Church
The Catholic collegiate church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste and Saint-Jean-l’Evangéliste dates from the 14th century. The original wooden roof was replaced in the 19th century.
The church contains an organ made by the brothers Barthélémy and Honoré Julien from Marseille in 1690. The organ was originally installed in the Couvent des Cordeliers in Avignon and was moved to the church in Roquemaure in 1820. The walnut casing dates from 1820 when the organ was moved.
In 1868 some relics of Saint Valentine were placed in the church after being purchased from Rome by Maximilian Richard, a local dignitary as it was believed that the relics would protect the vines from phylloxera which had ravaged the vineyards in 1866.
Read more about this topic: Roquemaure, Gard
Famous quotes containing the word church:
“The Tories in England had long imagined that they were enthusiastic about the monarchy, the church and beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about rent.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“A State, in idea, is the opposite of a Church. A State regards classes, and not individuals; and it estimates classes, not by internal merit, but external accidents, as property, birth, etc. But a church does the reverse of this, and disregards all external accidents, and looks at men as individual persons, allowing no gradations of ranks, but such as greater or less wisdom, learning, and holiness ought to confer. A Church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“The church is a sort of hospital for men’s souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailor’s Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)