Déols

History

Toponyms revealing the presence of former neolithic dolmens (Grandes and Petites Pierres Folles), near the place where a Gaulish village of the Bituriges was established on the plateau above the resurgent springs of the Montet and the river Indre, then nearby Gallo-Roman vestiges (fanum) confirm the age of Vicus Dolensis or Dolus, moved by the romans next to the antique ford then bridge over the river Indre of the road from Paris to Toulouse. In 469 or 470 the Visigoths defeated the army of the briton king Riothamus at the battle of Déols, the victory carrying with it the supremacy over the district of Berry. But it was only during the Middle Ages that, through the pilgrimage to the tomb of Saint Ludre, whose marble carved sarcophagus brought from Rome in the late IIIrd century stands with the limestone one of his father Saint Léocade in the crypts of the parish church of St Stephen built upon the graves of the roman senator and his son, later, one of the steps on the route from Paris to Santiago de Compostela, then through the lords of Déols and Châteauroux that Déols acquired its significance.

The Benedictine abbey of Our Lady of Déols was founded in 917 by Ebbes the Noble, prince of Déols. He gave his palace, legendarily said to have originally been the one of Saint Ludre, to the monks of the abbey in order to build their monastery and transferred his residence to Châteauroux, where the monks of Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys in Britanny took refuge from Norman raids with the relics of Saint Gildas from 920 to 1008 and founded another abbey under his vocable. The name of the new town comes from Château Raoul, the castle overlooking the river Indre built by his son Raoul about 2 km westward, rebuilt in the 15th c. and, later, seat of the Préfet then departemental assembly. For centuries this change did not affect the prosperity of the place of Déols, which was maintained by the prestige of its abbey, which was rebuilt about 1150 with seven towers, of which only one subsists, on a floorplan that was larger than the cathedral of Bourges; its dependencies, both churches and priories, were extended through seven dioceses.

A gateway facing the old bridge destoyed by a flood in the 17th c. and opposite the city a second one flanked by towers and bearing the city clock survives with the northern part of the old ramparts of the town. The parish church of St Stephen (10th to 16th centuries) has a Romanesque façade and two symetrical crypts containing the ancient Christian tombs of Saint Léocade, who according to the tradition of Limousin was proconsul of subligerian Gaul, and of his son Saint Ludre, the lords of the town in the late IIIrd and early IVth centuries who were baptised by St Ursin and who founded the church of Sainte-Marie-la-Petite, suppressed few years before the Revolution. Some walls of the original funerary chapel from the late 6th c. or 7th c. subsist above the crypt of Saint Ludre, as well as 12th c. frescoes remains and interesting old paintings of the 17th century representing the ancient abbey and the miracle of Déols. In the late 18th c. the church of Saint Germain dating as well from the 10th to 16th c. was not destroyed, as intended for the creation of the new road to Paris, but sold to private owners until now.

In the Middle Ages the head of the family of Déols enjoyed the title of prince and held sway over nearly all Lower Berry, of which the town itself was the capital. The last of the house was Raoul VII, who died in 1177 leaving a three-year-old heiress, Denise. Henry II of England took the child, who represented the inheritance of Déols-Châteauroux, worth more, it was said, than all of Normandy, into his care, and affianced her to one of his barons, Baudoin de Reviers 3rd Earl of Devon and at his death to André de Chauvigny.

In 1187, during the war between Henry II and his sons (Richard the Lionheart, Prince John) and Philip Augustus, the truce declared at Châteauroux was so unexpected that it was attributed to a "miracle of Our Lady of Déols" and published in a Liber miraculorum B. Mariae Dolensis. This influenced the religious devotion of the inhabitants of the region towards the Virgin Mary. The Chapel of Notre-Dame des Miracles built on the north side of the abbey to protect the statue was destroyed in 1833 and the statue was then transported to the church of St Stephen where it is still today.

The abbey church was sacked by the Protestants and burned out in 1568, during the religious wars; not one of the manuscripts from its library has been identified. In 1627 the abbey was suppressed by the agency of Henry II, prince of Condé and of Déols, who received its annual incomes, after the monks were denounced for corruption. With the abbey in ruins, the town declined and was eclipsed by its neighbour.

Present

Today, Déols is the third largest town in the Indre département with 9,000 inhabitants.

Déols has succeeded in creating new dynamism through its economic, sports and cultural activities.

Déols is not only situated on the A20 motorway (250 km south of Paris), but is also on a direct railway line from Paris (2 hours) to Toulouse.

The Châteauroux-Déols "Marcel Dassault" Airport is sited on the northern approach to Déols, where there is also a 5 square kilometre business park.

Personalities