Frigolet Abbey

Saint -Michel -de- Frigolet is a Premonstratensian abbey and former Benedictine monastery in the hills of montagnette in the municipality of Tarascon.

History

Saint -Michel was founded in the 10th century, when monks from Montmajour had left the marshes around their mother monastery due to health reasons and had moved to the much more pleasant surroundings of the montagnette: the monastery was at the pilgrimage chapel of Notre -Dame-du -Bon- Remede built.

One of the biggest attractions of the monastery are three encased in gilded woodwork painting by Pierre Mignard, the Anne of Austria to the monastery in 1638 donated after they had brought the future Sun King Louis XIV to the world after 23 years of childlessness. During this time, the entire monastery of Notre- Dame-du -Bon- Remede is called.

After the abbey was secularized during the French Revolution in 1791 and later sold, it was a long time boarding school, whose pupils from 1839 to 1841 belonged to the young Frédéric Mistral.

The owner of the plant was built a new building to the chapel around which forms the left side of the apse of the abbey church built in 1858 today. Were included also in the construction of the old abbey church of Saint- Michel ( 11th century ) and the chapter house and the refectory of the monastery. In the same year, the Saint -Michel -de- Frigolet was newly founded by the Norbertine Canons in 1869 was the establishment of the status of an abbey.

Early as 1880, had to leave the living in the monastery of Premonstratensian Saint -Michel again for the first time in connection with the anti-clerical policies of the then French government - the operation was due to the resistance of the canons known as " Siege of Frigolet ". The Conventual temporarily went into exile in England, where they founded the Priory of Storrington.

Another expulsion in 1903, the Premonstratensian went to Leffe in Belgium, the state sold the building. During the First World War, the building served as a prison camp. The end of the war brought an end to the political struggles around 1922 members of the Order from their exile could return.

In 1982, the abbey church of Pope John Paul II was elevated to the rank of basilica.

Literary adaptation

Alphonse Daudet describes in his collection of short stories " Lettres de mon moulin " (1866 ), German: " Letters from my Mill" (1879 ), in the fictional story " L' Élixir you révérend père Gaucher " the creation of a monastery liqueur by the Prämonstratenserbruder Gaucher, frees the Abbey of Saint -Michel -de- Frigolet from their precarious economic situation.