Saint-Augustin (Charente-Maritime)
| Saint-Augustin | ||
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| region | Nouvelle-Aquitaine | |
| Department | Charente-Maritime | |
| Arrondissement | Rochefort | |
| Canton | La Tremblade | |
| Community association | Royan Atlantique | |
| Coordinates | 45 ° 41 ′ N , 1 ° 6 ′ W | |
| height | 0-45 m | |
| surface | 18.83 km 2 | |
| Residents | 1,351 (January 1, 2017) | |
| Population density | 72 inhabitants / km 2 | |
| Post Code | 17570 | |
| INSEE code | 17311 | |
| Website | www.mairie-saint-augustin.fr/public | |
 Marsh meadows near Saint-Augustin |
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Saint-Augustin (or unofficially Saint-Augustin-sur-Mer ) is a southwestern French municipality with 1351 inhabitants (at January 1, 2017) in the department of Charente-Maritime in the region Nouvelle-Aquitaine .
location
Saint-Augustin is located about ten kilometers (route) northwest of Royan on between the Gironde and the Seudre located Arvert peninsula leading to the historic cultural landscape of the Saintonge is one, which in turn is a part of the landscape of the Charente is.
Population development
| year | 1962 | 1968 | 1975 | 1982 | 1990 | 1999 | 2006 | 2016 |
| Residents | 432 | 493 | 539 | 634 | 742 | 872 | 1156 | 1342 |
In the 19th century the place consistently had around 500 inhabitants. As a result of the mechanization of agriculture , the population decreased to around 370 in the first half of the 20th century. The renewed increase in the number of inhabitants has a lot to do with the tourist development but also with the comparatively low rents and land prices compared to the nearby city of Royan.
economy
Agriculture has played a dominant role in the municipality's economic life for centuries. This is one of the Bois ordinaires et communs of the Cognac wine-growing region , but because of the sales crisis for brandies and even for wine, vines are rarely planted. Many farmers have returned to 'normal' agriculture. Since the 1960s, tourism has played a not insignificant role in the economic life of the place.
history
The first mention of the church (and the place) can be found in a document from the end of the 11th century, in which the church was transferred to the Abbey of Saint-Étienne of Vaux-sur-Mer , which made it a priory . The monks and the conventuals occupied themselves with the drainage and fertility of the surrounding swamps. The place experienced the great events of the late Middle Ages and the early modern period ( Hundred Years War (1337-1453), Years of the Plague (after 1348) and Wars of Religion (1562-1598)), without any great devastation or destruction being known in detail. With the edict of Nantes issued by Henry IV in 1598, the tense situation between Catholics and Protestants calmed down , but after the king's murder (1610) new hostilities flared up, so that Louis XIII. and his first minister, Richelieu, to intervene, which culminated in the siege and conquest of La Rochelle in 1628 . In 1644 the Protestant cult was banned on the Arvert peninsula and in 1682 Louis XIV ordered the destruction of the Protestant temples . After the Edict of Fontainebleau was issued (1685), which repealed the Edict of Nantes, many Protestants emigrated to other European countries or to the American New France . The Protestant faith, however, lived on in the underground - the believers met in secret in the dunes or in barns; there was talk of a 'church in the desert' ( Église du Desert ). It was not until the marshal and governor Jean Charles de Saint-Nectaire , who was tolerant in religious matters , that the situation improved for the Protestants in the middle of the 18th century.
Attractions
See also: List of Monuments historiques in Saint-Augustin (Charente-Maritime)
- After the destruction during the Huguenot Wars, the old Romanesque church had become so dilapidated that it was demolished around 1830. Today's church was originally the private chapel of a wealthy landowner who made it available to the community on the condition that it should become a parish church. With a donation in 1859, the former chapel finally came into the possession of the community. It is a classicist building from the end of the 18th century with a baroque curved bell gable . With the exception of the precisely hewn corner stones , the building is made of rubble stones and therefore plastered outside and inside. The semicircle of the apse connects seamlessly to the single-nave nave, which is spanned by a suspended and paneled wooden ceiling.
- The Protestant church ( temple ) was built between 1857 and 1862. The building convinces - like many Protestant houses of worship - with its severity without decoration and the clear lines of the architecture. The mostly plastered facade is not structured by cornices etc., but has a neo-Gothic portal and a round window above it - which is rather unusual for a Protestant church . The use of reddish-brown corner stones from the quarries near the town of Thénac , about 30 kilometers southeast, is unusual for buildings in the Saintonge.
- In the immediate vicinity of the temple there is an extraordinarily elaborately designed grave monument for an officer who died at the age of 20 in the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. The reclining figure ( gisant ) created by two sculptors from Saujon shows a dying soldier in uniform with a rifle and bayonet attached.
literature
- Le Patrimoine des Communes de la Charente-Maritime. Flohic Editions, Volume 2, Paris 2002, ISBN 2-84234-129-5 , pp. 1146-1147.
