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Last modified: 2016-11-07 by ivan sache
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Flag of Sainte-Ode - Image by Ivan Sache, 29 March 2016
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The municipality of Sainte-Ode (2,305 inhabitants on 1 January 2007;
9,787 ha; municipal website) is located west of Bastogne. The municipality was formed in 1976 by the merging of the former municipalities of Amberloup (administrative seat of the new municipality), Lavacherie and
Tillet.
The new municipality was named after the St. Ode hospital, which previously belonged to the municipality of Flamierge (the remaining part of Flamierge was incorporated in 1976 to the municipality of Bertogne). St. Ode / Chrodoara is venerated in Amay, where her sarcophagus was discovered in 1977.
The domain of Sainte-Ode, formed in 1609 on the border with the
Provostship of La Roche, was an important center of early 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 from increased physic and psychic disorders compared with theaverage population of the same age class. 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
patients dramatically diminished because of ageing. In 1998, the
hospitals of Sainte-Ode and Libramont were merged as the Centre Hospitalier de l'Ardenne.
[Du "Belgica" au Centre Hispotalier de l'Ardenne]
Amberloup was in the Gallo-Roman times an important administrative and religious center, with a castrum, a villa and a temple. Destroyed during the Great Invasions in the late 3rd-early 4th century, Amberloup was rebuilt in the late 7th-early 8th century. The
first St. Hubert abbey is believed to have been founded in Amberloup by
Bréglise, supported by Pippin 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.
The former municipality of Tonny was incorporated on 1 October 1823 into Amberloup.
Lavacherie, located in the valley of the Western Ourthe, is rich in ancient remains: Neolithic flints, shelters from the Iron Age, a Gallic bronze statuette and several Gallic, Roman and Merovingian tombs.
Ivan Sache, 1 November 2007
The flag and arms (image) of Saint-Ode, submitted on 25 September 2014, after validation on 5 September 2014 by the Heraldry and Vexillology Council of the French Community, is prescribed by a Decree adopted on 10 December 2014 by the Executive of the French Community and published on 2 February 2015 in the Belgian official gazette, No. 48 (text), pp. 13,643-13,645.
The symbols are described as follows:
Flag: Quartered white and blue.
Coat of arms: Quarterly, 1. Argent three roses gules seeded or leaved vert, 2. Azure a daffodil or, 3. Azure a three-arched bridge argent masoned sable, 4. Argent a tree eradicated vert. Beneath the shield a scroll argent inscribed with the motto AB ORIGINE FIDELIS" in letter azure.
The flag is a simplified banner of arms, without the charges. The symbols were originally adopted on 10 July 2012 by the Municipal Council (minutes).
The three-arched bridge of Fosset over 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.
Pascal Vagnat & Ivan Sache, 29 March 2016Former, unofficial flag of Sainte-Ode
![[Flag]](../images/b/be-wlxs1.gif)
Unofficial flag of Sainte-Ode - Image by Arnaud Leroy, 11 November 2007
According to the municipal administration, Saint-Ode formerly used a white flag with the municipal emblem in the middle (photo).
The emblem is made of 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.
Pascal Vagnat &
