Ancienne abbaye de Saint-Liguaire

Saint-Liguaire comes from Saint Léger, abbot of Saint-Maixent and bishop of Autun in the 7th century, the local patois having deformed this name in Léodogaire.
His Benedictine abbey was founded in 961 by Elbes, abbot of St-Maixent, at the initiative of his brother Guillaume Tête d'Etoupe, second count of Poitou. His monks cultivated the fertile alluvium of Sèvre, drained the Bessines marsh and maintained the La Roussille lock.
Many times rebuilt after the Hundred Years Wars and Religion, the monastery was sold in 1791. The sixteenth-century chapter hall is one of its last remains and 3 bone fragments of the only known reliquary (St-Léger-du-Bois, diocese of Angers) were donated in 1962 to the church of Sainte-Marie-Madeleine on the occasion of its millennium.
To see also: the two keystones of the Renaissance cloister representing heads of emperors reused on the portal of the Ste-Macrine.