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Last modified: 2021-06-16 by ivan sache
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Flag of Hermes - Image by Olivier Touzeau, 4 January 2021
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The municipality of Hermes (2,504 inhabitants in 2018; 1,172 ha; municipal website) is located 30 km south-east of Beauvais.
Hermes is one of the two documented sites of Neolithic settlement in the lower valley of the Thérain; a dolmen housing the remains of some 400 human beings was excavated in 1837.
The parish priest Hamard found in 1877 an equestrian statue inscribed with Ratumagus; he deduced that a Roman vicus of this name was established there, on a ford on river Thérain, whose bed was much wider than today. In the next years, Hamard and an other parish priest, Renet, excavated a Merovingian necropolis.
In the Middle Ages, Hermes belonged to the neighboring Cistercian abbey of Froidmont, founded in 1134 as a daughter of Ourscamp. Mons Hermarum, probably referring to an old sanctuary dedicated to Roman god Hermes, was mentioned in 1143; the name of the place was shortened to Harmae in 1170.
Catherine de Clermont, who would subsequently marry Louis, Count of Blois, ordered in 1187 the erection of a fortress in Hermes. Upset by this attempt to challenge his power, Philippe de Dreux, bishop of Beauvais, soon ordered the destruction of the fortress. Rebuilt, the fortress became a den of rascals during the Hundred Years' War and the peasant uprising known as Grande Jacquerie, to be eventually destroyed in 1431.
The flag of Hermes (photo) is white with the municipal logo.
The logo features the spire of the St. Vincent parish church, which was erected in 1927 in the aftermath of the collapse, in 1919, of the old Romanesque spire (11th century). In the logo's lower part is represented the slalom basin established for the practice of kayak in 1991, one year after the foundation of the Hermes Canoë Kayak (HCK) sport club.
[Municipal website]
