Abbaye de Notre-Dame du Bec

Notre-Dame du Bec abbey is a Benedictine Catholic abbey now part of the Congregation of Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto and located at Le Bec-Hellouin, near Brionne, in the Eure département. It was founded in 1034 by Herluin, a knight of Count Gilbert of Brionne. With the arrival of the Italian Lanfranc of Pavia, prior and master of the monastic school, then of Anselm of Canterbury, Le Bec became one of the main centres of intellectual life in the eleventh century: the future Pope Alexander II studied there around 1050 as did many future legates and bishops. The abbey today consists of the chapter house, the cloister (seventeenth century) and the majestic conventual buildings (eighteenth century). The great abbey church (fourteenth century) has only its foundations left (the present church is in the former refectory). The whole is dominated by the powerful Saint-Nicolas tower (fifteenth century).

← Other sites in Eure