Eglise Notre-Dame à Sainte-Radegonde

Periods of construction: 11th century, 12th century

By “Radegondian place of worship”, we mean any place where Ste Radegonde is or was the object of a characterized cult – this place was only part of a sanctuary dedicated to another saint. In such a case, the presence of the one who is venerated there is materialized by an altar, a reliquary, a statue, a stained glass window, etc.
Radegonde was a princess whose family was massacred by Clotaire 1st, son of Clovis who took her prisoner before forcibly marrying her, who against her will became queen of the Franks. As soon as she could, she hastened to flee her husband and enter the convent, thus renouncing her royal status. In Poitiers, she founded a monastery which took the name of Holy Cross when she received from the Byzantine emperor a relic of the True Cross. . She retained great authority until her death in 587 in the region, many churches of which are dedicated to her.
Thanks to the cartulary of the abbey of Saint-Etienne, we know that the church already existed in the second half of the 11th century, because, between 1099 and 1107, the bishop of Saintes, Ramnulfe, made a donation to the abbey of Bathes in the church of Sainte-Radegonde following the abandonment by the secular lords of their rights over this church. In 1128, the new bishop of Saintes, Guillaume, came to confirm to the abbot Aimar the endowment of this church to the abbey.
The Ste Radegonde church of Romanesque origin has been extensively altered over the centuries. This building probably dates from the 11th century. The engaged columns of the north wall are Romanesque while those of the south wall are distinctly Gothic and date from the 13th century. The Romanesque plan, a single nave extended by a flat chevet, was completed by a Gothic chapel to the south.
It was above all the 19th century that left its mark on the monument: during these restoration projects, the neo-Romanesque and neo-Gothic styles born from the rediscovery of the Middle Ages were essential. This is the case for the Church of Ste Radegonde: in 1895, an imposing bell tower-porch replaced a simple pediment, bell tower-wall, where two bells were superimposed (it recalls the porch bell towers of neo-medieval churches St Martial and St Ausone d'Angoulême, built by Paul Abadie fils); another achievement of the 19th century, the Ste Radegonde stained glass window, whose workmanship is inspired by that of the stained glass windows of the Middle Ages (decorative borders, representations of the character under an architectural canopy, bright colors) hence its classification "Radegondian place of worship"