Saint-Amand-sur-Vire (canton of Torigni-sur-Vire, Manche) Church

    Of the Romanesque church of Saint-Amand, only a fine fully vaulted door in the south wall of the nave has been preserved, which has a lintel decorated with reticulated bonding.
This ornamentation which already figures in the pre-Romanesque art of Normandy, on the gable of Vieux-Pont-en-Auge, at the very beginning of the 11th century, and in a later example in Saint-Jean-le-Thomas, seems to have been sustained through to the end of the century, as the west gables of the two Caen abbey churches are also discretely decorated in this way. The church of Evrecy already had similar devices in the 11th century and it is possible to see here a modest resurgence of the ornamentation of Carolingian buildings, which had all disappeared under the scourge of the Viking invasions. 

Bernard Beck

Bibliography

- Beck, Bernard. - Quand les Normands bâtissaient les églises. Ocep, Coutances, 1981