Abbey of Chaalis

the royal abbey of Chaalis is located at Fountain-Chaalis, with orée of the Forêt of Ermenonville, vis-a-vis the Sea of sand, in the Département of Oise, with approximately 40 km in the North-East of Paris.

It was in the old diocese of Senlis.

History

The first mention of the place appears in a document of the 7th century. Chaalis - or Chaâlis - would mean Caroli Locus , i.e. place where one was to request for the memory of Charles the Good, count of Flandres, combined Louis VI.

A priory Benedictine is initially rested by Renaud of Mello to the return of the First crusade. Louis VI the Large one transforms it into Cistercian abbey, located in a marshy zone near banks of the Aunette.

Founded in 1136, the royal abbey of Chaalis was devoted in 1219 per brother Guerin, bishop of Senlis, Minister of Justice of Philippe Auguste. It was born from the will of the king Louis VI, wishing to commemorate the memory of her cousin, Charles the Good, count de Flandres, assassinated by its subjects revolted in 1127.

After having obtained the diploma of foundation in 1138, the abbey of Chaalis thrived very quickly, establishing barns, agricultural domains and wine in a score of places. In 1202, a new abbey church of Gothic style, was in building site. It was devoted in 1219. With its 82 meters length and its 40 meters of width, it was until its destruction one of the largest churches cistercians of the kingdom. Saint Louis came regularly in Chaalis, where it made a point of sharing the life of the monks. In 1378, Charles V made there, with its expenses, of the renovation work. The abbey is at that time the center of a fertile intellectual life.

After having known the effects of the general crisis which prevailed then in the kingdom during second half of the 14th century, the abbey was put in commende starting from the medium of 16th, which means that its administration was entrusted to a person named outside the community. It was the end of its independence. Initially managed by one of the largest patrons of the time, the cardinal Hippolyte d' Este (creative of the Villa of Este to Tivoli, Italy), the abbey declined gradually for lack of maintenance.

At the 18th century, its ninth commendatory abbot, Louis de Clermont, small son of the Grand Cop paradoxically completed to ruin it by sumptuous expenditure. In 1736, Jean Aubert, the architect of the large stables of Chantilly and Hotel Biron in Paris, began the rebuilding of it: the old cloister, with its two superimposed galleries, was demolished and the abbey palate, northern wing of the primitive project, was built. But the lack of money stopped work and involved the closing of the abbey, in situation of quasi compulsory liquidation, on order of Louis XVI in 1785. The monks are dispersed in other monasteries. With the Revolution, the buildings are sold like national goods in 1793. The first owner preserves only the abbey palate and exploits the other buildings like stone quarry. Most of the abbey is demolished, only remains the vault of the abbots (13th century). Until the middle of the 19th century, the conventual buildings are used as castle.

Nélie Jacquemart, widow of the banking rich person Edouard Andre, bought finally the abbey of Chaalis in 1902 to shelter its many collections of paintings and furniture. Before its death in 1912, it bequeathed the abbey to the Institute of France with the whole of its collections.

Gerard de Nerval described the site in the Girls of fire . In one of its Letters to Angelica , it evokes the abbey of Chaalis:

“ the continuation of the ruins still brought to a tower and a vault. We went up to the tower. From there one distinguished all the valley, cut ponds and rivers, with long stripped spaces which one calls the Desert of Ermenonville, and which offer only sandstones of gray color, intermingled with thin pines and heathers. Reddish careers still took shape that and there through wood thinned out the leaves of, and revived the greenish color of the plains and the forests, where the white birches, the papered trunks of ivy and the last sheets of autumn were still detached on the reddish masses from wood framed from the blue colors from the horizon. We went down again to see the vault; it is a wonder of architecture. The twinge of the pillars and the veins, the sober and fine ornament of the details, revealed the intermediate time, between the flowered Gothic and the Rebirth. ”

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