 a chaplain is known with “Sancti Martini de Cayreria” and this until the end of XIVe century. The name of Queyrières seems to come from popular Latin quadraria , which means place where the blocks of stone are squared.

The village includes/understands with a few kilometers with the round several monuments famous for their beautiful paintings, like the Saint-Hippolyte vault with the hamlet of Bouchier or Saint-Jacob de Prelles in edge of the old way towards Saint-Jacques-of-Compostelle which old the Abside in Cul of furnace evokes a Romance origin.

Administration

Demography

Places and monuments

The vault Jacques Saint in Prelles

This vault was built in Prelles in 1502, because of the distance of the church of Saint Martin's day, but especially because of abundance of faithful which were passage. The Saint-Jacob vault is indeed in edge of the way of Compostelle. The pilgrims, after having borrowed the Collar of Montgenèvre or of the Scale, followed the valley of the Durance to join the Via Tolosane with Arles. This way still empierré and walled - practicable between Prelles and Bouchier - takes again the layout of the Via Domitia.

The Saint-Jacob vault, as much of others was for faithful spiritual stage on the long roads which led them to Compostelle. It is decorated murals dating from XVIe century, restored in 1955. These paintings are divided into thirty-two scenes which find place in the apse, on the triumphal arch, the walls north and south.

In the years 1960, during the construction of the post office of Prelles, of old foundations were put at the day with the accesses of this vault: they could be the remainders of a hospital house.

the miracle of the Pilgrim hang-depended , northern wall of the Saint-Jacob vault.

This miracle is reported in the miraculi sancti Jacobi , which is the 2nd book of the Codex Calixtinus, and was transmitted via the religious mysteries and of the literature. In Prelles, it is an alternative of this history which is treated in nine painted panels.

It was a question of warning the pilgrims against the bad intrigues of not very scrupulous landlords.

In XVe century of “dirty reputation” to Bessée existed an inn. The latter was called “the ensanglantée inn”, because of many suspect disappearances that one had announced to it. The inn being located near the Durance, it was easy to the landlords, to make disappear the bodies from the unhappy travellers.

The church of Saint-Martin-of-Queyrières

The price-fact of the Saint-Marcellin church of the Room-the-Alps passed with Mathieu Guras on October 25th, 1469 establishes that it was to be rebuilt on the model of Saint-Martin-of-Queyrières probably built little time before, i.e. at the beginning of XVe century.

Saint-Martin-of-Queyrières, arched in broken clotheshanger, equipped with a smaller chorus with flat bedside, and with two doors on the southern side of which one includes/understands a gate (perhaps later) in semicircular arch with its posts in withdrawal surmounted by human masks, is typical monuments met in Briançonnais.

Although one misses retreat today (the building is in revolving in edge of the road), its pace strikes especially by its beautiful very slim bell-tower on five floors, confined pyramidions with the angles and festooned of blind arcades lombardes, which call upon the former uses in scheduling of the registers (remote reminiscences of Saint-Maurice and Saint-Firmin), since the composition of the large linear panels in hollow, is carried out by means of the festoons placed above bays of which the supports reduce the structure of it as one progresses in the stages (fatal fine, twin bays, and two tripled bay stages). The use of a line of teeth of very antiquated gears of character, points out that of the bell-tower of the Room-the-Alps; both are worked as in respect of the Romance heritage.

The vault of Saint-Hippolyte of Bouchier

Perched at the top of a rock piton, joined with a cell of hermit, richly decorated with frescos, this small vault attracted the patients who came to claim the intercession of the saint. Murals reporting the miraculous cures of Hippolyte are painted on the southernmost wall of the vault.

At the time of the restoration of the latter, in the years 1950, the Bonnardel priest of Argentière-la-Bessée discovered in a fault, near the building, of the skeletons of new-born babies rolled up in cloths of flax, a cross around the neck. Was it about body of ill children whom the parents had carried near the saint? A similar discovery took place in 1953, with the Saint-Sebastien vault in Vigneaux: three young children rolled up in cloths of flax, a cross around the neck, had been buried there.

Personalities related to the commune

See too

Common of Hautes-Alpes

External bonds

Saint-Martin-of-Queyrières on the site of the national geographical Institute
Saint-Martin-of-Queyrières on the site of INSEE
Saint-Martin-of-Queyrières on the site of Quid
Photographs, topography, toponymy: all that concerns Saint-Martin-of-Queyrières and its hamlets
Localization of Saint-Martin-of-Queyrières on a chart of France and communes bordering
Plan on Saint-Martin-of-Queyrières on Mapquest

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