origins

Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek is a monastic foundation of the French Abbey Notre Dame de Fontgombault, itself a foundation of Saint Pierre de Solesmes. Solesmes owes most of its fame to Dom Prosper Guéranger, who started Saint Pierre in 1833 in order to restore Benedictine life in France after its disappearance during the French Revolution. He was convinced that the first thing to do to renew Christian life was to reestablish monasteries as centers of doctrine and of prayer.

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Before Dom Guéranger, Solesmes was a modest priory, directly dependant upon the abbey of Saint Peter de la Couture in Le Mans. In the fifteenth century, Solesmes boasted a total population of ten religious.

Middle Ages

The land of Solesmes was long consecrated to God, according to the Acts of the bishops of Le Mans. St. Thuribus, in the fifth century, organized public worship in the Gallo-Roman "villa de Solesmis". By the beginning of the ninth century, this property of the Church of Le Mans was held as a benefice for a vassal of Charlemagne's court. Soon, Norman raids were to place the church and its surroundings into other hands - those of Raoul de Beaumont, Vicount of Le Maine. At the time, the counts of Le Mans, in order to fortify their border against Anjou, established Geoffroy, Raoul's own brother, as lord at Sablé.

Raoul gave ownership of Solesmes to Geoffroy, who wished to donate it to the monks of "la Couture" by a charter conjecturally dated October 12, 1010. It is from this date that today's monastery of Solesmes reckons its foundation.

Nothing much is known about the monastery during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but the peace and prosperity of the era allowed the prior, Guillaume Patry, to have the dam in the river Sarthe reconstructed so as to properly power the two windmills placed there at the time.

Still, difficult times were in the offing. Some time before 1365, a house on the "Isle of Sablé" was donated to the monks and soon served as a place of refuge. (This was the "logis de Solesmis" where, much later, Dom Guéranger, the future restorer of the Benedictines, lived as a boy.) In 1375, Solesmes experienced a first taste of the sufferings brought on by the interminable Hundred Years War. Fifty years later, the English occupied the countryside, burning and destroying the monastery and leaving he town in ruins, abandoned and resourceless. In 1491, and again in 1497, Jean de Nemous was obliged to make considerable donations so that the monks could fulfill their various liturgical and devotional duties. Among them was the daily obligation, after the office of Prime, of the "King's Mass", established in 1408 by Louis II of Anjou, king of Jerusalem and Sicily.

The Renaissance

After 1425, the generosity of several benefactors gave substantial means to the zeal of a series of priors who first determined to bring the monastery back to life, and once they had assured its survival, began a work of true spiritual renewal. Many of these priors were men of learning and virtue. Adept administrators, they belonged to well established families of Le Maine and several became abbot of La Couture in Le Mans.

Philibert de la Croix initiated the roof vaulting of the church around 1475. From 1486 to 1495, as Columbus sailed for the New World, Cheminart built a bell tower, and commissioned the Tomb of Our Lord sculpture group in the south transept, as well as other smaller undertakings. Saint-Hilaire had the Tomb sculpture group completed, and continued the construction of the roof vaulting. From 1532 on, Jean Bougler completed the vaulting of the entire church, made improvements in the sanctuary and undertook the sculptures in the "Belle Chapelle" of the north transept. Having pursued his work until 1553, his monks made further additions to it after 1556 following Bougler's original initiatives.

This economic revival and artistic renewal accompanied a spiritual and disciplinary reform in the cloister, whose principal artisan was Michel Bureau (abbot of La Couture, 1496-1518). Bougler would have become abbot of Le Mans if the king, Francois I, had not favored another candidate. The prior was therefore obliged to limit his zeal to a restrained circle, and so, his monks were the primary beneficiaries of his extraordinary talents. Despite certain prejudices of the Renaissance regarding monasticism, the cloistered life was held in esteem, and the surrounding population benefited too from the teachings of the superior of Solesmes.

Modern Times

Strengthened by the rights acquired through the concordat of Boulogne the king of France disposed of the priory at Solesmes as he did the abbey of La Couture in Le Mans: he placed both "in commendam" (the custody of a benefice in the absence of a regular incumbent). Thus deprived of their religious superiors, the monks led an ever-more precarious life: the house began to decline in numbers of monks, and the monastic life itself slipped into increasing decadence.

Not all the men who exercised secular authority over the monastery were entirely negligent as to the temporal and spiritual well-being of the house. And there was no better way to do so than to look to the Congregation of St Maurus which, since 1618 presided in France over the reform of most of the Benedictine cloisters. This is precisely what Gabriel de Chaource-Beauregard did when on December 8, 1664, he came to an agreement with the fathers of the Congregation to take on Solesmes. Forty years later, in 1723, the conventual lodgings were being completely rebuilt with the help of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the marquis of Torcy who was building his new chateau in neighboring Sablé.

On February 13, 1790, in the wake of the French Revolution, the new French constitution outlawed religious vows. By the beginning of 1791, the monks of Solesmes were forced to disperse, to the great regret of the neighboring populace; the municipality lodged a complaint with the District. But, of seven priests, only one returned to his home diocese and the others simply refused to leave the monastery. Dom de Sageon was imprisoned for three years in Le Mans. Dom Cotelle and Dom Morel were first imprisoned in Rennes then deported to Jersey. The others went into hiding. Dom Papion lived in the region, exercising his ministry for a group that had remained faithful to the Catholic Church. Officially, the priory was sold off, but in fact, no new owner ever came forward, and sundry groups of the faithful were able to hold clandestine meetings in the abandoned compound.

On two different occasions (1792 and 1794), villagers saved the monastery's most prized relic, a thorn from what is believed to be the Crown of Thorns retrieved from the Holy Land by Louis IX. It was not until 1850 that this relic was returned to the monastery where it continues to be exposed once a year, on Easter Monday.

Dom Guéranger's Restoration

Born in Sablé on April 4, 1805, Prosper Guéranger frequently made Solesmes the destination of his childhood walks, succumbing to the charm of the church building and its life-sized saints in stone. Though he never imagined himself being a monk, he loved the solitude of the place. Aspiring first to the priesthood, a precocious vocation led him, after his high school studies in Angers, to the seminary in Le Mans. There, he was drawn intensely to the study of Church history, and soon he discovered what the institution of monasticism had been. Contact with the great scholarly works of the Maurists soon awoke in him a real desire for the monastic life.

Ordained a priest in 1827 (Guéranger was only 22 years old at the time, so that his bishop had to obtain a canonical dispensation), he pursued his work as the bishop's secretary in Paris and in Le Mans. In 1831, learning that the priory at Solesmes was destined to destruction for lack of a buyer, the idea came to him to find the means to acquire it and to take up the Benedictine life again. With the help of a few friends and encouraged by his bishop, he gathered together - with considerable difficulty - enough money to rent the monastery property, and subsequently moved in with three companions on July 11, 1833.

No one doubted that a very great undertaking had begun, but it was judged to be barely viable, as the buildings were dilapidated, the tiny community without money or means to attract vocations, and certainly there was no one with experience in the monastic life. Its twenty-something superior possessed only a theoretical knowledge of how monks ought to live; the whole enterprise seemed to many to be more an act of folly than of faith.

The fledgling community encountered, of course, difficult times. But its young prior, borne up by his confidence in absolute Providence, by his humility and by his natural mirth and optimism, proved to possess a calm tenacity. Without copying the past in a servile way, he took inspiration from solid monastic traditions pursuing above all the true spirit of St Benedict while accepting several very necessary material adaptations to modern times. As a result, by his uncommon intuition of the benedictine charism, liturgy and spiritual life, he became a living example to his monks. As for temporal matters, Solesmes' first friends saw to the most urgent needs. They inaugurated a second and long list of the monastery's benefactors : the Cosnards, the Landeaus, the Gazeaus, Mme Swetchine, Montalembert, the Marquis of Juigné, and so many offers who thought constantly of the monks.

After a four-year tryout Dom Guéranger went to Rome, in 1837, to ask the Vatican for official recognition of Solesmes as a benedictine community. Rome not only granted Dom Guéranger's request, but on its own initiative raised Solesmes from the status of priory to that of an abbey making it the head of a new Benedictine Congregation de France, successor to the Congregations of St. Maurus and St. Vanne as well as the more venerable and ancient family of monasteries belonging to Cluny. On July 26, Dom Guéranger made his solemn profession in the presence of the abbot of St. Paul Outside the Walls in Rome.

From then on began a new period in the history of Solesmes. The trials and tribulations did not end, but they could no longer inhibit the newfound vitality of the young abbey.

