Abbaye de Fleury (Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire)

Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire

Around the middle of the 7th century, monks settled at Fleury, on the bank of the Loire. Around 672 an expedition set out for Italy: at Monte Cassino, laid waste by the Lombards, the remains of Saint Benedict of Nursia, the father of Western monks, lay abandoned. Monastic tradition tells that the envoys of Fleury recovered the precious bones and brought them back to Gaul — a translation the Church still celebrates every 11 July. Now guardian of the body of Saint Benedict, the Loire abbey drew pilgrims, kings and scholars: under the great abbots Abbo and then Gauzlin, around the year 1000, its school and library ranked among the foremost in the West. From that golden age survives a masterpiece: the tower porch raised after 1020, a forest of pillars bearing historiated capitals where angels and the damned rub shoulders, and then the vast Romanesque abbey church whose choir and crypt were rebuilt between 1070 and 1108. In the half-light of the crypt, the central pillar still houses the reliquary shrine, the beating heart of the place for thirteen centuries. Ruined by the Hundred Years' War, revived by the Maurists whom Richelieu installed there in 1627, emptied of its monks in 1790, the abbey church has survived everything; in 1944 a Benedictine community settled there once more, and the sung offices again set the rhythm of the days. To come to Saint-Benoît is to enter one of the oldest monastic pilgrimages in Europe — and one still alive.

Getting there : Abbey church in the centre of the village, avenue de l'Abbaye, 35 km east of Orléans by the D60 (north bank of the Loire). Open daily from 6am to 10pm, free admission; relic crypt accessible outside services. Le Belvédère interpretation centre nearby.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound