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Origin and history

The Church of Notre-Dame-de-Recouvrance finds its origins in the policy of Counter-Reform of the seventeenth century. Founded in 1615 by Georges de Babiault, seigneur de Rabaine and treasurer-general of France, the Carmelite convent of Saintes was designed to counter Protestant influence in a region marked by reformed ideas. His wife, Letice de Gourgues, later entered as a nun under the name of Sister Mary of Mercy. This first convent was part of a broader movement to establish religious orders in Saintes, including Jesuits, Recollets and Daughters of Notre Dame.

In the 19th century, the old buildings forced the diocese to build a new complex in La Pinellerie, on the outskirts of Saintes, along the road of Saint-Georges. The ambitious project, commissioned by architect Marc-Alexandre-Eustase Rullier (started in 1890), includes a convent organized around a cloister and a neo-Gothic church. The building was solemnly consecrated on 30 November by Monsignor Ardin, bishop of the diocese. The institution Notre-Dame-de-Recovery, transferred from Pons, completes the whole.

The church is distinguished by its three-level facade, its arched portal and its absence from a bell tower, compensated by a campanile on the convent buildings. Inside, the unique nave in a Latin cross, vaulted with dogive crosses, houses a statue of the Virgin with the Child under a dot of cloth. After serving in the Romanian Orthodox Church on an ad hoc basis until 2016, it is now integrated into the Diocesan House Robert-Jacquinot, continuing as a witness to the Carmelite and architectural heritage of the region.

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