[See also: SAINTS’ LIVES]
Hoepffner, Ernest, and Prosper Alfaric, eds. and trans. La chanson de sainte Foy. Paris: Les Belles
Lettres, 1926. [Facsimile of manuscript, critical edition, introduction, modern French
translation.]
Zaal, Johannes W.B. “A lei francesca” (Sainte Foy, v. 20): étude sur les chansons de saints gallo-
romanes du XIe siècle. Leiden: Brill, 1962.
SAINTES
. An important center in Roman times and capital of the Gaulish Santones, Saintes
(Charente-Maritime) was a bishopric from the 3rd century. It flourished under the dukes
of Aquitaine and passed, with that duchy, to England. Louis IX won a victory over
England here in 1242, and in the Treaty of Saintes (1259) Henry III rescinded his claim
to Normandy. The town passed to English hands again under the Treaty of Brétigny
(1360) but in 1371 was reclaimed by Bertrand du Guesclin.
Little remains of the original late 12th-century cathedral of Saint-Pierre. Under the
direction of three successive bishops (1426–1503), this church was reconstructed in the
Flamboyant Gothic style. Owing to the devastations during the Wars of Religion, it
underwent further (and unfortunate) restorations in the 17th and 18th centuries. The
building has a polygonal apse and a long choir with an ambulatory and radiating chapels.
The transept follows the original Romanesque foundations; the nave is short, and
additional chapels line the south side of the building. At the western entrance to Saint-
Pierre is an unusually large bell-tower porch. The arched molding around the great portal
contains figures of angels, musicians, doctors of the church, saints, and prophets.
The Cluniac priory church of Saint-Eutrope (dedicated 1096), built over the remains of
an early Christian church, was a recommended stopping place for travelers en route to the
pilgrimage church of Santiago de Compostela. The building, divided into upper and
lower sections, was designed to accommodate visitors to the tomb of the city’s first
bishop, housed in the lower church or crypt. The crypt retains its original form. The wide
and squat proportions of the aisles, apse, ambulatory, and radiating chapels convey a
sense of weight and massiveness. In the upper church, part of the ambulatory and apse
were reconstructed in the 15th century in Flamboyant Gothic style; however, the
Romanesque character can still be found in the choir and transept. The columns in the
upper church are surmounted by lions, griffins, tritons, acrobatic figures, and biblical
subjects. In the last years of the 15th century, Louis XI funded the construction of a great
bell tower on the north arm of the transept. The nave was demolished in 1803, and the
original choir now serves this purpose.
Additional medieval buildings in Saintes include the Benedictine Abbaye aux Dames
(11th c. with 15th-c. additions); the remains of a 14th-century Gothic cloister; the church
of Saint-Pallais, which combines Romanesque and Gothic elements; and the Chapelle des
Jacobins (1446), distinguished by an immense Flamboyant Gothic window.
Nina Rowe
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1606