The Church of Sainte-Radegonde (french: Église de Sainte-Radegonde) is a medieval

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy *Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lette ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

Poitiers Poitiers (, , , ; Poitevin: ''Poetàe'') is a city on the River Clain in west-central France. It is a commune and the capital of the Vienne department and the historical centre of Poitou. In 2017 it had a population of 88,291. Its agglomerat ...

, France, dating from the 6th century. It takes its name from the

Frankish Frankish may refer to: * Franks, a Germanic tribe and their culture ** Frankish language or its modern descendants, Franconian languages * Francia, a post-Roman state in France and Germany * East Francia, the successor state to Francia in Germany ...

queen and

nun A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent.''The Oxford English Dictionary'', vol. X, page 599. The term is o ...

Radegund Radegund ( la, Radegundis; also spelled ''Rhadegund, Radegonde, or Radigund''; 520 – 13 August 587) was a Thuringian princess and Frankish queen, who founded the Abbey of the Holy Cross at Poitiers. She is the patron saint of several churches ...

, who was buried in the church. Considered a saint, the church became a place of

pilgrimage A pilgrimage is a journey, often into an unknown or foreign place, where a person goes in search of new or expanded meaning about their self, others, nature, or a higher good, through the experience. It can lead to a personal transformation, aft ...

by those devoted to her heavenly intercession. The current church, constructed from the 11th to 12th centuries, was built in a combination of Romanesque and

Angevin Gothic The Plantagenet style or Angevine Gothic is an architectural style of western France, mainly of the second half of 12th and the 13th century. By Eugène Viollet-le-Duc it was called "Style ogivale Plantagenêt", something like "Plantagenet Ribs Sty ...

architectural styles.

History

The church was established as a

mortuary A morgue or mortuary (in a hospital or elsewhere) is a place used for the storage of human corpses awaiting identification (ID), removal for autopsy, respectful burial, cremation or other methods of disposal. In modern times, corpses have cus ...

chapel A chapel is a Christian place of prayer and worship that is usually relatively small. The term has several meanings. Firstly, smaller spaces inside a church that have their own altar are often called chapels; the Lady chapel is a common ty ...

in the 6th century to hold the remains of the nuns of St. Mary Abbey, later the Abbey of the Holy Cross, which had been founded in Poitiers by Radegund in 552 as the first monastery for women in the

Frankish Empire Francia, also called the Kingdom of the Franks ( la, Regnum Francorum), Frankish Kingdom, Frankland or Frankish Empire ( la, Imperium Francorum), was the largest post-Roman barbarian kingdom in Western Europe. It was ruled by the Franks dur ...

. Due to its function, the chapel was built outside the city walls, which gave it its initial name, the Church of St. Mary outside the Walls (french: Sainte-Marie-hors-les-murs). Upon Radegund's death and subsequent burial there in 587, however, the chapel was renamed to be placed under her

patronage Patronage is the support, encouragement, privilege, or financial aid that an organization or individual bestows on another. In the history of art, arts patronage refers to the support that kings, popes, and the wealthy have provided to artists su ...

The remains of the saintly foundress were exhumed by order of Abbess Béliarde in 1012 for public veneration, and the entire church was rebuilt after a major fire in 1083. The reconstruction expanded the structure, including both a

chevet In architecture, an apse (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an ''exedra''. In ...

and the foundations of a bell tower when it was dedicated in 1099. By this time, the chapel had become both a

parish A parish is a territorial entity in many Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest, often termed a parish priest, who might be assisted by one or m ...

and

collegiate church In Christianity, a collegiate church is a church where the daily office of worship is maintained by a college of canons: a non-monastic or "secular" community of clergy, organised as a self-governing corporate body, which may be presided over by a ...

, staffed by a community of canons whose

prior Prior (or prioress) is an ecclesiastical title for a superior in some religious orders. The word is derived from the Latin for "earlier" or "first". Its earlier generic usage referred to any monastic superior. In abbeys, a prior would be l ...

was appointed by the abbess.

Description

The church is built in the shape of a

Latin cross A Latin cross or ''crux immissa'' is a type of cross in which the vertical beam sticks above the crossbeam, with the three upper arms either equally long or with the vertical topmost arm shorter than the two horizontal arms, and always with a mu ...

. This was a style which became popular in the 11th century, particularly for pilgrimage

shrine A shrine ( la, scrinium "case or chest for books or papers"; Old French: ''escrin'' "box or case") is a sacred or holy sacred space, space dedicated to a specific deity, ancestor worship, ancestor, hero, martyr, saint, Daemon (mythology), daem ...

s. It consists of a central nave with radiating chapels. This allowed for both private space for prayer by the clergy of the church and open space for the pilgrims visiting it.

Organ

The church has had a series of organs since the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire a ...

. After the devastation of the church during the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...

, it was not until 1894 that an organ was again installed in the church. Though it survived damage caused by bombardment during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, this organ was irreparably damaged by poorly done renovations in 1991. It was replaced in 1997 by an entirely new organ.

Architecture

The church comprises a low relief porch of the eleventh century, a Pieta seventeenth century and the capitals of the Romanesque choir. A series of 16

stained glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

windows partially dating from the 13th century recounts the life of Radegund. They were restored in the 19th century.

References

Sources

Sainte-Radegonde
Poitiers' town hall website *

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 ...

, ''Glory of the Confessors'', translation by R. Van Dam (Liverpool, 1988) *Gregory of Tours, ''Glory of the Martyrs''; translated by Raymond Van Dam. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004. *Gregory of Tours, ''History of the Franks''; translation by L. Thorpe (Penguin, 1974: many reprints) *

Venantius Fortunatus Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus ( 530 600/609 AD; french: Venance Fortunat), known as Saint Venantius Fortunatus (, ), was a Latin poet and hymnographer in the Merovingian Court, and a bishop of the Early Church who has been venerate ...

,
The Life of the Holy Radegund
'; translation by J. McNamara and J. Halborg * Edwards, Jennifer C. ''Superior Women: Medieval Female Authority in Poitiers' Abbey of Sainte-Croix''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. *Labande-Mailfert, Yvonne & Robert Favreau, eds. ''Histoire de l’abbaye Sainte-Croix de Poitiers: Quatorze siècles de vie monastique''. Poitiers: Société des Antiquaires de l’Ouest, 1986. *Lillich, Meredith Parsons. ''The Armor of Light: Stained Glass in Western France, 1250–1325''. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. {{DEFAULTSORT:Sainte-Radegonde, Church of Roman Catholic churches in Poitiers 11th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in France Former collegiate churches in France Roman Catholic shrines in France Romanesque architecture in France Gothic architecture in France