Liste des sites de l'Avranchin

cliquez ici pour consulter l'album photographique

Savigny-le-Vieux
(Canton of Teilleul, Manche)

Portal of the abbey refectory

    The hermit Vital de Mortain (d. 1122) is at the origin of the foundation of a monastic establishment in 1113 at Savigny-le-Vieux, on land donated by Raoul de Fougères. An initial abbey church was dedicated in 1124. This was very quickly replaced by a much larger building whose period of construction extended from 1173 to 1200. As part of a reforming school of the Benedictine order, the monasteries claiming their origins from Savigny soon numbered some thirty or so in Normandy and in England. In the mid 13th century they joined the Cistercians.
The monastic group of buildings virtually disappeared after the Revolution. Almost nothing survives of the Gothic church, or of the chapel of Sainte-Catherine from the Romanesque period. Of the convent accommodation, only the entrance to the refectory is retained with its Romanesque portal decorated with chevrons.

Bibliography

-Musset, Lucien. - Normandie romane, Zodiaque, La Pierre-Qui-Vire, 1987, T. I, p. 42.
-Poulle, Béatrice. - “ Les bâtiments de l’abbaye de Savigny ”, dans Richesses de la région de Saint-Hilaire-du-Harcouët, Art de Basse-Normandie, n° 109, 1er trimestre 1997, p. 45 à 53