Saint Vincent Abbey (Senlis)

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General view from the northeast

The Saint-Vincent Abbey in Senlis was a monastery founded in the 11th century by the Augustinian Canons . It played a central role during the founding of the Congrégation de France , was abolished during the Revolution and now houses a privately run Catholic grammar school. The abbey church was recognized as a monument historique as early as 1862 ; the remaining parts of the monastery building were also gradually placed under monument protection between 1933 and 1948.

location

The former abbey is located in the extreme southeast of the old city center of Senlis on Rue de Meaux ; it borders on the medieval city wall, which is called Rempart Bellevue here . When it was founded, the abbey was still outside the city.

history

The abbey was founded in 1065 by Anna of Kiev , the widow of King Henry . It is unclear whether the ruined predecessor buildings of the abbey were just a chapel or a monastery. The foundation goes back to a vow Anna wanted to found a monastery consecrated to Saint Vincent of Valencia , if her marriage to the king did not remain childless. After the birth of her son Philipp , she let 14 years pass and after the death of Heinrich a further 5 years before she redeemed her vow, whereby her new marriage to Count Rudolf IV of Vexin and the excommunication in 1064 that it triggered played a role will have. On October 29, 1065 the monastery church was consecrated to the Trinity , Mother of God , John the Baptist and Vincent of Valencia. The abbey was handed over to the Augustinian Canons, Philip I took over the patronage in 1074 and made it a monastery directly subordinate to the king. What is known about the buildings from this time beyond the existence of the church is that the canons erected a tithe barn .

A few years before his death (1100), Philip passed the abbey to his son Ludwig VI. from, who did not succeed in protecting her from the desires of secular and ecclesiastical masters. Above all, the Cluniacians wanted to take over the rich abbey, but this prevented a merger of local giants, including the three large monasteries in the city (the Abbey of the Cathedral of Senlis , the Abbey of Saint-Frambourg and the Monastery of Saint-Rieul) could be. In order to fend off similar attacks in the future, the abbey was equipped with further goods; Louis VI. gave her back the property that had previously been taken from her. In addition, Saint-Vincent de Senlis leaned on the Abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris ; however, the union, approved by Louis VII in 1138 , did not give Saint-Victor access to the administration or income of Saint-Vincent.

Saint-Vincent became wealthy because of the agricultural goods they had left, a school, first mentioned in 1124, was established, which required new buildings, of which no description can be found in the abbey archives; only the twelve- bay new refectory is mentioned, which was able to accommodate 80 canons. In the 12th and 13th centuries, Saint-Vincent founded eight priories , three of them in the Archdiocese of Rouen and two in the Diocese of Arras .

Due to the abbey’s wealth, the relationship with the Bishop of Senlis became increasingly difficult. At the end of the 12th century, concessions of a symbolic nature were made, and from 1277 the abbot found it useful to have a certificate attesting to every meal the bishop ate at Saint-Vincent that he was present as a visitor and not as a superior. In addition, the abbey often had its priests and priests ordained by foreign bishops. A dispute about this ultimately led to a confirmation of the abbey’s position by a bull by Pope Innocent VIII (1484–1492). On the other hand, the abbey ceded its jurisdiction over the Faubourg Saint-Vincent and its houses in the city in return for an annual payment to the municipality. Following the abolition of the municipal constitution in the 14th century, the king's Bailli challenged the abbey several times - but without success.

The neutrality that Saint-Vincent sought to maintain during the Hundred Years War did not prevent the abbey from being sacked by both the king's and the Duke's troops. In the period that followed, the discipline of the canons and the abbey's prosperity declined noticeably, also triggered by tax demands raised by both the Council of Basel and the king for his warfare. The number of inhabitants of the abbey decreased to 16.

Nevertheless, in 1491 and then again in 1505, attempts were made to overturn the abbot suffrage of the canons with the help of the parliament and to usurp the abbot dignity - but with no success. The abbey's prosperity continued to decline during this period. A third attempt was made superfluous by the Bologna Concordat , as the system of commendatabbots was now introduced, which resulted in the abbots being appointed by the king from 1536 and who used the monastery income only for their own living. At the end of the 16th century, most of the canons no longer lived in the abbey, so it was proposed that Saint-Vincent be left to the Capuchins .

With the support of Cardinal François de La Rochefoucauld , Bishop of Senlis , some young monks succeeded in re-enforcing the Augustinian rule and community of property in the monastery from 1618 onwards. In 1622, La Rochefoucauld was commissioned by the king and the pope to reform the French monasteries, and he started doing so with 40 located in the Paris area. Robert Baudouin, the new prior of Saint-Vincent (the system of commendate abbots was not affected), and Charles Faure , a young priest from the monastery, were given the task of visiting the selected monasteries, which was completed on October 12, 1623 and theirs Results La Rochefoucauld used to found the Congrégation de France , of which Charles Faure was elected superior, who in turn sent canons from Saint-Vincent to the forty monasteries to implement the reforms - even if the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris was due to its location to The center of the reform, the starting point was the Saint-Vincent monastery in Senlis. On August 10, 1628, the first general chapter of the Congrégation was held in Saint-Vincent. The other general capital took place in Sainte-Geneviéve; in Saint-Vincent the 43 chapters of the Province de France were carried out every three years until 1786.

The new construction of the monastery buildings goes back to Abbot Jean-Philippe Berthier (1620–1667), with the exception of the abbey church, which was merely redesigned. The work continued until 1689. The monastery was dissolved during the revolution in 1791. The buildings then served as a military hospital, barracks and prison for prisoners of war, and in 1804 they were rented out as a factory . The contract, which was concluded for a period of 60 years, expired in 1826, and the buildings were sold for demolition in 1835. A year later, however, three canons from Beauvais bought the monastery back and established a school for boys that still exists today.

  • Choir of the abbey church

  • North facade of the main building

  • Cloister

  • North gallery of the cloister

  • Transept and apse

  • Nave with organ

architecture

Floor plan of the abbey (1858)

The former monastery essentially consists of two building complexes: the abbey church from around 1138 and the convent building from the 1660s. Other buildings to the west belonged to the Notre Dame de la Présentation convent , which was directly adjacent to the Saint-Vincent Abbey and was only separated from it by a wall.

The cruciform, but not exactly east-facing church originates mainly from the time from 1138; it consists of a four yokes comprehensive nave , a clearly projecting transverse ship and a two yokes long chorus flat apse . The almost unadorned interior is approx. 47 m long (of which approx. 27 m for the main nave), has a width of approx. 8.40 m in the nave and 7.40 m in the choir and is. 14.10 m high (Apsisjoch only 11.60 m). In the corner of the main nave and the north transept is the extremely slender, approx. 41 m high bell tower , which was built towards the end of the 12th century and opened through high arcades . The west facade was renewed in the 17th and 19th centuries and lost its original character. The vaults of the main aisle and transept were renewed around 1670 and raised in order to match the height of the new convent building. The single nave nave of the church has a groin vault , whereas the crossing and the flat apse are rib vaulted .

The cloister ( cloître ), which was newly built in the 1660s, i.e. in the baroque period , together with the convent buildings is located on the south-west side of the church. It measures approx. 43 × 28 m and is integrated into the convent building.

Abbots

Regular abbots

  • Lieutauld (1065 -?)
  • Felinand
  • Baudouin (from 1119)
  • Baudouin II (from 1138)
  • Hugues (from 1147)
  • Baudouin III. (from 1154)
  • Hugues II. (From 1162 or 1163)
  • Guillaume
  • R.
  • Odo (from 1192)
  • Pierre (around 1205)
  • Henry (around 1220)
  • Adam (around 1230)
  • Foulque (around 1240)
  • Pierre II (around 1248)
  • Henry II (from 1250)
  • Adam II ( coadjutor 1273, abbot 1276)
  • Jean (around 1292)
  • Guillaume II (1316-1325)
  • Jean II. De Montataire (around 1336)
  • Jacques (Coadjutor 1355, Abbot 1356)
  • Guillaume III billiards (from 1376)
  • Jean III de Sainctes (around 1380)
  • N. (1398 -?)
  • Oudard or Odo II (around 1402)
  • Guillaume IV Le Clerc (from 1415)
  • Jean IV (around 1433)
  • Jean V. Bonissent (around 1450)
  • Pierre II. Richevillan (from 1462)
  • Robert Foulon (from 1482)
  • Charles du Bec (claims the title from 1491)
  • Nicolas Barbe (from 1492)
  • Bernard de Vauldray, (claims the title from 1505)
  • Jean VI. Thibaud (from 1505)

Commendati abbots

  • Guillaume V. Thibaud (from 1536)
  • Jean VII Mazile (from 1572)
  • Nicolas du Val (from 1580)
  • Jean VIII. Berthier (from 1604)
  • Jean-Philippe Berthier (from 1620)
  • Louis Armand de Simiane de Gordes (from 1667–1680), 1671 Bishop of Langres
  • Laurent de Bergerat (from 1680)
  • Charles-Alexandre de Salians d'Estain (from 1693)
  • Louis de Chaumejan de Fourille (from 1718)
  • perhaps another abbot whose name is not known
  • Claude-Charles de Mostuejouls (from 1765)

literature

  • Marc Durand, Philippe Bonnet-Laborderie, Senlis et son patrimoine: La ville en ses forêts. extended edition. 2004, ISSN 1255-0078, pp. 113-116.
  • Fortuné Magne: Abbaye Royale de Saint-Vincent à Senlis: Histoire et description. 1860.
  • Comité Archéologique de Senlis, Comptes-rendus et Mémoires. Part 4: Eugène Müller: Essai d'une monographie des rues, places et monuments de Senlis. 2nd series, Volume 7, 1881, pp. 121-330.

Web links

Commons : Abbaye Saint-Vincent, Senlis (Oise)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ancienne abbaye Saint-Vincent, Senlis in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)

Coordinates: 49 ° 12 ′ 9 ″  N , 2 ° 35 ′ 22 ″  E