Saint Martin's Collegiate Church

The collegiate church of Saint-Martin de Candes is a former collegiate church located in Candes-Saint-Martin in the west of the French department of Indre-et-Loire, in the Centre-Val de Loire region.

A first church, dedicated to Saint Maurice, was built by Saint Martin in one of the first rural parishes of Tours that he founded and where he died in 397. It later became a pilgrimage church, even in the absence of relics of the saint. In 1050, the church of Candes is mentioned as a "collegiate church" and its chapter counts twelve canons.

The old church of Saint-Maurice being ruined, the present church of Saint-Martin de Candes was built between 1175 and the middle of the 13th century. The construction work was spread over several decades, a modest period considering the importance of the building whose architecture is largely inspired by the Western Gothic style. It is characterized by a very rich sculpted decoration that adorns its transept and its nave, but especially by a monumental porch that opens onto the north side of the latter. The addition, in the 15th century after the Hundred Years' War, of devices making this collegiate church one of the rare fortified churches of Touraine, reinforces its singularity. This did not prevent it from suffering serious damage during the Wars of Religion. Two earthquakes, causing significant damage a little more than a century apart, imposed large-scale repair and reconstruction campaigns, but the restoration work undertaken in the second half of the 19th century was very severely criticized: some historians even spoke of "vandalism". However, it is still considered as "the second most beautiful religious building in Indre-et-Loire after the Saint-Gatien cathedral in Tours". Since the French Revolution, Saint-Martin de Candes has lost its status as a collegiate church, even if this denomination remains in common parlance; it remains a parish church.

The study of this building, the chronology of its construction, its architecture and the interpretation of its decoration, particularly complex, is still in progress at the beginning of the 21st century: the written sources on which to rely are rare and the stages of its construction, intertwined in space and time, are difficult to interpret. The collegiate church, which was visited by Prosper Mérimée in 1836, was classified as a historical monument in the 1840 list. Several elements of its furniture are also protected.