A former Benedictine priory of the 11th century, the church of Saint Jacques is dependent on the abbey of Saint Jouin de Marnes.
Built under the name Saint Jacques Le Majeur, this church is regularly attended by pilgrims of St Jacques de Compostela called the Jacquets.
This pilgrimage gained momentum in the 11th century with the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula by Christians on Muslims.
Clisson was already on the Nantes-Parthenay route at that time and the church of Saint Jacques was a relay for pilgrims.
The Romanesque church of Saint Jacques dates from the end of the 12th century.
It currently has only its nave; its apse, transept and bell tower were destroyed in the nineteenth century.
• The building is now a roughly rectangular building facing west to east, supported by five glacis buttresses.
• The west-facing façade is pierced by a pointed arch, recessed in a larger arch, and above it is a narrow, open window.
• The end of the nave has a large pointed arch opening, now walled, an ancient triumphal arch that gave access to the square of the transept.
Originally, this Romanesque church, surrounded by a cemetery, was quite large and consisted of a nave, two transept arms, all covered with simple panelling, a vaulted apse and a cubic bell tower covered in tiles and containing three bells.
• The building contained two chapels, one on each side of the triumphal arch; the sacristy was behind the bedside.
• The structure, rather curious, now bears a few coarse ornaments and is noticed by entrails that seem to come out of the mouths of crocodiles, sculpted at each of their ends. On one of the entrances, the date of 1583, the year in which the frame was laid, in replacement of an older one, is carved from wood.
• In the nave was the altar of the Dying Brotherhood. His altarpiece was decorated with a painting depicting a sick man lying on his bed, his wife, a devil (with his pitchfork), held in respect by Saint Michael (armed with a lance) and a priest. It was necessary to give a shield to enter the brotherhood of the Dying.
 At the time of the death of a confrere, the bell sounded at Saint James: everyone immediately left his work and prayed for the unfortunate sufferer. When a confrere had died, one of his companions, dressed in a black dalmatic decorated with heads and bones of death waving two bells, went to all the crossroads, announcing aloud the death and the hour of the funeral of the deceased.
 The church of St Jacques became parish in the 15th century. The parish of St Jacques was not very large and stopped at the main gate of the closed city of Clisson (St Jacques gate).
On May 29, 1789, the third state of the parishes of Notre Dame, La Trinité, St Jacques and St Gilles met in the church of St Jacques to write their complaints.
 During the revolutionary period, this church was not burned down. In 1792 it was transformed into a decadal temple, where laws were proclaimed and marriages were celebrated. The statues of saints were replaced by two goddesses painted on wooden boards, one holding a scale and the other holding the book of the law.
Disused at the end of the eighteenth century, the chapel was used for a long time as a depot for ragmen.
In the 19th century, it underwent some destruction (apse and transept)
It has been listed in the Inventory of Historical Monuments since 1941