Église priorale Saint-Loup de Saint-Loup-de-Naud, Romanesque parish church in Saint-Loup-de-Naud, Seine-et-Marne, France

The Église priorale Saint-Loup is a Romanesque church begun in the second half of the 11th century, built of small rubble stone. Its nave has six bays, with six round-arch arcades opening onto the side aisles; the four western bays carry carved leaf capitals, the two eastern ones are plain. A two-storey porch with pointed arcades precedes the west portal, and a near-square bell tower with four sound openings per side rises over the crossing.

Around 980 the Archbishop of Sens gave a chapel dedicated to Saint Loup to the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Pierre-le-Vif, which founded a priory here. The church was begun in the second half of the 11th century. Around 1160 Archbishop Hugues de Toucy gave the priory a relic of Saint Loup, and Count Henry the Liberal of Champagne funded four more nave bays and the west portal. English bands and Huguenot looting in 1567 ruined the priory, dissolved at the Revolution.

The church is dedicated to Saint Loup, bishop of Sens in the 7th century, and the trumeau of the west portal carries his figure. The capital below shows the miracle of the precious stone said to have fallen from heaven while he celebrated Mass, with two deacons beside the altar. The archivolts also tell episodes of his legend, including a figure in a bell identified as King Chlothar II.

The church stands at the top of the slope above the Dragon valley, with the village centre below. The west porch opens through stepped pointed-arch arcades, and a rectangular stair turret adjoins it on the north side. The nave is lit only by the side-aisle windows, so the interior stays dim; the two eastern bays are covered by a groin vault inserted in 1874.

The column sculptures on the western entrance rank among the earliest examples of Gothic carving in the Île-de-France region. These stone figures display an experimental phase of artistic development before Gothic forms later spread across Europe.