Chiesa parrocchiale della Conversione di San Paolo

Introd's parish church wears a baroque interior around a Romanesque tower base: a bull of 1176 names an earlier building, a consecrated host sealed into the altar in 1441 became its relic story, and carved wood, a stone vault and a canvas of the Conversion of Saint Paul gave the space its present character.

Why it matters

Few mountain parishes can chain a twelfth-century document, an eleventh-century tower base and a late-baroque furnishing campaign into one readable interior. A church at Introd is named in a papal bull of 1176, and diocesan tradition traced by Mgr Duc and the abbé Hanry organised the community as a parish as early as the seventh or eighth century. Standing on the same plateau as the castle, the church formed the spiritual half of the Sarriod lordship, and its dedication to the Conversion of Saint Paul, less common than a patronal dedication, still headlines the parish's identity and its museum work at Les Combes.

What to notice

The bell tower is the oldest and most legible element: its lower Romanesque section dates to the eleventh century, the structure was raised in the fifteenth century, and the bell cell and tall spire were added afterwards, bringing the tower to twenty-six metres. An old clock was installed around the turn of the seventeenth century, and the iron cross once carried a rooster, the badge of the Gallican allegiance of the Valdostan clergy, until a storm ruined it, an episode recorded by the scholar Robert Berton.

Inside, the plan is a Latin cross with the presbytery slightly raised on its vault. The high altar of the late seventeenth century is carved wood with twisted columns shaped as vine stocks, framing a painting of the conversion of Saint Paul attributed to Giacomo Gnifeta and dated 1695. The church also contains a gilded tabernacle in the form of a small temple, the statues of Saints Peter and Paul, and the side altars dedicated to Our Lady of the Rosary and to Saint Joseph. A square bay against the south wall of the choir keeps the fifteenth-century chapel founded by the Sarriod and dedicated to Saints Catherine and Michael, with its stilted-arch window and door.

Context and history

The building was renewed and reconsecrated on 14 May 1441; lacking the traditional relics, those consecrating placed a consecrated host in the altar, which was found intact two and a half centuries later during restorations in the 1680s, an episode that fixed the church's local reputation. In 1686 an enlargement replaced the wooden ceiling with the present stone vault, the older Gothic altar, itself consecrated in 1441, gave way to the baroque high altar, and the two side altars were raised.

In the early twentieth century the nave was lengthened, the facade joined to the rectory and the entrance moved to the south side; accounts date these works to either 1904 or 1906. Burials inside the church were practised into the eighteenth century, with a record of 22 May 1794 documenting the custom's final phase.