SAINTES. - Ancient diocese and city, seat of the subprefecture of Charente-Maritime in France. It is the ancient "Mediolanum Santonum," capital of the Santones (whence its present name), one of the cities richest in Roman monuments of ancient Aquitaine (triumphal arch in honor of Tiberius, called the arch of Germanicus; Roman amphitheater).
It was destroyed by the barbarians, rebuilt, and was conquered by Pepin, then passed to the kings of France. Sacked in 1330 by Charles of Alençon, it was ceded to the English by the Treaty of Brétigny in 1360 and retaken in 1371 by Du Guesclin. It suffered during the wars of religion, the Revolution, and the bombardments of 1944.
Christianity at S. is attested by the list of its bishops, which begins with Eutropius, who seems to belong to the second half of the 4th century. On his tomb there soon arose, along with veneration, an oratory, restored in the 6th century by Bishop Leontius II of Bordeaux, as is recalled by Venantius Fortunatus (Carm., I, 13). At the end of the same century Bishop Palladius erected in the city a basilica into which he transferred the relics of St. Eutropius. On that occasion two abbots, in opening the sarcophagus, believed they recognized traces of a blow from an axe on the bishop's skull. Gregory of Tours (In gloria Martyrum, 55) points out that until then "non aderat historia passionis." The sarcophagus with the inscription evrnopivs rediscovered at S. in 1843 cannot be the one seen by Gregory of Tours (E. Le Blant, Inscriptions chrétiennes de la Gaule, I, Paris 1856, no. 579).
The composition of his passion is found in a 13th-century manuscript that repeats the accounts of Venantius Fortunatus and Gregory of Tours (Catal. Hagiograph. Paris., II, p. 223), and in another manuscript of which the Bollandists have reproduced some fragments, a pious romance deriving from the Liber Calixtinus or S. Jacobi of the 12th century. This Passio, without historical value, is more or less directly influenced by that of St. Dionysius (cf. B. De Gaffier, Les sources de la Passion de st Eutrope de S. dans le « Liber sancti Jacobi », in Anal. Bolland., 69 [1951], pp. 57-66).
After Eutropius are listed: Ambrose; Bibianus, commemorated on 28 Aug. in the Hieronymian Martyrology: for him Bishop Eusebius between 533-50 erected a basilica finished by Leontius II of Bordeaux (Venantius Fortunatus, Carm., I, 12); Peter, who was at the Council of Orléans of 511; Troianus, buried near Bibianus, known to Gregory of Tours (In gloria confessorum, 58); Eusebius, who took part in the Councils of Orléans of 533 and 549; of Emerius Gregory of Tours also speaks (Historia Francorum, IV, 26). Bishop Palladius in 586 sent a priest to Rome to obtain relics, and Gregory the Great sent him a letter (Jaffé-Wattenbach, 1430-31); Odebertus was at the Council of Paris of 614; Leontius at the Council of Clichy of 628; Agnebertus at the Council of Bordeaux (673-75); Ato, who was first abbot of St. Hilary of Poitiers, at the end of the 8th century; Freculphus was bishop ca. the year 864.
Later, among the bishops of S. are remembered the cardinals R. Perrauld (1503-1505), F. Soderini (1516-44), C. de Bourbon (1548), then archbishop of Rouen, P.-L. de La Rochefoucauld-Bayers (v.; 1782-92), killed by the revolutionaries in Paris on 2 Sept. 1792, beatified in 1926, who closes with his sacrifice the list of the bishops of S., since the diocese was suppressed by the Revolution and under the Concordat its territory passed to the diocese of La Rochelle (v.).
The church of St. Peter, the ancient cathedral, was rebuilt after a fire between 1117-27 by Bishop Peter de Confolens; a reconstruction was begun in 1450 that was devastated in 1568 by the Huguenots; the central nave was redone between 1585-95. The facade, from the end of the 15th century, has a Gothic portal with statuettes of St. Eutropius, St. Louis, etc., and the bell tower is of the same period; the interior is divided into three naves by cylindrical pillars, nine chapels open onto the ambulatory, and to the south of the church a part of the 13th-century cloister remains. The church of St. Eutropius, founded at the end of the 6th century by Bishop Palladius, was rebuilt in the 11th century and consecrated in 1096 by Pope Urban II; Louis XI in 1478 carried out many restorations there and built the bell tower. The nave was destroyed in 1803; the present one consists of the ancient Romanesque choir, while the present 15th-century one has replaced the original apse. The crypt extends beneath the transept and the choir; the apse is surrounded by an ambulatory with three chapels. In a bull of Nicholas V of 1451 it is said that the cathedral of S. is the second church dedicated to St. Peter. The church of St. Palladius is of the 12th-13th century. A barracks occupies the site of the monastery of the ancient abbey "des Dames," founded in 1047 by Geoffrey Martel, count of Anjou, on the ruins of a previous monastic building founded by Palladius at the end of the 6th century. The ancient abbey church Ste Marie-des-Dames survives, restored, today a parish. The 12th-century facade has two levels, with a portal decorated with the representation of the divine hand borne by angels, the divine lamb with the symbols of the Evangelists, the 24 elders, the massacre of the innocents. The square 12th-century bell tower rises at the height of the transept. A circular 12th-century baptismal font is preserved. Behind a modern altar is the tomb of St. Eutropius and nearby that of St. Eustella. The facade was erected in 1831.
Bibliography4 works
Enrico Josi