Saint-Étienne

The full story

In the 5th century, the castrum seemed safe enough for the bishops of Langres, on whom Dijon then depended, to set up a residence there. Around them a cathedral group took shape, that is, the set of buildings belonging to a bishop: the episcopal church of Saint-Étienne, a chapel dedicated to the Virgin and the Saint-Vincent baptistery. A community of clerics led by an abbot served them. None of these buildings has survived: the baptistery, which stood until 1765, lives on only in the name of the Cour Saint-Vincent.

In the 11th century, Abbot Garnier de Mailly thought bigger. The first church, judged too modest, became the parish church of Saint-Médard, and a new church of Saint-Étienne rose a little further south, on its present site. Sixty metres long, it had a nave, a transept, a crypt and a triple apse that crossed the castrum wall. By the end of the Middle Ages, the abbey controlled most of the town’s religious life. Its abbot wore the insignia reserved for bishops; it owned houses, mills and vineyards, and took in elderly people who gave it their property in exchange for care.

The church then changed its appearance several times. Around 1480, Abbot Richard Chambellan had the apse rebuilt, lit by large Gothic windows. After the nave collapsed, Abbot Claude Fyot had it rebuilt in the Gothic style, and his coat of arms still decorates some of the keystones; Saint-Médard was demolished in 1680. For the façade, Martin de Noinville stacked, in the Italian fashion, two classical orders (styles of column), the Ionic and the Corinthian. The statues of Religion and Constancy that framed it have disappeared, but the portal’s bas-relief, the stoning of Saint Stephen carved by Jean-Baptiste and Edmé Bouchardon, now adorns the tympanum of Saint-Bénigne cathedral.

After the Revolution, the town bought the building in 1809. When the commodity exchange moved in in 1896, the entrance received two statues by the Dijon sculptor Paul Gasq, traditionally identified as Commerce and Industry, while the choir and the north arm of the transept stored sets for the nearby theatre. The Rude museum later moved in, with its casts of works by the sculptor François Rude, including the Departure of the Volunteers of 1792, nicknamed “La Marseillaise”, which adorns the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile in Paris.

In Rue Chabot-Charny, the abbey’s 14th-century fortified gate, topped by a small dwelling, still bears the inscription “Ave sancte Stephane” in Gothic lettering. The 17th-century chapter house, where the clergy met, and the cloister can be reached from the library. In the choir of the Rude museum, a section of the castrum stands beside the remains of the 11th-century crypt.