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Monastery / hospiceIsère

Abbaye de Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye, la maison mère des Antonins

Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye

Dimensions
A terraced village at the foot of the hills of the Chambaran, overlooking the valley of the Isère some fifteen kilometres north-west of Saint-Marcellin; the abbey church overwhelms the roofs of the village with its mass
Period
Relics said to be those of Saint Anthony laid there around 1070; priory of the Benedictines of Montmajour in 1083; lay almonry in 1095; abbey of canons regular in 1297; Gothic abbey church from the end of the 13th to the 15th century; sack of 1567, restoration from 1593; union with the Order of Malta by the bull of 17 December 1776
What stands there
The mother house of an order born to care for a disease that no one understood

The village was called La Motte, or La-Motte-Saint-Didier, when there were laid there, around 1070, bones said to be those of Anthony, the hermit of Egypt who died in 356. Tradition has them brought from Constantinople by a lord of the country, Jocelin de Châteauneuf, together with his brother-in-law Guigues Didier; no eastern source confirms it. Jocelin, who said he had been cured by the saint, undertook around 1074 to build a church; in 1083 Benedictines come from Montmajour settled beside the relics and the village took the saint's name. But the burning sickness brought crowds of the sick, and it was a confraternity of laymen, gathered in 1095 by Gaston de Valloire and his son Guérin, that took on the task of feeding them and watching over them: the almonry, the first state of the Antonines. Innocent IV gave it the rule of Saint Augustine in 1247, Boniface VIII made it in 1297 an order of canons regular, master of its abbey and of its network. From here set out the alms-collectors with the blue tau and the pigs with bells, from here came the saint-vinage. The immense Gothic abbey church, begun at the end of the 13th century and finished in the 15th, is the only church of that size in the whole of the Bas-Dauphiné: it was built for sick pilgrims.

Wikipédia — Abbaye de Saint-Antoine ↗

Further reading

Getting there : By the D 27 from Saint-Marcellin, or by the Saint-Marcellin exit on the A 49; one leaves the car at the bottom of the village and climbs up on foot. The abbey church is open to visitors outside services. The departmental museum, installed in the abbey buildings, presents the treasury, the history of St Anthony's fire and a medieval garden: as in all the museums of the department of the Isère, entry is free; the days and the times vary with the season. Allow an hour for the village, classified among the Plus Beaux Villages de France, and as much for the museum.

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

See it on the map OpenStreetMap Directions

Ambient sound

Abbaye de Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye, la maison mère des Antonins
Zairon · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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In the same department

All places — Isère (15).