Villiers-aux-Nonnains abbey

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Notre-Dame de Villiers-aux-Nonnains Abbey is a former monastery in the area of ​​today's municipality of Cerny ( canton La Ferté-Alais ) in the Essonne department . It existed from 1218 to 1751, initially as a male monastery of the Dominican - and from 1220 as a female monastery of the Cistercian order , and belonged to the Archdiocese of Sens . The abbey gained importance in the 17th century because of the claim that Anna of Kiev , widow of the French King Henry I , was buried there.

history

After Pope Honorius III. Having approved the Dominican Order in 1215 , some members of the Order settled in Villiers on land that King Philip II had given them and founded the Saint-Romain Monastery. From Jean Briard, Seigneur de Breteuil, they received alms and tithes on grain and wine from Villiers as a source of income in February 1218 . Due to the development of the order to the mendicant order , the monastery was abandoned on March 31, 1220.

Amicie de Breteuil, Jean's widow, received permission from the Archbishop of Sens in May 1220 to found a Cistercian monastery at the same location and with the same rights. The monastery existed until 1763, until the death of Abbess Louise des Balbes de Berton de Crillon, a sister of Jean-Louis des Balbes de Berton de Crillon, the Archbishop of Narbonne who died in 1751 . Subsequently, Villiers Abbey was merged with La Joie (Nemours) monastery and has been called Villiers-La Joye Abbey since then.

During the Revolution , the abbey was sold and destroyed, later the Château de Montmirault was built here, which was again demolished in 1972 to make way for the "Alexandre Denis" vocational school.

Tomb of Anna of Kiev

The Abbey of Villiers-aux-Nonnains would have remained of little importance had it not been for the suspicion at the end of the 17th century that Anna of Kiev, the widow of the French King Henry I, was buried here.

On June 22, 1682, the Journal des sçavans reported on historical "new discoveries" ( nouvelles découvertes ) by the Jesuit father Claude-François Ménestrier (1631–1705), who was considered the authority on the history of the nobility at the time. At the top of the report was a description of a tombstone found in the church of Villiers-aux-Nonnains Abbey: Ménestrier believed that the tombstone belonged to a queen mistakenly named Anna instead of Agnes, and the widow of king Henry I had been. He tells of an engraved portrait of a person crowned with a hood, as well as a semicircular epitaph that begins with the words Hic jacet Domina Agnes uxor quondam Henrici Regis - this is where Mistress Agnes, once the wife of King Henry, rests, and then follows a gap before it continues with eorum per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace .

The authors of Gallia Christiana take up the subject a century later in their article on Villiers Abbey, but note that in 1642 Magdelon Theulier, an envoy of the Vicar General of the Cistercian Order, only read Hic jacet Domina Agnes on the tombstone, 1749 at the Review of Ménestrier's report, the addition quae fuit uxor Henrici , but not the word Regis , could be discovered. In addition, the authors of Gallia Christiana point out that the Villiers monastery was only founded a century and a half after Anna's death, and that the necessary reburial of the body from an unknown first grave in the abbey left no traces in the medieval chronicles.

Since the gravestone disappeared during the revolution , only the texts mentioned are available and it can no longer be determined what the inscription actually was.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Prince Alexandre de Labanoff Rostoff (Alexandre Ĩakovlevich Kniaz Labanov-Rostovskiī, from 1788 to 1877): Recueil des Pièces Historique sur la Reine Anne ou Agnès, épouse de Henri Ier, Roi de France et fille de Iarosslaf 1er Grand Duc de Russie. Avec une notice et des remarques. Paris 1825, p. 42f.
  2. ^ A b Louis Paris (1802-1887): La Chronique de Nestor. Volume 1, 1834, pp. 324-326

Coordinates: 48 ° 28 ′ 56 ″  N , 2 ° 30 ′ 3 ″  E