The Saint-Etienne church of Pépieux, in the Aude, 30 km north-west of Narbonne, dates in its present form from the 14th century.
However, previous buildings had been erected, victims like the village of the damage caused by the crusade against the Albigensians then the Hundred Years War in this troubled region that is the Minervois.
Thus, in 1355, after repair work dating from 1274 when it was reunited with the goods of the chapter of the cathedral of Narbonne, the church was set on fire by the troops of the Black Prince (the thread of the King of England).
It was rebuilt in 1356: the frame was made with wood from the Quillan forest. For the rest, it has a single very wide nave with chapels between the buttresses, a choir and vaulted apses opening onto the nave. The style is from Languedoc Gothic. For reasons of economy, the vaults of the nave are replaced by ceilings formed by purlins resting on the transverse arches. In the nineteenth century, however, brick vaults were built giving back its true dimension to the whole (although simple in design, the church is indeed 40 m long but suffered from these architectural tricks supposed to save the cost of the building site). We observe that the windows, having certainly been enlarged, are still mullioned.
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