traveldk.com

Dramatically sited on a lone rock in the Bay of Mont-St-Michel, this famous abbey exerts a huge draw on the thousands who visit every year.

A centre of learning for 700 years, Jumièges became nothing more than a quarry after the Revolution. Today, its enigmatic ruins, romantically set in a loop of the Seine, live again as one of the “must-see” sights of Normandy (see Abbaye de Jumièges).

In 1034, a knight called Herluin exchanged his charger for a donkey and founded a religious community on the banks of the River Risle. When he was joined some eight years later by the influential Italian theologians Lanfranc and Anselm, the monastery grew to become the intellectual heart of Normandy. Disbanded in the Revolution and later demolished, it again became a Benedictine monastery in 1948 (see A Drive Along the Risle, Abbaye Notre-Dame, Le Bec-Hellouin).

Lanfranc was the first abbot of the abbey, which was founded by William the Conqueror and consecrated in his presence in 1077. Ten years later, William was buried, most unceremoniously, in the abbey’s church, St-Etienne.

Like their founders William and Matilda, the Abbaye-aux-Hommes and Abbaye-aux-Dames (the first of the two to be built) are close cousins. The lovely convent buildings were designed by Guillaume de la Tremblaye.

In 1114, William of Tancarville founded a small community of monks, who took this beautiful Norman Romanesque building as their abbey church (see Abbaye St-Georges de Boscherville).

Founded in 649 and rebuilt in the 10th century after destruction by Norsemen, the abbey became a centre of learning. Inevitably, the Revolution saw its demise, but in 1931 it once again became a Benedictine monastery (see Abbaye de St-Wandrille).

This vast and austerely beautiful church owes its scale to a casket containing the Holy Blood of Christ, said to have been washed ashore in the trunk of a fig tree in the 1st century. The abbey built on the spot in the early 13th century attracted streams of pilgrims. Le Précieux Sang is still venerated today.

Lord of the Manor Guillaume Paynel founded the abbey in 1145. Always a small community, its fortunes declined over the years, and in 1784 it was declared defunct. In the 19th century, the buildings were quarried for stone; only in the 20th were the noble ruins we see today saved from further destruction (see Abbaye de Hambye).

Founded in 1140, La Trappe was one of the Cistercian monasteries which adopted the Strict Observance – silence, prayer, abstinence, manual labour – introduced by Abbé de Rancé in the 1660s. Thereafter, they were known as Trappist monasteries; there is another at Bricquebec.