Nos événements

Nestled in the valley of the Ourthe, the church of Barvaux has undergone 3 major changes in the course of its history.

Firstly, the chapel was erected as a perpetual vicariate in 1611 by order of Ernest of Bavaria, Prince-Bishop of Liège and Archbishop of Cologne, and was replaced by a larger church in 1730. Father Lambert de Sy had it built, having found the old chapel in ruins at the beginning of his ministry.

140 years later, a provincial architect found it in the same dilapidated state. Because, in addition to its advanced state of decay, the church of the parish priest de Sy was too narrow to accommodate all the Barvautan communicants (70% of the inhabitants), it was once again decided in the early 1870s to raze it to the ground and rebuild a third version of the sanctuary.

The current version of the Barvaux church, consecrated in 1878, is in the neo-gothic ogival style, in vogue at the end of the 19th century. It is the result of the tenacity of Father Gérard Lambert combined with the significant mobilisation of the population to raise the necessary funds for the work. In the terms of our time, we could speak of a real “crowdfunding” operation!

In addition to these 3 profound metamorphoses, the building has suffered various damages during its recent history. Following the French Revolution, the French “Sans-culottes” threw the “Christ des Bateliers” into the Ourthe; in 1944, by blowing up the nearby bridge, the Germans destroyed the stained-glass windows and window frames: finally, in January 1978, lightning struck the bell tower, which went up in smoke.

Today the church has some beautiful pieces in Russian red oak by the Liège sculptor Olivier Merveille (what remains is in fact the furniture he created in 1878 and which was sold in 1972), beautiful stained glass windows by Louis-Marie Londot, several tombstones which, like the baptismal font of 1608, come from the old church, or an interesting statuary, with a Pietà and a Christ on Calvary from the Mosane school dated 1520-1530. There are also some beautiful modern works of art.

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