Church of Autrey

History of D'Autrey, P.D. Mouton, 1868. Translated by Jean Louis Guichard, Autrey les Gray, France. (Please remember English is not Mr. Guichard's first language and he is translating as he learns English).

The Christian religious names to be early established in these countries, according to the Chronicle of Beze, the first church were the ones of Bouhans, Autrey with its dependences, Poyans, Broyes. Already in VI's they were considered ancient. The founder of the present church of Autrey? Its patron saint? Do bad events arrive to this nave?

1. We must say the information are not numerous about the time and the founder of this construction. Only one work speaks about it. It is a compilation of prayers, printed by Mr. Beuraud, Autrey's priest. According to this priest, this church was built by the Lords of Vergy. He add this church was built during the XI's. It is false. The Vergy came there about 1145. The church, built by one of them, must be after this date.

2. The tradition tells the one who got it built was a powerful, warlike, generous, religious lord. Anyone who knows the history of the Vergy's family, it names Hugues Ist, died in 1200. And the style of the church of Autrey, Romanesque in which appears the rib (and the gothic style) announces the end of this century. There are on the front aspics, two characteristic signs: tow half circle of relief stones. The upper represents the sname who tempts Adam and Eve; the lowest, Adam and Eve overwhelmed by their pain. These two symbols have so much analogy with he names of Huges, they are so completely show that his life was erratic, but also praise worthy, the bad spirit who led Marie de Montignon to attack Hugues like it had pushed Eve to attack Adam and the second shows Hugues and Marie overwhelmed by their lapse like our first parents after theirs.

When Hugues got the church of Collonges built, one of Poyans, their choir of the one of Mantoche, he put there (that was the usual practice), his escutcheon, neither inside or outside, but there are his two signs on the front on which show with a so appropriated manner that was happened to its founders that we are allowed to think that Hugues wanted to wash his lapse off by a charitable work and to give it a stamp of repentance which should remain during several centuries.

Really, these three naves are large, solid and incites to the meditation. The building does not change through the centuries, except entering to the right, a chapel was built in 1636, endowed by Jeanne Bobelet.

3. The shapes of the lowest windows were changed (they were like the upper one, in Romanesque style). In the nave, in front of the altar Saint Anne, near the first pew, we find a burial vault in which there are still the bones and the caskets of two persons. This church contains several burial.

4. Saint Didier is the Parton Saint of the parish. The ASaint, called Desirerius in Latin, is named in French Didier, Dizier, Disir, Deserby. According to the writers and the records of the priory left at Vesoul he endured the martyr in 264 and not after 400. The church of Autrey would have been built after his death. It did never had other patron saint and owned his relics since 1315.

5. In 1417, when Guillaume of Vergy was prisoner at Douai under the orders of Louis XI, the interior of the church was devastated. In 1631, according to the records left at Vesoul, the alters were knocked down, the stalls given by the religious of Verfontaine and set up in the choir were destroyed and even the monstrance was robbed. Later, Paul Bernard FAVIERE got the right altar built, which bears his escutcheon, and other persons got the left one built.

In 1651, the church of Autrey owned a well worked statue of Saint Didier, made of silver, one foot high, on a pedestal, in which there were authentic relics of the saint. It was lost in 1793, during the Revolution. In 1535, Miss Perron got a burial dug near the high alter. Under Mr. Clerc, a roof of tiles took the place of the roof made of stone (flat and tile shaped stones) was put and the small upper window, which were hidden, were opened.

Under Mr. Deschamp, the interior and the exterior of this church were well restored. The small pillars were rise where they lacked, (perhaps since 1447).