Fleury Abbey

Benedictine abbey founded (c.630) at Fleury, St Benôit-sur-Loire, France by monks from Orleans. The abbey first existed under the rules of the Irish monk St Columba but then adopted the rule of the Italian St Benôit, whose remains were brought from Rome. The abbey flourished under the guidance of St Abbon (late 10th-c). During the French Revolution it was destroyed and the relics hidden away for protection. In 1944, 10 monks were sent from the monastery of Pierre-qui-vire, near Vezelay, to revive the monastic life at Fleury and to oversee the building of a new monastery, which is sited next to the 12th-c abbey church.

Fleury Abbey (Floriacum) in Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Loiret, France, was one of the richest and most celebrated Benedictine monasteries of Western Europe.

Of the list of eighty-nine abbots of Fleury, the last twenty-two held the abbey in commendam and did not reside there.

The most famous of the Merovingian abbots was St. Mommolus. The monk of Fleury named Helgaud (died ca 1068), was chaplain to King Robert II and wrote a brief Epitoma vitae Roberti regis. Fleury had particular significance in lending legitimacy to its patrons.

Theodulphus, bishop of Orléans established at Fleury a school for young noblemen recommended there by Charlemagne. Later under St. Abbo of Fleury (abbot 988-1004), head of the reformed abbey school, Fleury enjoyed a second golden age; Later, among the abbots in commendam are Odet de Coligny, Cardinal de Chatillon, Antoine Cardinal Sanguin in the reign of François I and Armand du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu). The last abbot, at the time of the French Revolution, was Georges-Louis Phélypeaux, Archbishop of Bourges.

The seventeenth-century Benedictine scholar Jean Mabillon accepted the traditional founding of Fleury as by Leodebaldus, abbot of St-Aignan (Orléans) about 640, in the existing Gallo-Roman villa of Floriacum, in the Vallis Aurea, the "Golden Valley". This was the spot selected by the Abbot of St-Aignan for his Benedictine foundation.

The Catholic Encyclopedia avers that "from the very start the abbey boasted of two churches, one in honour of St. Peter and the other in honour of the Blessed Virgin." After the ravages of the Normans, who penetrated via the Loire and burned the monastery buildings, this latter became the great Romanesque basilica that occasioned the erection of a great tower, that was intended as the west front of the abbey church, completed in 1218. The tower of Abbot Gauzlin, resting on fifty columns, forms a unique porch.

Fleury is reputed to contain the relics of St. Benedict of Nursia, the father of Western monasticism, a claim disputed by the monks of Monte Cassino. Mommolus, the second Abbot of Fleury, is said to have effected their transfer when that abbey fell into decay after the ravages of the Lombards in the seventh century. The monks of Monte Cassino impugned the claims of Fleury, but without ever showing any relics to make good their contention that they possess the body of the founder.