The Church of Saint-Aignan (french: Collégiale Saint-Aignan) is a collegiate church in the Bourgogne quarter of Orléans on the north bank of the Loire, France. The church is dedicated to Anianus, a 5th-century bishop of Orléans, who, according to legend, persuaded

Attila the Hun Attila (, ; ), frequently called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in March 453. He was also the leader of a tribal empire consisting of Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans, and Bulgars, among others, in Central and Ea ...

not to sack the city. According to

Gregory of Tours Gregory of Tours (30 November 538 – 17 November 594 AD) was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours, which made him a leading prelate of the area that had been previously referred to as Gaul by the Romans. He was born Georgius Florenti ...

, there was a basilica with a shrine to Anianus where Bishop Namatius was buried after his death in 587. A monastery dedicated to Anianus existed in the first half of the 7th century, because in 651 its abbot, Leodebodus, left to found a new monastery at Fleury on land donated by King Clovis II. According to the '' Chronicle of Fredegar'', written in the middle of the century, the shrine of Anianus was comparable in importance to that of Saint

Martin of Tours Martin of Tours ( la, Sanctus Martinus Turonensis; 316/336 – 8 November 397), also known as Martin the Merciful, was the third bishop of Tours. He has become one of the most familiar and recognizable Christian saints in France, heralded as the ...

. Queen Balthild (died 680) supported reform there by introducing the rule of Benedict and that of the Irish missionary

Columbanus Columbanus ( ga, Columbán; 543 – 21 November 615) was an Irish missionary notable for founding a number of monasteries after 590 in the Frankish and Lombard kingdoms, most notably Luxeuil Abbey in present-day France and Bobbio Abbey in pr ...

. By the 9th century, the abbacy at Saint-Aignan was the "virtual hereditary possession of a noble family", the counts of Orléans. During the reign of Louis the Pious, Count Odo I (died 834) tried to confiscate all the churches in the Orléanais and usurp the abbacy of Saint-Aignan. Mid-century, control of the monastery passed to the bishops, who also controlled the countship, and later in the century to the Robertian dynasty. To historians of this period, urban Saint-Aignan is more obscure than its rural daughter house at Fleury. In the ''Illatio sancti Benedicti'', composed between 1010 and 1018,

Theodoric of Fleury Theodoric is a Germanic given name. First attested as a Gothic name in the 5th century, it became widespread in the Germanic-speaking world, not least due to its most famous bearer, Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. Overview The name ...

recounts a legend then current at Fleury. When some Vikings attacked Fleury by sailing down the Loire, the relics of

Benedict of Nursia Benedict of Nursia ( la, Benedictus Nursiae; it, Benedetto da Norcia; 2 March AD 480 – 21 March AD 548) was an Italian Christian monk, writer, and theologian who is venerated in the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Orient ...

were brought to Saint-Aignan for safekeeping. The monks there sued to keep them, but by a miracle they were sailed back down the frozen river to Fleury when the danger was past. The monastery of Saint-Aignan was rededicated in 1029. At the time its main altar was jointly dedicated to Saints Peter and Anianus, while the altar in the choir was dedicated to Anianus alone, whose

relic In religion, a relic is an object or article of religious significance from the past. It usually consists of the physical remains of a saint or the personal effects of the saint or venerated person preserved for purposes of veneration as a tangi ...

s lay in the

crypt A crypt (from Latin ''crypta'' "vault") is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, sarcophagi, or religious relics. Originally, crypts were typically found below the main apse of a chur ...

below it. There were twelve minor altars lining the nave, dedicated to saints of both local and universal importance, but the six local saints whose relics the church possessed did not have any altars, liturgies or hagiographies at all. Shortly after this date, the bones of Saint Euspicius were transferred to Saint-Mesmin de Micy. In the 1070s, an anonymous monk of Saint-Aignan composed the ''Miracula sancti Aniani'', a collection of stories of miracles performed by Anianus. In 1661, a monk of Saint-Aignan, Robert Hubert, published a collection of documents from the history of Saint-Aignan. Many of these he had forged and they have misled historians ever since.

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