Chêne chapelle
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The Chêne chapelle (lit. "chapel oak") is an oak tree located in Allouville-Bellefosse in
Seine-Maritime Seine-Maritime () is a department of France in the Normandy region of northern France. It is situated on the northern coast of France, at the mouth of the Seine, and includes the cities of Rouen and Le Havre. Until 1955 it was named Seine-Inféri ...
,
Normandy Normandy (; french: link=no, Normandie ; nrf, Normaundie, Nouormandie ; from Old French , plural of ''Normant'', originally from the word for "northman" in several Scandinavian languages) is a geographical and cultural region in Northwestern ...
, France.


Description

The oak tree is between 800Atlas Obscura - The Chapel Oak
/ref> and 1,200''Petit Futé'' - Le Chêne chapelle
 years old. It is high and its base has a circumference of . Its hollow trunk is used as the walls of the two
chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common type ...
s, which were built there in 1696 and are still used: ''Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix'' ("Our Lady of Peace") and the ''Chambre de l'Ermite'' ("Hermit's room"). A spiral staircase around the trunk provides access to the chapels. When the tree was nearing 500 years of age, it was struck by lightning; the resulting fire burned slowly through the center and hollowed the tree out. The local Abbot Du Detroit and the village priest, Father Du Cerceau, claimed that the lightning striking and hollowing the tree was an event that had happened with holy purpose. So they built a place of pilgrimage devoted to the Virgin Mary in the hollow. In later years, the chapel above was added, as was the staircase. During the
French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are conside ...
, the tree became an emblem of the old system of governance and tyranny as well as the church that aided and abetted it: a crowd descended upon the village, intent on burning the tree to the ground. However, a local whose name is lost renamed the oak the "Temple of Reason" and as such it became a symbol of the new ways of thinking and was spared. Today, a number of measures are necessary in order to counter problems caused by the age of the tree: poles shore up the weight of some branches, and wooden shingles have been used to cover areas of the tree that have lost their bark; still, part of its trunk is already dead. Twice a year, mass is celebrated in the oak. The oak is the site of a pilgrimage on August 15 (
Assumption of Mary The Assumption of Mary is one of the four Marian dogmas of the Catholic Church. Pope Pius XII defined it in 1950 in his apostolic constitution '' Munificentissimus Deus'' as follows: We proclaim and define it to be a dogma revealed by ...
).


Protection

The Notre-Dame-de-la-Paix chapel has been classified since 1932 as a ''
monument historique ''Monument historique'' () is a designation given to some national heritage sites in France. It may also refer to the state procedure in France by which National Heritage protection is extended to a building, a specific part of a building, a col ...
'' by the
French Ministry of Culture The Ministry of Culture (french: Ministère de la Culture) is the ministry of the Government of France in charge of national museums and the . Its goal is to maintain the French identity through the promotion and protection of the arts (visua ...
.


Gallery

Chnedallouville2.jpg, Chnedallouville3.jpg, Chnedallouville4.jpg, Chnedallouville5.jpg, Chnedallouville7.jpg, Chêned'allouville09.jpg, Chêned'allouville10.jpg,


Other chapel oaks

Other chapel oaks exist in France: * in
Saint-Sulpice-le-Verdon Saint-Sulpice-le-Verdon () is a former commune in the Vendée department in the Pays de la Loire region in western France. On 1 January 2016, it was merged into the new commune of Montréverd.Vendée Vendée (; br, Vande) is a department in the Pays de la Loire region in Western France, on the Atlantic coast. In 2019, it had a population of 685,442.
* in Villedieu-la-Blouère,
Maine-et-Loire Maine-et-Loire () is a department in the Loire Valley in the Pays de la Loire region in Western France. It is named after the two rivers, Maine and the Loire. It borders Mayenne and Sarthe to the north, Loire-Atlantique to the west, Indre-et ...
"Chapelle Saint Joseph du Chêne" (blog entry)
.


See also

* Tree house *
List of individual trees The following is a list of notable trees. Trees listed here are regarded as important or specific by their historical, national, locational, natural or mythological context. The list includes actual trees located throughout the world, as well as ...


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Chene chapelle Monuments historiques of Seine-Maritime Individual oak trees Chapels in France Tourist attractions in Seine-Maritime Individual trees in France