Montreuil Abbey, or Montreuil-les-Dames, was a

Cistercian nunnery Cistercian nuns are female members of the Cistercian Order, a religious order belonging to the Roman Catholic branch of the Catholic Church. History The first Cistercian monastery for women, Le Tart Abbey, was established at Tart-l'Abbaye in t ...

in the

Diocese of Laon The diocese of Laon in the present-day département of Aisne, was a Catholic diocese for around 1300 years, up to the French Revolution. Its seat was in Laon, France, with the Laon Cathedral. From early in the 13th century, the bishop of Laon ...

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...

, located at first at Montreuil-en-Thiérache (commune of Rocquigny, department of Aisne) until the 17th century and afterwards in

Laon Laon () is a city in the Aisne department in Hauts-de-France in northern France. History Early history The holy district of Laon, which rises a hundred metres above the otherwise flat Picardy plain, has always held strategic importance. ...

, where it was known as Montreuil-sous-Laon.

History

The nunnery was founded by Bartholomew, Bishop of Laon, in 1136. In its early days the community occupied themselves not only in traditional women's tasks such as weaving and embroidery, but also in tilling the fields, clearing the forest, and weeding the soil. The nunnery rapidly gained a great reputation and within a few years the community numbered nearly three hundred. A community this large was difficult to manage, and within a century of its foundation the abbey was forbidden by the Abbot of Clairvaux to take more novices until the number of nuns at Montreuil was reduced to one hundred, which figure was not in future to be exceeded. In 1636 the warfare prevalent in the region forced the nuns to abandon the abbey, which was destroyed. In 1655 they were eventually granted as a replacement the former

leper hospital A leper colony, also known by many other names, is an isolated community for the quarantining and treatment of lepers, people suffering from leprosy. ''M. leprae'', the bacterium responsible for leprosy, is believed to have spread from East Afr ...

of Saint Ladre and Saint Lazare in La Neuville, a suburb of Laon, which became known as Montreuil-sous-Laon The abbey was suppressed in 1792 at the

French Revolution The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in coup of 18 Brumaire, November 1799. Many of its ...

. The premises were subsequently used as a workhouse, a lunatic asylum, and as a lodging for refugees, and suffered considerable damage and alteration during this period. After a major refurbishment in the early 1990s they are now principally residential in use.

Holy Face of Montreuil

Throughout the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

Montreuil was a place of pilgrimage on account of its possession of the ''Sainte Face'' (i.e. Holy Face) as the

Veil of Veronica The Veil of Veronica, or (Latin for sweat-cloth), also known as the Vernicle and often called simply the Veronica, is a Christian relic consisting of a piece of cloth said to bear an image of the Holy Face of Jesus produced by other than huma ...

. This representation of the face of

Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religious ...

, which was regarded by many as the original relic, was really a copy of the ''Vera Effigies'' in

St. Peter's Basilica The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter in the Vatican ( it, Basilica Papale di San Pietro in Vaticano), or simply Saint Peter's Basilica ( la, Basilica Sancti Petri), is a church built in the Renaissance style located in Vatican City, the papal e ...

at Rome. It was presented in 1249 to the then Abbess of Montreuil, Sybilla, by her brother Jacques Pantaleon, afterwards

Pope Urban IV Pope Urban IV ( la, Urbanus IV; c. 1195 – 2 October 1264), born Jacques Pantaléon, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 29 August 1261 to his death. He was not a cardinal; only a few popes since his time hav ...

. The painting, apparently of Eastern origin and already ancient when it came into the hands of the nuns, bore an inscription that seemed undecipherable, baffling even

Mabillon Dom Jean Mabillon, O.S.B., (; 23 November 1632 – 27 December 1707) was a French Benedictine monk and scholar of the Congregation of Saint Maur. He is considered the founder of the disciplines of palaeography and diplomatics. Early life Mabi ...

. Subsequently, however, some

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

n scholars asserted that the words were Slavonic, and read ''Obraz gospoden na-oubrouse'' (in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, ''Imago Domini in linteo''): "the image of the Lord in a linen cloth". The ''Sainte Face'' was not destroyed along with the abbey in the French Revolution, as was once believed, but was instead deposited in 1807 in the treasury of

Laon Cathedral Laon Cathedral (french: Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Laon) is a Roman Catholic church located in Laon, Aisne, Hauts-de-France, France. Built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it is one of the most important and stylistically unified exampl ...

, where it remains.Cairn.info: Revue d'Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 2001/4, p.7
/ref> The term

Holy Face of Jesus The Holy Face of Jesus is a title for specific images which some Catholics believe to be miraculously formed representations of the face of Jesus Christ. The image obtained from the Shroud of Turin is associated with a specific medal worn by s ...

has, however, in recent years been more closely associated with the image obtained via the negative plate of the 1898 photograph taken by

Secondo Pia Secondo Pia (9 September 1855 – 7 September 1941) was an Italian lawyer and amateur photographer. He is best known for taking the first photographs of the Shroud of Turin on 28 May 1898 and, when he was developing them, noticing that the photo ...

of the Shroud of Turin.

References

Sources

Montreuil Abbey
-

Catholic Encyclopedia The ''Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church'' (also referred to as the ''Old Catholic Encyclopedia'' and the ''Original Catholic Encyclopedia'') i ...

article
Patrimoine de France: Abbaye de Montreuil à Laon
{{Coord, 49, 34, 12, N, 3, 36, 8, E, type:landmark_region:FR, display=title Cistercian nunneries in France Religious organizations established in 1136 Monasteries in Aisne Christian monasteries established in the 12th century