Chartreuse of Valsainte

Swiss house of the order Carthusian monk, Valsainte was founded in 1295 by Girard, lord of Corbière on the territory of the current canton of Freiburg (District of the Gruyere, commune of Cerniat). It was removed in 1778 by the government Freibourgese patrician which wanted to use the land incomes of them to maintain the bishop Lausanne from which he had the load. Under the French revolution, Valsainte sheltered Trappistes, then Rédemptoristes.

In 1863, the local political interests facilitated the return of the monks and the convent, ruined, was restored and rebuilt. The former monks of the chartreuse neighbor of Share-God, itself removed in 1848, constituted the core of the restored community. The current buildings date essentially from the 18th century (body of principal building) and from the end of the 19th century (cells of the monks, building of the Convers, vault and external hotel trade). In the church, the modernizations undertaken into 1970 allowed the restoration of a beautiful vault of tuff of the area, dating from the 14th century. It is the oldest vestige of the monastery.

Valsainte at the 20th century

In the last decade of the 19th century, then at the beginning of the 20th century, one builds with haste two new lines of cells to accommodate the expelled Carthusian monks of France by the laws anticlericals. The house even once sheltered the general chapter of the order. During the 20th century, it profited from the vocations which could not be accommodated in France and several vocations of Swiss origin. The chartreuse one became an important spiritual hearth of the life Catholique Swiss and French.

Two priors contributed largely to the radiation of the house.

In the Years 1920, Dom Florent Miège, French monk, spiritual father of Raissa Maritain and adviser of his husband the philosopher Jacques Maritain. But the community, foreign in majority, was badly integrated in the local population.

Of 1934 to 1981, Dom Nicolas Barred, native, largely contributed by his human qualities to attract with the Monastère the sympathy of those which attended it and to support the good relationships with the vicinity, in particular with the peasants and tenants of Alpage S, tenants of the monastery. Endowed with practical direction, it took care of the maintenance and the modernization of the buildings and played a big role, though of second plan, in the life of its kind lasting nearly 50 years. Intractable about the questions of disciplines, it could nevertheless accompany a certain evolution by the observances of its kind, in particular in the field of the hygiene of life (installation of electricity and the central heating in the common parts, adaptation of the food mode). However this open dynamism ages with him and became exhausted in tirednesses of a too long priorat. Endowed with a certain good sense, it could recognize the value of the men, at least in the administrative domain and practical; the insufficiency of the intellectual training given into chartreuse left it more stripped in the theological and historical fields, as he deplored it itself at the end of his life.

Monks of Valsainte count among cartusiens the most famous authors of the XXe century, such Dom Augustin Guillerand ( Silence cartusien ) and Dom Jean-Baptiste Porion ( Amour and Silence ).

The last decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the next century were for the house one crisis period human and material, prepared by the rarefaction of the vocations which was felt since the Seventies.

Following the collapse of a surrounding wall and important cracks in the line of lower cells, one had to go obviously: The buildings built between 1890 and 1902 had been high on a ground brought back insufficiently stabilized and were to be demolished. It is about a wing of the house, called cloister of the noviciate because it sheltered the cells of the solemn monks not profès, as well as a small unit called “Noviciate” located close to the access road, including/understanding the cell of the Master of the beginners, flanked of a vault and a small library to the use of the beginners. This “noviciate” had been restructured in the Sixties by the Main Father of the beginners of the time, Dom Claude. Transforming the original cell of the Master of the beginners into library, it installed the cubiculum and the Ave Maria (see article Chartreux: structure) in the southern part of the vault to make him profit from a different orientation (window towards the south instead of being directed towards the west like all those of the line). The northern wall of the vault was covered with rollers of Javroz (torrent close running at the bottom to the valley); the furnace bridge in T was rebuilt against the wall in same materials, surmounted by a beautiful wood crucifix. The ground and the other walls were covered with a floor waxed and equipped with the usual pieces of furniture cut down on the spot. At the time, the group of the noviciate was still numerous, and the vault was used as room of chapter for the single weekly conference of the Master of the beginners and the celebration of the coulpes of the beginners. The Master of the beginners ceased living the “Noviciate” at the end of the Eighties, but the library and the vault continued to be practically used until the destruction. Of this unit, there remains nothing any more but the memory today.

Valsainte is Chartreuse the alive last of Switzerland. It includes/understands today a little less than twenty-five monks, for the profès majority of the house (12 Fathers and 12 Brothers).

See too

Carthusian monk
Religious orders alphabetically
List of the monasteries Carthusian monk

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Random links:

Chartreuse of Valsainte

Valsainte at the 20th century

See too

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