Église Sainte-Tanche de Lhuître

Lhuître

Lhuître has a church out of all proportion to its size, listed as a monument historique as early as 1862: a 12th-century Romanesque tower, a 13th-century choir and transept, a nave completed in the 16th, an altarpiece of the Passion in polychrome stone and a hexagonal 13th-century font adorned with apostles. This excess is explained by the dedication: the building is dedicated to Saint Tanche, a local martyr of the diocese of Troyes celebrated on 10 October, whose tomb drew the crowds. The legend, passed down by the hagiographers of Champagne, tells that a girl of sixteen was beheaded by a servant whose advances she had rejected, and that she picked up her head and walked to the place of her burial — a cephalophore motif very widespread in Champagne. A chapel was raised on the spot where she died and became, according to tradition, a major site of medieval pilgrimage to which many cures were attributed. Only two churches bear her name, that of Lhuître and that of Vaupoisson, both in the Aube. Saint Tanche left no contemporary documentary trace: her historical existence is not established and her hagiographical dossier goes back only to late recensions, taken up in the 19th century by the abbé Remion. The church, for its part, is very real, and the gap between the modesty of the village and the scale of the monument remains the best indication of the place's former fervour.

Église Sainte-Tanche de Lhuître (Wikipédia) ↗

Getting there : In the centre of the village of Lhuître, 9 km north-east of Arcis-sur-Aube. The coordinates are those of the village: the church is the great building that dominates the centre, impossible to miss. Irregular opening hours; enquire at the mairie or with the communauté de communes of Arcis, Mailly & Ramerupt.

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

Ambient sound