SAINTES. - Ancient diocese and city, seat of the subprefecture of Charente-Maritime in France. It is the ancient "Mediolanum Santonum," capital of the Santones (from which its current name derives), one of the richest cities in Roman monuments of ancient Aquitaine (Tiberius' triumphal arch, known as the Arch of Germanicus; Roman amphitheater).
It was destroyed by barbarians, rebuilt, and then conquered by Pepin. It later passed to the kings of France. Plundered 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 religious wars, the Revolution, and the bombings of 1944.
Christianity in 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. Soon after his tomb, a small oratory arose through veneration, restored in the 6th century by Bishop Leontius II of Bordeaux, as recalled by Venantius Fortunatus (Carm., I, 13). At the end of the same century, Bishop Palladius built a basilica in the city where he transferred the relics of St. Eutropius. On that occasion, two abbots, upon opening the sarcophagus, claimed to recognize traces of an axe blow on the bishop's skull. Gregory of Tours (In gloria Martyrum, 55) emphasizes that until then no passion story had been written about him. The sarcophagus with the inscription *Eutropis* rediscovered in 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 Roman from the *Liber Calixinus* or *S. Jacobi* of the 12th century. This *Passio*, devoid of historical value, is more or less directly influenced by that of St. Denis (cf. B. De Gaiffier, 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, the following bishops are listed: Ambrose; Vivian, commemorated on August 28 in the *Martyrologium Hieronymianum*; to him Bishop Eusebius between 533-50 built a basilica completed by Leontius II of Bordeaux (Venantius Fortunatus, Carm., I, 12); Peter, who attended the Council of Orléans in 511; Trojan, buried near Vivian, known to Gregory of Tours (In gloria confessorum, 58); Eusebius, who took part in the Councils of Orléans in 533 and 549; Emerius is also mentioned by Gregory of Tours (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); Odebert attended the Council of Paris in 614; Leontius the Council of Clichy in 628; Agnebert the Council of Bordeaux (673-75); Ato, who was first abbot of St. Hilary of Poitiers, at the end of the 8th century; Freculf was bishop around the year 864.
Later, among the bishops of S., the cardinals R. Peraud (1503-1505), F. Soderini (1516-44), C. de Bourbon (1548), later archbishop of Rouen, P.-L. de La Rochefoucauld-Bayers (v. 1782-92), killed by revolutionaries in Paris on September 2, 1792, beatified in 1926, close with his sacrifice the list of bishops of S. since the diocese was suppressed by the Revolution and, by the Concordat, its territory passed La Rochelle (v.).
The church of St. Peter, the ancient cathedral, was rebuilt after a fire between 1117-27 by Bishop Peter of Confolens; reconstruction began in 1450 but was devastated in 1568 by the Huguenots; the central nave was rebuilt between 1585-95. The façade, from the late 15th century, has a Gothic portal with statues of St. Eutropius, Louis, etc., and the bell tower is from the same period; the interior is divided into three naves by cylindrical pillars, the ambulatory opens into nine chapels, 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 made many restorations and built the bell tower. The nave was destroyed in 1803; the current one consists of the ancient Romanesque choir, while the current 15th-century one replaced the original apse. The crypt extends beneath the transept and choir, the apse is surrounded by an ambulatory with three chapels. A bull of Nicholas V in 1451 states that the cathedral of S. is the second church dedicated to St. Peter. The church of St. Palladius is from 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 of Ste Marie-des-Dames survives, restored, now a parish church. The 12th-century façade has two levels, with a portal decorated with the representation of the hand of God carried by angels, the Lamb of God with the symbols of the Evangelists, the 24 elders, and the massacre of the innocents. The 12th-century square bell tower rises to the height of the transept. A 12th-century circular baptismal font is preserved. Behind a modern altar is the tomb of St. Eutropius, and nearby that of St. Eustella. The façade was erected in 1831.