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![[Flag of Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise]](../images/f/fr-62-sp.gif)
by Olivier Touzeau
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Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise (5,000 inhabitants) is the capital city of the Ternois, a chalky, rural region located in the north of France.
Saint-Pol is one of the 337 municipalities located on the Méridienne Verte (the Green Meridian Line). On 25 November 1999, 100,000 trees were planted in all the municipalities in order to materialize the Line. The Green Meridian Line project was promoted by the mathematician and novelist Denis Guedj. In his excellent book La Méridienne, Guedj relates the expedition set up by the astronoms Pierre Méchain and Jean-Baptiste Delambre in 1792. The two astronoms were commissioned by the National Assembly and supported by the best French scientists of that time (Lavoisier, Borda, etc.). They had to measure the length of the meridian running from Dunkirk to Barcelona, in order to establish the standard metre. The expedition ended only in 1804 and was often interrupted by political changes.
The first settlement in Saint-Pol was probably established on a small hill over the river Ternoise, known in early ages as Lhena, Terna, Thernois or Ternois. The city was initially called Terrana or Tervana. Ancient writers claimed that Tervana was a syncopated form of Terra avenae (the Land of oats), a name given by the Romans to the area where they sent the cavalry to recuperate. The name of the region, pays tervanois, was later shortened to Ternois. Other writers with an equally low reliability confused Tervana (Saint-Pol) with Tervanna, today the city of Thérouanne, located c. 30 km north of Saint-Pol.
Lambert d'Ardres says that the name of the city was changed from Tervana to Saint-Pol in 881. One year after the invasion of Artois by the Danes and the trashing of its capital city, Arras, the counts of Boulogne and Flanders, helped by duke Rudolf of Burgundy, expelled the invaders. The only city that had not been attacked was Tervana, allegedly hidden by a thick cloud provided by the patron saint of the city, Saint Paul. The orthograph Pol is not common in France (except in Brittany; Saint-Pol-de-Léon) and might have been adopted during the Spanish occupation of the area (see below), as a corruption of Paolo.
The county of Ternois appeared in 543. Count of Boulogne Rulf (or
Rudolf), grandson of the first count of Boulogne Léger (or Léodgard,
511), married his daughter to Léodegond and gave her the county of
Ternois as her dowry.
The count of Ternois built a castrum in Saint-Pol at the end of the
Xth century, maybe on the remains of a Gallo-Roman oppidum