Church of Our Lady, Chambly

The church of Notre-Dame de Chambly is a Catholic parish church located in the heart of the city of Chambly, France. According to tradition, the impetus for its construction was given by Saint Louis, when he stayed in the city in 1248. The construction work was apparently not started right away, but only around 1260. It began with the choir and ended with the nave around 1280. The choir and its chapels are conservative for the time and display a radiant gothic style at its peak, as at the time of the construction of the Sainte-Chapelle, but the windows of the transept and the nave indicate the late radiant style. At the same time, the beautiful homogeneity of the church as a whole, the coherence of the plan and the absence of any signs of interruption in the work indicate a rapid progress of the construction, and allow us to conclude that it was completed around 1280. With a length of 53 m and a width of 20 m, the church of Chambly represents one of the principal radiating achievements of the region. The edifice seduces by the clarity of its conception, its regularity, its severe elegance and its just proportions. Its plan is not original, but is not repeated in any other radiating church in the region, and its apse is characterized by the multiplication of small diameter shafts between the windows, which present radiating networks without horizontal scansion. The ascent to the heights is suggested as always in the radiant period, but we note the renunciation of certain common procedures of the time, such as the arcatures placed on the window bases, and the triforium. But as a whole, the church of Notre-Dame is a work of quality, and the recognition of its artistic value has motivated a classification as a historical monument by list of 1862, and a complex restoration in the last third of the nineteenth century. Since the French Revolution, the church of Notre-Dame is the only parish church of Chambly. Today it is the center of a large parish grouping fourteen towns and villages, and hosts Eucharistic celebrations every Sunday.