Église Saint-Jacques-le-Majeur-et-Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Folleville, Gothic church on Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route, Folleville, France.
The église Saint-Jacques-le-Majeur-et-Saint-Jean-Baptiste de Folleville is a small country church of two parts: a three-bay nave from the late 14th century with a chestnut wood vault on carved corbels, and a taller three-bay choir added in the 16th century as the seigneurial chapel, with ribbed stone vaults. An octagonal stair turret joins them on the south side, and a slate-spired bell tower rises over the first nave bay.
Construction of the church began in the late medieval period with records documenting its presence from 1301 onwards. The building evolved over centuries, with significant 16th-century expansions adding Renaissance elements.
The church holds Renaissance tombs of the Lannoy family carved from Carrara marble by Italian sculptors. These elaborate monuments reflect the connection between local nobility and Italian craftspeople during the early modern period.
The nave and the raised choir are on the same axis, so the Lannoy tombs in the two northern recesses of the apse are reached by walking past the main altar. The three paintings of Vincent de Paul hang in the nave, above the pews. The church stands in the village centre of Folleville, in the Somme department.
The pulpit from which Vincent de Paul preached on 25 January 1617 stands in the nave, not the choir. His sermon that day led to the founding of the Congregation of the Mission, the Lazarist priests. The three framed paintings hanging in the nave depict scenes from his life and came from the Lazarist college of Montdidier, donated to the parish priest in 1913.
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