Monastère de Chalais: A Former Benedictine Abbey in France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page10 sections
History
Monastère de Chalais, also known as Notre-Dame de Chalais, is a former Benedictine monastery in France, near Voreppe, founded in 1101 on the southern foothills of the Chartreuse Massif. Hugues de Châteauneuf, bishop of Grenoble, established it for male hermits who followed the Rule of Saint Benedict, a monastic code centred on prayer, discipline, work, and obedience. The original community occupied a Romanesque religious setting that later became the centre of a wider monastic congregation.
The Benedictine foundation
The first monks, later called the hermits of Chalais, supported themselves through forestry and sheep raising. In 1110 they considered leaving the hermitage, but the community received donations and encouragement from the Count of Albon and his wife, Mathilde. This support allowed the settlement to continue developing.
Chalais became an abbey in 1124, and Pope Honorius II placed it under his protection the following year. Limited income and the number of men seeking admission encouraged the foundation of dependent houses. Monks from Chalais reinforced Boscodon in 1142, while a priory had been opened at Laverq in 1135. Boscodon later founded the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Lure in 1165, and the Abbey of Clausonne was built in 1185.
The Order of Chalais
The communities formed by Chalais were organized as the Order of Chalais, a Benedictine congregation, under a rule known as the Charter of Charity in 1148. At its height in 1205, the order comprised ten abbeys and three priories. Boscodon became its mother house. The order declined during the late thirteenth century as more prosperous religious communities expanded.
Carthusian and revolutionary transformations
Chalais passed to the Carthusians of the Grande Chartreuse in 1303–1304. The Carthusians belonged to a contemplative order whose principal monastery was the Grande Chartreuse in the Chartreuse Mountains. Chalais initially remained an autonomous Carthusian community, but Huguenots, French Protestants involved in the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century, pillaged and partly destroyed it in 1562. The community could not finance the rebuilding, and in 1582 Chalais was attached to the Grande Chartreuse. It then served as a residence or refuge for elderly, sick, and weak Carthusian members.
The buildings were restored in 1640 and again in 1773. Only five priests and brothers remained when the French Revolution began. The abolition of monastic vows and religious congregations in 1790 led to the dispersal of the monks in 1791. The buildings were seized as national property and sold to a private owner, after which they were used as farm buildings and barns.
Dominican use and twentieth-century revival
Henri Lacordaire, a nineteenth-century French Dominican friar and religious leader, acquired Chalais in 1844 and established a Dominican house of studies and novitiate. The first friars arrived on 4 April 1844, and the community accommodated about forty brothers. A small building for visitors was also constructed. Hyacinthe Besson, a Dominican friar and religious painter, became the first master of novices.
The house was reduced to an ordinary convent between 1849 and 1851, although its study function returned in September 1851. The community moved to Saint-Maximin in 1859, and Chalais subsequently served as a Dominican rest house. The Dominican presence ended with the expulsions of 1880, and the property was sold to a Grenoble industrialist in 1887.
During the period of private ownership, the Nicolet-Courbier family invited Dominicans from a house of studies near Chambéry to spend holidays at Chalais in 1932. Maintenance became difficult during the Second World War, when the French Resistance, the network opposing the German occupation and the Vichy regime, established a base at the site in 1943.
An effort to restore Chalais in 1956 failed for lack of funds. A road built in 1958 improved access for Dominican nuns from Oullins, who acquired or settled at the property in the early 1960s after leaving the Lyon suburbs. Nuns from Chinon joined them in 1966, and the present Dominican community became affiliated with the Notre-Dame des Prêcheurs Federation.
The former abbey was restored according to Chalaisian architectural principles in the early 1970s. The abbey church and the façades and roofs of the conventual building have been protected as historic monuments since 1974. The Dominican nuns maintain the monastery through manual work, particularly by producing monastic biscuits. The enterprise began in 1957 with Dominican nuns from Chinon and later moved to Chalais. Its products include vanilla “Towers,” anise-flavoured “Stars,” orange-flavoured “Arches,” coconut “Coco-sport,” and chestnut-honey biscuits shaped to represent the church belfry, created between 1957 and 1971.
Remains
Monastère de Chalais stands on a plateau about 940 metres above sea level, east of Voreppe, between the Aiguille de Chalais, at 1,089 metres, and the Mont de la Roize, at 1,135 metres. The monastery lies in the Chartreuse Mountains, a setting that is often snow-covered in winter. The complex includes the former abbey church, conventual buildings, and a cemetery. A conical hill topped by a cross stands about half an hour’s walk from the monastery.
The Romanesque abbey church
Early church fabric
The primitive Romanesque chapel dates from 1101, while the larger abbey church belongs to the middle of the twelfth century and is associated with a building campaign under Guigues de Revel, who also built Boscodon and Lure. The surviving early portions comprise the choir, transept, transept arms, side chapels, and one bay of the nave. The choir, transept, and nave bay survived the destruction of 1562, while other parts were rebuilt by the Carthusians.
Carthusian additions
Carthusian alterations changed the exterior and interior of the church. A distinctive hood-shaped roof was added, and an eighteenth-century porch and belfry were erected near the western entrance. The belfry is crowned by a globe surmounted by a cross.
The crossing of the transept has a Gothic ribbed vault, a ceiling organized by intersecting stone ribs. Its keystone represents the Mystic Lamb, with the four Evangelists arranged around it. Slender columns flank the choir window. At the eastern end, an oculus admits the summer-solstice sun along the axis of the nave. During the day, the light traces an ellipse on the floor, a feature also found in other former Chalaisian abbeys.
Monastic buildings and associated structures
The monastery buildings cover approximately 6,000 square metres. About 2,000 square metres are occupied by the biscuit workshop. The complex contains a refectory, library, offices, laundry, and the nuns’ cells on the upper floor. An old forester’s house, known as the hermitage, provides an associated accommodation building, while a smaller house for visitors was constructed during the Dominican period in the nineteenth century.
