Bishop of Saintes

The former French diocese of Saintes existed from the sixth century to the French Revolution. Its see was located in Saintes in western France, in the modern department of Charente-Maritime. After the Concordat of 1801, its territory passed mainly to the diocese of La Rochelle.

Saintes has numerous Roman monuments, including a large amphitheater and an arch dedicated to Germanicus, the nephew of the Emperor Tiberius.

The oldest bishop to whom a date can be assigned is Bishop Peter, who took part in the Council of Orléans (511).

The first reference to a bishop, however, is to one Eutropius. Venantius Fortunatus, in a poem written in the second half of the sixth century, makes explicit mention of him in connection with Saintes: Urbis Santonicae primus fuit iste sacerdos. A quite different tale is related, however, by Venantius' friend, Gregory of Tours, in a work called de gloria martyrum (I. 56), with a cautious ut fertur ('as is said'), indicating Gregory's doubt as to the historicity of the narrative. Eutropius was said to have been consecrated a bishop and sent to Gaul by Pope Clement I in the late first century; at Saintes he began converting people to Christianity, but enraged pagans killed him with a blow to the head. (He is later given a virgin companion, Eustella, the daughter of the local king, who pays the butchers of the town some 150 solidi apiece to kill Eutropius and Eustella.) Were it true, Saintes would be the only church of Gaul which Gregory traces back to the first century, though far from the only church which makes such a claim to antiquity. The evidence is much weakened, in the view of Louis Duchesne, by Gregory's remark that no one knew the history of St. Eutropius before the removal of his relics to a church built in Eutropius' honor by Bishop Palladius of Saintes, which took place about 590. It is at this late date that the legend of Eutropius as a martyr seems to have begun.

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