Abbatiale Saint-Gervais de Bourg-Moyen

About

In the middle of the Middle Ages, the Saint-Gervais abbey constituted the chapel internal to the abbey of Notre-Dame de Bourg-Moyen, located in Blois, in the centre of France. Founded in the 11th century, it was destroyed between 1273 and 1274 according to the will of the Count of Blois, John I, who wished to offer a new establishment to the monks of the Order of the Preachers: the convent of the Jacobins.

A chapel dedicated to Saint Gervais du Mans, attested to in the 12th century, would have been established within the abbey of Notre-Dame de Bourg-Moyen. Attached to the religious heritage of his territory, Count Jean I of Blois-Châtillon bought the residences around the abbey of Saint-Gervais to the bourgeois Renaud Tupin (who gave his name to rue de la Tupinière) and ordered in 1273 the construction of a new building in place of it, which he gave in April 1274 to the Dominican monks in order to found there the convent of the Jacobins. Thus, the preaching brothers, who were established in Blois later than the monks neighbouring Bourg-Moyen and Saint-Laumer and with the support of the Count, were targets of rivalry on the part of other Catholics as early as the end of the 15th century, the first fruits of the Wars of Religions.