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Sainte-Ode (Municipality, Province of Luxembourg, Belgium)

Municipal flag of Sainte-Ode - Image by Arnaud Leroy, 11 November 2007

Presentation of Sainte-Ode and its villages
Municipal flag of Sainte-Ode

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Presentation of Sainte-Ode and its villages

The municipality of Sainte-Ode (2,305 inhabitants on 1 January 2007; 9,787 ha) is located west of Bastogne. The municipality of Sainte-Ode was formed in 1976 by the merging of the former municipalities of Amberloup (administrative seat of the new municipality), Lavacherie and Tillet, and named after the St. Ode hospital, which belonged previously to the municipality of Flamierge (the rest of Flamierge was incorporated in 1976 to the municipality of Bertogne).

The three-arched bridge of Fosset over the river Laval, portrayed by the famous symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff (1858-1921), whose family had a vacation house in Fosset, is the official symbol of the municipality of Sainte-Ode.
St. Ode / Chrodoara is venerated in Amay, where her sarcophagus was discovered in 1977.

Amberloup was an important administrative and religious center, with a castrum, a villa and a temple, in the Gallo-Roman times. Destroyed during the Great Invasions in the late IIIrd-early IVth centuries, Amberloup was rebuilt in the late VIIth-early VIIIth centuries. The first St. Hubert abbey is believed to have been founded in Amberloup by Bréglise, supported by Pepin of Herstal. In the Middle Ages, the villages of Amberloup, Sainte-Ode, Wigny and Tonny formed the Municipality of Amberloup, part of the Provostship of Bastogne.
On 1 October 1823, the former municipality of Tonny was incorporated into Amberloup.

Lavacherie, located in the valley of the Western Ourthe, is rich in ancient remains: Neolithic flints, shelters from the Age of Iron, a Gallic bronze statuette and several Gallic, Roman and Merovingian tombs.

The domain of Sainte-Ode was formed in 1609 on the border with the Provostship of La Roche; it was an early and important center of iron industry in Luxembourg. In 1764, the forges still employed 250 workers. In 1947, the Fédération des Anciens Prisonniers de Guerre (FNAPG, Federation of the Former Prisonners of War) opened the Belgica sanatorium in Montana (Switzerland), where 1,800 were healed until 1960. When the sanatorium was sold, the FNAPGA and associations of war veterans purchased the domain of Sainte-Ode, whose castle (Le Celly) was revamped to house 47 people repatriated from the Montana sanatorium. The Belgica Pavilion, built in 1954 and renamed Belgica Sanatorium in 1962, became a unit of health care for ex-prisoners suffering from heavy after-effects of captivity. Scientists from the Universities of Brussels, Liège and Leuven contributed to the project and presented their results in an international symposium held in 1976. They showed that ex-prisoners exhibited early signs of senescence and that they sufferred more from physic and psychic disorders than the average population of the same age. It was further shown that the younger prisoners were the most affected by early sencescence. These results prompted the set up of a better care for ex-prisoners, with specific treatmants rather than a general, long-term care.
In 1987, the hospital experienced money problems while the number of its patients dramatically diminished because of ageing. In 1998, the hospitals of Sainte-Ode and Libramont were merged as the Centre Hospitalier de l'Ardenne.

Source:

Municipal website
History of the Hospital of Sainte-Ode, by Dr. Smeets

Ivan Sache, 1 November 2007

Municipal flag of Sainte-Ode

The municipal flag of Sainte-Ode, as communicated by the municipal administration, is white with the municipal logotype in the middle.
The municipal logotype is a blue shield showing the three-arched bridge of Fosset over a white wavy stripe and a green terrace, on which Ste-Ode is written in yellow letters. A yellow daffodil (Narcissus) flower covers the upper part of the shield, its two lower floral leaves overlapping the bridge and its upper floral leaf "leaving out" the shield.

However, Armoiries communales en Belgique. Communes wallonnes, bruxelloises et germanophones says that Sainte-Ode does not have a municipal flag.

Pascal Vagnat, 11 November 2007