The Recevresse, a Fifteenth-Century Oratory

La Recevresse is located in the town of Avioth in the Meuse department, northeast France. The name of this small chapel, which used to stand outside the old cemetery wall, means The Receiver and originated from the pilgrim custom of leaving offerings nearby on the way to church. The theory of Viollet-le-Duc, who thought it might be a lantern of the dead, appears to be abandoned.

This illustration may owe something to the sketches done by architect Émile Boeswillwald at the time he was in charge of the restoration work of the Basilica of Our-Lady of Avioth and the Recevresse, in the early 1840s.^[1]