Wishing to restore "a center of prayer and studies in service to the Church", Dom Guéranger underscored the primacy of the Divine Office from the very beginning, putting aside the notion of the benedictine monk as mere scholar. Nevertheless, the new abbot knew that for monks a persistant search for the truth is a prerequisite of an authentic spiritual life, and he seriously organised studies making huge sacrifices in order to build up the Solesmes library. A remarkable teacher with a lively and pleasant way of speaking, he encouraged his monks in intellectual pursuits, leading the way by his own example, and helped by his remarkable capacity for work. It is by the sheer number and authority of his publications that Solesmes acquired its first real influence, in France, and later in the universal Church.

Dom Guéranger is known above all for the part he played in the restoration of the liturgy. The meaning and value of the ceremonies having long been forgotten, the abbot of Solesmes explained them to the faithful in his most famous work, The Liturgical Year, which saw numerous translations and reprints. He taught them to live by and in the Church, to pray with Her and as She does . The return of the dioceses of France to the Roman Liturgy is owed in large measure to him, as well as the great current of piety, at once ancient and modern, known as "the liturgical life", which was to result in the present day liturgical movement.

Holding the Church's chant to be the perfect expression of her liturgical prayer, the abbot of Solesmes undertook, with his monks, the restoration of the Gregorian melodies which centuries of neglect and changes in taste had left unrecognizable.

The workshop of the Paléographie musicale would be born of this research one day.

Rome herself recognized what precious help she might expect from Solesmes. In 1851, Pius IX asked Dom Guéranger to work on a project which would contribute to the definition of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. And in 1860, he finished a study on Modernist thinking. The abbot of Solesmes' work, La Monarchie pontificale, played a decisive role at the time of the proclamation of papal infallibility (1870); the work was recognized in a brief by Pius IX. Finally, the growth of Solesmes translated into the first foundation of additional monasteries. In 1853, Dom Guéranger, with the support of the bishop of Le Mans (Msgr. Pie), resuscitated France's most ancient monastery, St Martin of Tours, in Ligugé, near Poitiers. In 1865, Guéranger created St. Mary Magdalene of Marseille, later transfered to Hautcombe and thence to Ganagobie. Women's vocations began to flourish simultaneously, and led Guéranger to found St. Cecilia's of Solesmes in 1866, a monastery called to rapid development under the direction of its first abbess, Mme Cécile Bruyère. She had been under the spiritual direction of Dom Guéranger since her childhood and eventually resolved that her whole life to be the faithful guardian of his thinking.

Solesmes gave life to other religious families too. The founders of the German Benedictine Congregation of Beuron were formed by Dom Guéranger. Dom Leduc, a monk of Solesmes, was the founder, in Angers, of the Congregation of the Servants of the Poor, regular oblates of the order of St. Benedict. These are only the primary examples of a monastic influence in which many would take part. Dom Guéranger's advice, encouragement and help were decisive in setting Lacordaire on his final steps towards the restoration of the Dominican Order in France. Similary, it was Guéranger who launched J.P. Migne on his project of compiling the writings of the Church Fathers, the collection known today as the Patriologia Latina & Greca.

Upon his death, January 30, 1875, Dom Guéranger left behind him a solid work which earned the praise and gratitude of Pius IX in yet another brief written for the intention of the first abbot of Solesmes, today a large and united family which has remained faithful despite some extraordinary trials. The body of Dom Guéranger lies in the crypt of the abbey church, though his heart, according to his own wish, was transported and is entombed in the sanctuary of St Cecilia's. He is, and will forever remain a most beloved father and teacher to his children.

Dom Guéranger's Successors

It was Dom Guéranger's prior, Dom Charles Couturier, who was elected to succeed him. The tenure of this good and prudent man began under the best of auspices, in a monastery uniquely focused on the blossoming of its paternal heritage.

The first of many more storms, however, blew up on the heels of the decrees of March 29, 1880 which pretented to submit religious to completely unacceptable conditions, and in fact led to the dissolution of practically all houses of religious men in France. During a long and memorable day, November 6, 1880, the monks of Solesmes were the objects of a spectacular expulsion.

During fifteen years of constant hardship, as detente and renewed friction alternated, the sons of Dom Guéranger lived on their own doorstep, sometimes succeeding in partial or even complete re-entry of the monastery. The offices and Mass were celebrated in the parish church or at St Cecilia's. The monks lived in twenty or so houses placed at their disposal. Only by a very great grace of God did they retain their fervor in such abnormal conditions. These trials merely served to strengthen unity of purpose to attract vocations, and even to favor new foundations. Two were: the group of monks who raised up the monastery of St. Maurus again, in Anjou; and the small group of chaplains, accompanying some of the nuns to Wisques, in the Artois, who prepared the foundation of St. Paul's monastery.

