Abbaye Saint-Gildas de Rhuys, le tombeau de Gildas et l'abbatiat d'Abélard

Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys

Gildas is the only Breton saint of whom a book can still be read, the De excidio Britanniae, written on the island around 540; what is told of him in Armorica comes from a Life composed here itself, in the 11th century, by a monk of Rhuys. It has him land on the island of Houat, found this monastery and withdraw to the Blavet, and relates that the boat carrying his body came to ground on the coast of the peninsula, where he was buried. Of this first monastery nothing is known. Certain history begins in 1008, when Félix, a monk from Fleury-sur-Loire, re-established the abbey with the support of Duke Geoffrey I, after the site had been abandoned in the face of the Normans around 919. A century later, from 1125 to 1133, the abbot was Peter Abelard: in the Historia calamitatum he describes monks he could not reform and a country whose language he did not understand, and he ended by fleeing. The church of his time partly survives: the 11th-century transept, the choir rebuilt in the early 12th century with its ambulatory and its capitals, the tomb attributed to Gildas behind the high altar. The Romanesque nave collapsed in 1668 and was rebuilt; the treasury holds reliquaries, including a 14th-century shrine. The whole has been listed since the list of 1840.

Wikipédia — Abbaye Saint-Gildas de Rhuys ↗

Getting there : In the centre of the village, place Monseigneur-Ropert; parking nearby. The abbey church is a parish church, open during the day (to be checked); the treasury of reliquaries can be seen during accompanied openings in season (to be checked). The conventual buildings, occupied since the 19th century by a congregation which runs a guesthouse there, cannot be visited freely. Allow half an hour for the church, more for the coast of the peninsula.

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

Ambient sound