The Saint Maurice basilica of Épinal was built in the 11th century on the foundations of an older building. Romanesque style, it is remodeled and enlarged from the thirteenth, aisles being added on both sides of the nave. At this time also, the choir is rebuilt, and a new portal overlooking the city is built in the north wall of the nave.
First abbey dedicated to Saint Goëry whose relics with miraculous virtues are then the subject of pilgrimages, it is still in the thirteenth century that it becomes the seat of a chapter of canonesses and that it is dedicated to St. Mauritius.
Featuring a singular 30 m high belfry tower, its material, the pink sandstone of the Vosges, its mixture of styles (at the hinge between Romanesque and Gothic), its dimensions (the nave is 14 m high), its grandstands served by stairs in turrets visible from the outside, also amaze the visitor.
Inside still, we can admire a painting by Nicolas Bellot depicting the Passion (XVII), the necropolis where the old canonesses, reliquaries.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).