The past of the Notre-Dame-du-Pont Chapel is both simple and illustrious. This chapel is the work of two monks of the Abbaye de la Couronne d'Angoulême, Bertrand de Griffeuille and his disciple Guillaume Robert. They both created no less than twelve small chapels, of the same type, nine of them in Haute-Auvergne.
These pioneering monks certainly brought to our regions a morality (little serfdom in our region) and culture in the broadest sense of time, that is to say, knowing how to cultivate the land, how to work the wood, how to feed, how to care for oneself and how to teach (how to read and write) and the Gospel.
Their works were so successful that the “aura” of these men crossed the boundaries of our province.
They both refused the honours offered them by the Bishop of Clermont and Aymeric de Mercoeur.
Also attached to this chapel is a cartular divided into forty-two paragraphs in Romanesque that Marcellin Boudet published in 1909, the original is in the Vatican library.
Only two chapels of these same founders remain today: the Chapel of the Bridge and Notre-Dame-de-Vavauclaire, near Molompize, as well as the Descalmels site. Bertrand de Griffeuille, who died in Estourotz in extreme poverty, was buried in the Chapel of the Bridge by Guillaume Robert himself, who wanted to be buried next to his master.
Many nobles came to pray at the Bridge before leaving for crusades.
Others became monks to follow Bertrand and Guillaume.
If they were initially protected by Guibert de Marcenat, a native of Saint-Mamet and owner of these lands, Hugues de Fournaules, Hugues Audouin or Aldouys were great protectors of the chapel of the Bridge.
Like the Calmont d'Olt by the gift of the lands of Montmarty and Marine de Beaumarchais de Calvinet, their estate grew and spread throughout the region.