Edified in the 10th and 11th centuries. The main interest of the Saint-Pé la Moraine chapel lies not in its architecture, however, but in its exceptional decoration (sculptures, reuse…).
Chapel of Saint-Pierre or Saint-Pé-de-la-Moraine
This pretty chapel is located on a moraine – a lateral glacial deposit – of the Larboust glacier.
Although it was altered in the late Middle Ages, Saint-Pé-de-la-Moraine, built in a mixture of limestone, granite, schist and salvaged antique materials, is representative of the early Romanesque style in the mountainous Comminges of the Middle Ages, which drew on its rich Gallo-Roman heritage. The chapel also features a number of cinerary trough lids, or funerary urns, with slightly less conventional representations. On the chevet buttress, particularly on the slab at its base, the sculptor has added attributes (pottery and a series of tools) to the usual simple busts embodying the deceased. The intention was certainly to evoke their professional activity.
But the building was built in the middle of an area where traces of occupation go back well beyond this period. Excavations have revealed that the chapel lies at the heart of a network of Neolithic burial sites.
Inside, the pebble paving, probably contemporary with the erection of the chapel, features a fish in one place, a Christian symbol dating back to the origins of Christianity.
Also worth seeing: the altarpiece, full of colour, with its trompe-l’oeil paintings. The motifs correspond to the ornamental vocabulary of 17th-century altarpieces. Listed as a Historic Monument, it dates from 1682, but its statues probably date from earlier (Peter, the chapel’s patron saint, and Saints Blaise and James).
