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Solesmes Abbey or St. Peter's Abbey, Solesmes (Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes) is a Benedictine monastery in Solesmes (Sarthe), famous as the source of the restoration of Benedictine monastic life in France under Dom Prosper Guéranger after the French Revolution.
Priory
It was originally founded in 1010 as a priory of the Benedictine Le Mans abbey. Its history was largely uneventful. It suffered considerably during the Hundred Years' War but was afterwards restored. From the 17th century it underwent a slow decline under a series of commendatory priors. It was dissolved in 1791 in the course of the French Revolution.
Abbey
In 1831 the remaining buildings, which had escaped demolition in the Revolution but were threatened with destruction for want of a buyer, came to the attention of the locally-born priest Prosper Guéranger, who, inspired by the vision of a restored monastic life in France, acquired them for the home of a new Benedictine community, which moved in on 11 July 1833. Against all expectation the new community flourished and in 1837 not only received Papal approval, but was elevated to the rank of an abbey and made the head of the newly created French Benedictine Congregation, now the Solesmes Congregation within the Benedictine Confederation.
In 1866 a convent, St. Cecilia's Abbey, Solesmes, was also founded at Solesmes, by Mother Cécile Bruyère (the first abbess) with the support of Dom Guéranger, which was the first house of the nuns of the Solesmes Congregation.
The abbey was closed several times by French legislation, and between 1901 and 1922 the monks were forced into exile in England. They settled on the Isle of Wight and built the present Quarr Abbey. The community survived those trials and those of two World Wars and is still at Solesmes.
As part of its mission of monastic revival the abbey has been the mother house of numerous other monastic foundations, most notably in recent years the monastery at Palendriai in Lithuania.
The abbey is noted for its crucial contribution to the advancement of the Roman Catholic liturgy and the revival of Gregorian chant.
External links
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