Lérins Abbey

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Cistercian Abbey of Lérins
Floor plan of the monastery complex in the 19th century

The Notre-Dame de Lérins Abbey (Latin Abbatia BMV de Lerina ) is a Cistercian monastery on the island of Saint-Honorat , one of the Îles de Lérins on the Côte d'Azur near Cannes . A monastic community has lived there since the 5th century; the oldest of the current monastery buildings date from the 11th to 14th centuries. The abbey has been classified as a Monument historique since 1840 .

history

The island was uninhabited until Honoratus von Arles († 430), a pupil of the hermit Caprasius, founded a monastery there around 400/410. According to tradition, Honoratus intended to live on the island as a hermit, but was soon surrounded by disciples who formed a monastic community.

Lérins quickly became one of the most important houses of Western monasticism, Johannes Cassianus wrote that the monastery had already assumed enormous proportions in the year 427. Honoratus wrote the monastic rule for Lérins, the "Rule of the Four Fathers", which is considered the oldest monastic rule in Gaul . According to another tradition, St. Patrick of Ireland lived in the monastery in the 5th century. So many bishops came from the abbey at this time that the Lérins was also called the "nursery school of the bishops". The church father Vincent of Lérins († around 445) also lived on the island, as did the later Bishop Caesarius of Arles .

Saint Nazarius (Saint Nazaire) was the 14th abbot of Lérins, probably at the time of King Chlothar II (584–629); he destroyed a temple of Venus near Cannes and founded a women's monastery on the same site, which was destroyed by the Saracens in the 8th century . In the 660s, Abbot Aygulf tried to replace the monastery rule of Honoratus with the Benedictine rule , which was not actually adopted until the end of the century.

Refuge in the southeast of the island

In the centuries that followed, monastic life on the island was interrupted several times by raids, especially by the Saracens and pirates. In 732, numerous monks, including Abbot Porcarius, were killed in such a raid. The monastery was then rebuilt by Elentherius. Around the year 1000 Lérins adopted the Cluniac reform . In 1047 the monks were taken captive after an attack in Spain and only freed with a ransom from Abbot Ysam of Saint-Victor .

Cloisters in the fortress tower

From the 11th to the 14th centuries, the abbey responded to the threats posed by the sea. In 1073 a fortified tower was built next to the monastery and expanded into a refuge in 1181, the four-meter high entrance of which could only be reached with a ladder. The interior of the main tower houses a two-story cloister, the side towers next to it contain the chapel, bedrooms and the storage cellar of the fortress. In 1327, a chain of beacons enabled the exchange of information with Le Suquet, the old town of Cannes. In 1391 the Honoratus relics were transferred to Arles. During this time, the monastery also became a popular pilgrimage destination after the monk Raymond Féraud described the life of Honoratus with his La Vida de Sant Honorat . In 1400 the abbey was sacked by Genoese pirates. The island was defended by mercenaries, later by Provencal (1437) and French (1481) troops.

In 1464, the system of commendatar abbots was introduced in Lérins , which was to apply with interruptions until the end of the abbey. At the same time, the abbey continued to be run by regular abbots who were elected for three years and whose immediate or later re-election was possible. Abbot Augustin Grimaldi († 1532) abolished the system again in 1510, carried out a monastery reform and joined Lérins to the Cassinese Congregation . From 1533 ( Franz I ) to 1547 ( Heinrich II. ) This membership was suspended.

View from the escape monastery to the enclosed Lérins Abbey

In 1635 the island was conquered by the Spaniards who drove the monks away. Two years later, they were able to return from their exile in Vallauris after the French were able to recapture the island despite the fortifications the Spanish had built. In 1638 the abbey resigned from the Cassinese Congregation and joined the Congrégation de Saint-Maur at the royal request ( Louis XIII or Cardinal Richelieu ) . However, King Louis XIV (that is in fact Cardinal Jules Mazarin ) reversed this change in 1645.

Îles de Lérins , on the right Sainte-Marguerite , on the left Saint-Honorat with the Abbaye de Lérins and the Monastère fortifié on the headland. Behind the Côte d'Azur near Cannes .

In the years after the reconquest, the abbey suffered from Spanish and Genoese attacks. In 1756 the abbey joined the Congrégation de l'ancienne observance de Cluny , but even this could no longer save the existence of the monastery. When the number of monks had dropped to four, the monastery was closed in 1787, shortly before the revolution . During the Revolution, the island became state property and then sold to the wealthy actress Mademoiselle de Sainval (Marie Blanche Alziary de Roquefort), who lived there for twenty years and made the former convent her drawing room.

In 1859, Bishop Henri Jordany von Fréjus bought the island back to re-establish the monastery. Ten years later, a Cistercian community was established with monks from Sénanque Abbey, which has lived there ever since and to which part of the current buildings can be traced back.

The Cistercian abbots since 1869

  • Marie-Bernard Barnouin , 1871–1888
  • Colomban Legros, 1888-1911
  • Patrice Lerond, 1911-1917
  • Léonce Granet, 1918-1928
  • André Drilhon, 1928-1937
  • François d'Assise Causse, 1937–1945
  • Bernard Chalagiraud, 1945-1958
  • Bernard de Terris, 1958-1989
  • Nicolas Aubertin , 1989–1998
  • Vladimir Gaudrat, 1998–

Personalities

literature

  • Anonymous (a monk from the abbey), L'Île et l'abbaye de Lérins. Récits & description , Imprimerie de l'Abbaye, 303 pp. (1929)
  • Abbé L. Alliez, Histoire du monastère de Lérins , 2 volumes (1862)
  • Brother Marie-Nicolas Aubertin, Lérins - L'île Saint-Honorat, Cannes, Abbaye de Lérins , bulletin trimestriel (1996)
  • Germain Butaud, Listes abbatiales, chartes et cartulaire de Lérins: problemes de chronologie et de datation (XIe - XIIe siècles) , in: Yann Codou et Michel Lauwers (eds.), Lérins, une île sainte de l'Antiquité au Moyen Âge ( 2010), Collection d'études médiévales 9, pp. 365–444
  • Brother André SOCist, Notre-Dame de Lérins: Lérins . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 5, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1991, ISBN 3-7608-8905-0 , Sp. 1907.
  • Père Vladimir Gaudrat, photographs by Jérôme Kélagopian, foreword by Emmanuelle Cinquin , Abbaye de Lérins , Nice, Giletta Nice-Matin, 168 p., 2005 ( ISBN 2-915606-21-8 )
  • Mireille Labrousse, Yann Codou, Jean-Marie Le Gall, Régis Bertrand, Histoire de l'abbaye de Lérins , ed. Abbaye de Bellefontaine (1999)
  • Henri Moris, E. Blanc (eds.), Cartulaire de l'abbaye de Lérins (1883)
  • Henri Moris, L'Abbaye de Lérins. Histoire et monuments , Paris 1909

Web links

Commons : Abbaye de Lérins  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.zisterzienserlexikon.de/wiki/Legros,_Colomban
  2. ↑ http://www.zisterzienserlexikon.de/wiki/Lerond,_Patrice
  3. ↑ http://www.zisterzienserlexikon.de/wiki/Granet,_Léonce
  4. ↑ http://www.zisterzienserlexikon.de/wiki/Drilhon,_André
  5. ↑ http://www.zisterzienserlexikon.de/wiki/Causse,_François
  6. ↑ http://www.zisterzienserlexikon.de/wiki/Terris,_Bernard

Coordinates: 43 ° 30 '23 "  N , 7 ° 2' 49"  E