Abbaye Saint-Amant-de-Boixe

Saint-Amant-de-Boixe

Tradition has Amant born in Bordeaux around 520: setting out for Galicia and driven off course by a storm, he is said to have withdrawn as a hermit into the forest of La Boixe, in the Angoumois, where he worked miracles before dying around 600, a disciple of Saint Cybard. Around his tomb a cult took root, then a community: excavations have uncovered a church of Saint-Pierre from as early as the 7th century and Merovingian sarcophagi, and the abbey appears in the records in 888, when the counts of Angoulême seized it. Around 1025, William IV Taillefer moved the monastery to its present site, along a Roman road, and had an abbey church built. The great Romanesque rebuilding began around 1100; on 1 October 1125 the relics of Saint Amant were transferred there, and the church was consecrated in 1170. The abbey then held sway over sixteen priories and twenty-four churches with some fifty monks, before its decline: the Wars of Religion, only seven monks in the 17th century, suppression in 1774 and sale as national property in 1791. Listed as early as 1840, the abbey church was restored by Paul Abadie in 1851 and 1874 and today welcomes around 12,000 visitors a year.

L'histoire de l'abbaye — Abbaye Saint-Amant-de-Boixe ↗

Getting there : Place de l'Abbaye, in the centre of the village, some twenty kilometres north of Angoulême. The abbey church is open; the conventual buildings house an interpretation centre for Romanesque art and a stopping place for pilgrims on the Way of St James. The forest of La Boixe, cradle of the legend, stretches just north-east of the village.

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

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