Abbey Holy-Cecile de Solesmes

the Abbey Holy-Cecile de Solesmes is a Monastère of bénédictines founded by dom Guéranger, in 1866. It constitutes like the during female one Abbaye Saint-Pierre de Solesmes.

This monastery of moniales is the last foundation of dom Guéranger, restorer of the monastic life in France, but also the first foundation of a monastery of women of the “French congregation about Benoît saint”, who will become later the Congrégation of Solesmes.

History

With the difference of the monasteries of extinct men all following the French revolution, there remained monasteries of Moniales bénédictines, reconstituted after a fashion and which had restored the life bénédictine while associating with their activities of the tasks of education. There was not thus the same need for Dom Guéranger, to create a female branch with the new congregation bénédictine, in the same way that it had revived the monasteries of men in France. Actually this foundation was allowed thanks to the meeting of dom Guéranger with a figure which will prove exceptional thereafter: Jenny Heather. The young girl is entrusted to him for a preparation with the first Communion. Quickly become the spiritual girl of the Father Abbot, it expresses little by little its desire to him to be devoted entirely to God, in the spirituality of Solesmes and the Règle of saint Benoît.

The quickly built monastery takes the name of Sainte particular Cecile because of the devotion which Dom Guéranger with respect to the Roman Martyr had. The founder Jenny Bruyère also adopted like name of religion the first name of holy of Rome, while becoming Madam Cécile Bruyère, first abbess of Holy-Cecile de Solesmes. In the Cathedral (1898), Joris-Karl Huysmans devotes some admiring pages to the Holy-Cecile abbey, whose moniales revive the Gregorian plainsong in all its purity and all its force, and to its Abbess, " a large Abbess of the Middle Ages ".

In the chorus of the Abbey of the 19th century, one finds a reproduction with identical and on a scale the Gisant of holy Cécile such as one can see it with the Basilique Holy-Cecile of Rome.

With the difference of much of female convents of the time, the spirituality of Holy-Cecile de Solesmes is based on the practice and liturgical spirituality, very far from the methods of Oraison which had usually course in the religious houses of this time. The dynamism of this monastic restoration and the radiation of its founder made it possible the female branch of the Congregation of Solesmes to found many monasteries which essaiement today in France and abroad. The radiation of Holy-Cecile de Solesmes largely overflows the narrow limits of the congregation, since the constitutions written by Mrs Bruyère for her moniales with the support of dom Guéranger influence at the time much of monasteries of bénédictines in France and out of the borders. One of the characteristics more striking, it is the re-establishment of the Abbatiat for the women with its attributes (in particular the ring, the pectoral Croix and the Crosse) but also the revival of the Rite forgotten Consécration of the virgins.

In 1967, the bénédictines founded a monastery with Keur Guilaye (Senegal).

See too

Holy Cecile
Order of Saint-Beno4it cheese
Saint-Beno4it cheese
Monachism
Rule of saint Benoit
the commune of Solesmes

External bonds

the Holy-Cecile Abbey on the site of the diocese of Mans

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