Sergeac, a town in the canton of Montignac en Sarladais, is bounded, to the west and northeast, by the Vézère and crossed, from the east to the west, by a stream called the Signole. It has prehistoric stations and sites, in particular that of Les Roches.
Sergeac, once one of the main establishments of the Templars in Sarladais, became, with the suppression of the order (1307), a commandery of Malta.
In 1280, Hélie Rudel I, Lord of Pons, Lord of Bergerac and Montignac, etc., sold to Brother Géraud Lavergne, tutor of the houses of the Temple, in the diocese of Périgueux, all income, products, common and other duties that ' he had in the town of Sergeac, a certain expanse of land around the house of the Temple of Sergeac, with all the jurisdiction in the places delimited by the deed, for the sum of two hundred livres tournois, and a gold marbotin suitable, as a sign of high justice, payable to the Lord of Montignac and the Grand Master of the Temple overseas by the collector of Sergeac or any other.
This act sufficiently proves that the house of Sergeac had already existed for some time.
1. - Departmental Archives of the Basses-Pyrénées, E 611, folios 66-67.
- Departmental Archives of the Dordogne, E, Hautefort, n ° 17. The tutor would have the knowledge and prosecution of all civil and criminal causes and the right to punish by mutilation or beating, or to convert these penalties into a financial fine, etc. . But the Lord of Montignac retained all the military strongholds existing in the land sold and their homage and total jurisdiction over the Mas de Port.
In the first months of 1305, and consequently more than twenty-four years after this sale, Renaud de Pons IV, son and heir of Hélie Rudel, found himself no longer in agreement with Géraud Lavergne and made a treaty with he, by which he ratified the sale made by his father, for three hundred and fifty pounds of small black tournaments and the golden marbotin of fit, stipulated with some other unimportant reservations.
We still see in the village of Sergeac the house of the old commandery and, about a kilometer away, a vast enclosure closed by walls called the Commandery. Between this place and the village, there is a very beautiful carved stone cross, listed among the historical monuments, called the cross of the Commandery. We see depicted Jesus on the cross, the Virgin, a knight holding a sword, a kneeling monk holding an armorial crest, salamanders, Saint Michael the Archangel, etc.
The goods belonging to the commanders of Condat, in the commune of Sergeac, were sold nationally on April 25, 1793. The purchaser was Antoine Ferregaudie for 3,125 francs.
The church of Sergeac has in plan the usual form of the churches of the Templars. It consists of a single nave, subdivided into three parts, with a flat apse. It seems to have been built in the 12th century. The apse or choir, barrel vaulted, was decorated on its north and south interior lateral faces with a series of three arches falling on two corner pilasters and on two intermediate columns, it was lit by three small windows one by one. east, one to the north and one to the south. This arrangement was modified by the addition in the 15th century, on the north side, of a small chapel dedicated to Saint Peter, which required the removal of the small window, the opening of an arched bay and the walling of the parts of remaining arches.
2. By M. de Roumejoux, Bulletin of the Historical and Archaeological Society of Périgord, volume XXIV, 1897, pages 98-95.
The site available for the establishment of this chapel was also quite small, the builder, to increase its small width, he deemed essential to demean the primitive wall on which it was based.
The apse has its floor raised by two steps above the other two sections of the nave and is separated from them by a triumphal arch supported by two pilasters decorated with tall twin columns with historiated capitals.
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