After Dom Couturier's death, October 29, 1890, the family of Solesmes had grown so much that the choice of his successor had to be made not only by the monks of Solesmes, but by the abbots of the congregation as well. The choice fell once again on the prior, by this time Dom Paul Delatte. The first goal of the new abbot was to form souls thirsting for God. Knowing only too well the necessity of having a cloistered place for any serious pursuit of the monastic life, re-entering the monastery grounds was his major preoccupation. So much so, that on the 23rd of August, the bells of the old abbey church could be heard ringing out once again.

Meanwhile, the priory house of 1723 had become too small for a community that in spite of everything, had constantly continued to grow larger. A grand building program was rapidly launched. The cornerstone of a vast edifice was blessed on March 21, 1896. In 1898 the monks inaugurated their new refectory. At the same time, two more groups left for yet more foundations: St. Michael's at Farnborough, England in 1895; the other St. Anne at Kergonan, near Plouharmel (Brittany), in 1897.

These few peaceful years ended abruptly on the first of July, 1901. The law concerning "associations", in fact a law against all religious congregations drawn up during the Third Republic, gave Dom Delatte and his monks little choice but exile. This time, the nuns of the congregation were included in the move to shut down religious houses. Everyone left Solesmes, with real emotion, on September 20th of that year, for the freedom that was offered to them in England. The grounds and house of Appuldurcombe, on the south of the Isle of Wight, offered the monks asylum. The nuns found a new home at Ryde.

Meanwhile in France, the generous friendship of the Marquis de Juigné moved him to purchase the abbey of Solesmes, in the hope of better days. Such times failed to come right away, however. The house at Appuldurcombe not being the best place for a prolonged stay, Dom Delatte arranged to purchase the site of England's ancient abbey of Quarr, on the north of the island. The community moved there in 1908. Quite soon, Dom Paul Bellot began the construction of a new monastry there.

So the monks lacked only their homeland. They profited greatly in the silence and peace to be found on the Isle of Wight from the teachings of their abbot, a great theologian who was also a contemplative. Everybody appreciated the qualities they found in him: brilliant intellect, cultivated manners, profound goodness coupled with heighten sensitivity, a youthfulness of soul with nobility of character, and a vigorous temperament. Above all, he possessed a most supernatural gift of faith, a sense of the presence of God and His omnipotence over all His creatures. No one doubted that troubles within the community might surround such a strong personality from time to time. The abbot saw to the care of all his sons none the less.

The task fell to a new abbot, Dom Germain Cozien, to lead the community back to Solesmes in 1922, while leaving behind a group of monks at Quarr who would carry on Dom Guéranger's work in England. (Though Mother Cécile Bruyère's' body was carried back to France, her nuns also left behind a community at Ryde which remains to this day). Dom Delatte had resigned his duties the previous year, crippled by a paralysis that would afflict him until his death on September 20, 1937.

Dom Cozien, the fourth abbot of Solesmes, had his heart set on peacefully living out the teachings of his predecessors. But he too was to know times of trial, above all, those of the Second World War and the Nazi occupation (1939 1945). But he knew how to overcome difficulties with courage and dignity. Three of his monks fell in battle. Many more were imprisoned. In spite of everything, life went on, requiring more building: a library, a cloister, more cells. In 1948, it was Dom Cozien who arranged for the monks of Solesmes to restore the old trappist abbey of Our Lady at Fontgombault.

It was his successor, Dom Jean Prou, elected abbot July 5, 1959, who revived and completed the project of foundations in Africa in 1966/ today at Keur Moussa in Senegal there is a monastery of monks and a monastery of nuns. In this way, one of the Church's essential wishes was accomplished - that the contemplative life always accompany the active. As proof, the monks and nuns were soon joined by the Servants of the Poor from Angers. And so, every branch of Dom Guéranger's family found itself represented in Africa.

Since October 2, 1992, a new abbot, Fr. Philippe Dupont, is responsible for the abbey and congregation of Solesmes. Like his predecessors, he intends himself to maintain the monastic and contemplative ideals of Dom Guéranger. In December of 1996, after a favorable vote of the Chapter, he undertook yet another foundation - that of Palendrai, in Lithuania.

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The Congregation of Solesmes today

21 MONASTERIES, 760 MONKS

The abbey church around 1850, from an anonymous pencil sketch.