ÉGLISE DE SAINT-AGNAN

The oldest known document about Saint-Agnan is a charter of the year 1005, by which Adalberon II, bishop of Metz, donated the church of the priory of Saint-Agnan and the lordship of Puche to the abbey of Neunmunster in the Palatinate. In 1226, a bull confirmed this donation. The plague ravaged the whole region in 1390 and killed 15,000 people. Saint-Agnan was destroyed in 1404 but only his church was spared. As the chapel of a priory, the church depended on the Benedictine Abbey of Neunmunster, but the goods of this abbey were attributed to the Order of Malta and remained in the hands of the knights of the Order until 1789. In 1802 the church was destroyed by fire, leaving only the four walls. It was rebuilt in 1856 and its bell tower in 1877. In 1882, a donation from Mrs. Legrand made it possible to have a wooden ceiling built at her own expense. The church was then restored and modified in the neo-Romanesque style thanks to the generosity of this inhabitant of Flanville. Since 1923 the pilgrimage to Saint-Agnan has taken place every year.