Saint Vaast Church, Verberie

The church of Saint-Vaast de Saint-Vaast-de-Longmont is a Catholic parish church located in Saint-Vaast-de-Longmont, a commune of the Oise department. Romanesque in style, this church is architecturally closer to that of Rhuis than to that of Morienval, and its construction began around the year 1100. It was associated with a priory dependent on the provost of Angicourt and the domain of the abbey of Saint-Vaast. Moreover, the patronage of the church is an indicator of the age of the parish. The primitive church, which was probably not the first church in this place, consisted of a rectangular nave without vaulting, a first choir bay, now vaulted with ogives, half as wide as the nave, and a cul-de-sac chevet. With the exception of the latter, this building has been preserved to the present day, although it has undergone some modifications. The first ones took place only a few decades after the construction, around 1120/1130, and concerned the addition of a side aisle and a chapel to the north, quite similar to the choir of the time. Shortly before the middle of the century, the north and south facades were reinforced with new buttresses in their centers, and the portal was rebuilt. Then, around 1160/1170, the original chevet was demolished and replaced by a second choir bay, also square in plan, and a new hemicycle chevet was built. It differs from the first one notably by its quadripartite ribbed vault, and is pierced by three bays. In the 16th century, the north aisle was almost entirely rebuilt, the bays of the south facade were redone, and a buttress at the southeast end was rebuilt. The porch, which unfortunately partly hides the western portal, was added at an undetermined time. This basket-handle portal is surmounted by a quadruple archivolt in diamond point, of a rather large scale. The bell tower rises above the first bay of the choir and is remarkable for the refined decoration of the geminated bays on each side of the two upper floors. They have carved capitals and colonnettes. On the second floor, the bays were blocked in 1669 for reasons of stability, which was not conducive to aesthetics. The reason for this was probably the weight of the octagonal stone spire, surrounded by four pyramidons at the corners. The bell tower contains only one bell, dating from 1789. The church was classified as a historical monument by decree of May 25, 1883.