Église et pèlerinage de Sainte-Maure

Sainte-Maure

A league north of Troyes, this village bears the name of a young girl who was, in the 9th century, the best-loved saint of the diocese. Maure was born around 827 into a well-to-do family of Troyes, to Marien and Sédulie; with her brother Eutrope, she led a life given over entirely to prayer and works of charity, relieving every form of distress in the town. She died before her twenty-third birthday, around 850, and it was her own bishop, Prudentius of Troyes — one of the great scholars of the Carolingian age — who wrote her eulogy and attested the graces obtained through her intercession: tradition reports numerous cures at her tomb. Canonised at the end of the 9th century, she rests in the church of the village which, originally dedicated to Saint Bartholomew, ended up taking her name, so popular had the pilgrimage become. Every 21 September, her feast day, the monks of the abbey of Saint-Loup in Troyes led a solemn procession from the town to Sainte-Maure. The present church, built in the 15th and 16th centuries and listed as a historic monument in 1931, keeps the bell tower as its oldest element, a choir completed in 1546 and a remarkable set of stained glass, including a Tree of Jesse of 1603 by the Troyes glass painter Linard Gonthier. The saint's shrine is still venerated here, a few steps from the Vanne.

Getting there : Route de Méry, in the centre of the village of Sainte-Maure, 6 km north of Troyes, in the valley of the Vanne. Opened on request through the parish volunteer (free visits during the heritage open days).

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound