Honcourt Abbey (French: Abbaye de Honcourt) or Hugshofen Abbey (German: Kloster Hugshofen) (Hugonis Curia in Latin) was a Benedictine abbey located near the village of Saint-Martin, Bas-Rhin, France, founded in the year 1000 and dissolved in or very shortly after 1525.
The abbey was sited next to the Klosterwald ("monastery wood") in the village of Saint-Martin and was founded in 1000, in the reign of Emperor Otto III, by Count Werner of Ortenbourg, a descendant of the former ruling family of Alsace, the Etichonids, and of the family of the Eberhardines. [1]
According to the 17th century history of Jean Ruyr, the monastery was built on the site of an earlier structure, a small castle or hunting lodge belonging to the eponymous Hugh or Hugo. [2]
Werner and Hugo, who seem in fact to have been co-founders of the monastery, were brothers, sons of Albrecht, and both were buried in the abbey.
The abbey was endowed with estates throughout the Villé valley, particularly in Dieffenthal. Theoger, abbot of St. George's Abbey in the Black Forest from 1088 to 1119, introduced the Hirsau Reform, and this spiritual revival brought Honcourt a period of success.
In 1473–74 the abbey was occupied and sacked by the Burgundian troops of Charles the Bold, who entered the valley on 20 December 1473, occupied Villé and systematically ravaged the whole surrounding area. [3]
In April 1525, during the Peasants' Revolt, the conventual buildings were sacked and burnt, destroying most of the abbey's contents, including the great majority of the library and archives. [4] Those few documents that were saved, were incorporated into the archives of Andlau Abbey, all of which were destroyed during the French Revolution. [5]
While the peasants were sacking the abbey, a particularly valuable retable, which seems certainly to have been a work of the sculptor Sixtus Schultheiss (d. 1527), was somehow transferred to the church of Villé, where Nicolas Volcyr de Serrouville, secretary to Antoine, Duke of Lorraine, took an interest in it. It was subsequently carried off by the Lotharingians along with a number of other sacred items rescued from the peasants, and its subsequent fate is unknown.
Shortly after the abbey was sacked and burnt, the monks dispersed. The last abbot, Paul Voltz, converted to Protestantism and took part in the Strasbourg reform.
In 1599 the remains of the abbey premises were sold by the Archdukes of Austria to Andlau Abbey. [6] The transfer was confirmed by Pope Paul V in 1616. In 1782 the abbess of Andlau ordered the demolition of Honcourt, as its upkeep had become too expensive, and nothing now remains. The consequent architectural loss to the region was great, as the buildings were of high interest. Honcourt was a strategic point in the line of entry of Romanesque and Burgundian art into Alsace, between the churches of Saint-Dié and St. Faith of Sélestat.
Construction of the abbey church began in 1186 and was finished a century later under abbot Conrad III in 1286. The church was an exceptional structure, circular, like the rotunda of Senones Abbey, adjoining a rectangular choir. The church too was demolished by the order of the abbess of Andlau in 1782. In its circular form, a great rarity, the abbey church strongly resembled the church of Ottmarsheim near Kembs, an outstanding example of primitive Romanesque architecture and a faithful replica, only smaller, of the Palatine Chapel in Aachen.
Both Werner and Hugo were, according to tradition, extraordinarily large men, and both were buried in the abbey. Their last descendant, Hugo, Count of Reichenberg (d. about 1361), also legendary for his exceptional height, was also buried here. [7]
In 1516, the Emperor Maximilian I, while passing through Alsace, wished to satisfy his curiosity about the truth of the legend of the gigantic stature of Hugo of Reichenberg, and ordered the tomb to be opened. A femur was removed, from which it was proposed to calculate the overall length of the body on the ancient principle ex pede Herculem , basing the calculation on the assumption that a femur represents 1/8 of a man's overall height. The femur measured 32.48 centimetres (just over 1 foot), which when multiplied by 8 gave an extraordinary height of 259 centimetres, or 8½ feet, for Hugo. [8] The diagram of the findings and calculations was preserved for many years at Sainte-Foy Priory in Sélestat. (Another curious discovery was that the bones of the co-founders Werner and Hugo were jumbled together).
In July 1986 three fragments of an inscribed pink stone slab were discovered at Saint-Martin. The date 1359 was decipherable, which may have been the actual date of death of Hugo (of which more is not known than that it occurred in about 1361). There are also arms which resemble those of the Reichenbergs. It is thus very possible that these are the remains of the tombstone of Hugo of Reichenberg.
Saint-Hippolyte is a commune in the Haut-Rhin department in Grand Est in north-eastern France.
Lièpvre is a commune in the Haut-Rhin department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. A monastery was built here in the eighth century by Saint Fulrad, who filled it with relics of Saint Cucuphas and Saint Alexander.
Murbach Abbey was a famous Benedictine monastery in Murbach, southern Alsace, in a valley at the foot of the Grand Ballon in the Vosges.
Andlau is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Alsace, Grand Est region of northeastern France.
Bouxwiller is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department, Alsace, Grand Est, northeastern France. Likely meaning "Bucco's land", Bouxwiller is the capital of the Bouxwiller canton and is located within the Saverne arrondissement about 34 kilometres (21 mi) northwest of Strasbourg.
Fouchy is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Alsace in north-eastern France.
Richer of Senones was a monk and chronicler of Senones Abbey in Lorraine, a traveller and one of the very few chroniclers or historians of the Vosges whose works have survived complete.
The Feuillants were a Catholic congregation originating in the 1570s as a reform group within the Cistercians in its namesake Les Feuillants Abbey in France, which declared itself an independent order.
The Route Romane d'Alsace is a tourist itinerary designed by the Association Voix et Route Romane to link both the well-known and the more secret examples of Romanesque architecture of Alsace, in an itinerary of 19 stages, linking churches, abbeys and fortresses, that range from the first Romanesque structures of Alsace at the abbey church of Saint Trophime, Eschau, into the 13th century, and the beginning of Gothic architecture in Alsace. From north to south, the Route Romane d'Alsace traverses the Bas-Rhin and the Haut-Rhin, passing through:
Grestain Abbey was an 11th-Century Benedictine monastery near the town of Fatouville-Grestain, which is located in the modern-day Eure département of Upper Normandy, France. The abbey was in the Catholic Diocese of Lisieux. Closely associated with the family of William, Duke of Normandy, the abbey was instrumental in the Normans taking control over the Church in England in the centuries following the Norman Conquest of England, establishing new churches and priories in England, and Abbots of Grestain ordained many English priests. Many churches mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 cite Grestain as the founding establishment.
Maubuisson Abbey is a Cistercian nunnery at Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, in the Val-d'Oise department of France. It was founded in A.D. 1236 by Blanche of Castile, Queen of France, who may have been buried there in 1252. The site is now within the north-western suburbs of Paris. The surviving buildings are listed as a monument historique.
Niedermunster Abbey, situated at the foot of Mount Saint Odile at an altitude of 511 metres, was founded around 700 A.D. to cater for the overflow of pilgrims to the Saint Odile Abbey, formerly known as the Hohenbourg.
The Abbey of Honau was a monastic foundation in Northern Alsace which flourished from the 8th century until 1290, when it succumbed to the flood-waters of the Rhine.
Saint-Mihiel Abbey is an ancient Benedictine abbey situated in the town of Saint-Mihiel, near Verdun in the Meuse department in Lorraine in north-eastern France.
The Abbey of St. Vincent, Laon was a Benedictine monastery in Laon, Picardy, northern France.
The Abbey of St. John, Laon was a Benedictine monastery in Laon, France, from 1128 to 1766, which replaced a nunnery founded in 641. The prefecture of the department of Aisne now occupies the site.
Saint Trophimus' Church is a Romanesque church in Eschau, a small town in the suburbs of Strasbourg, the historical capital of Alsace. The church is dedicated to Trophimus of Arles.
Comercy Abbey or Saint-Paul de Cormery Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey located on the territory of the commune of Cormery in the French department of Indre-et-Loire in the Centre-Val de Loire region.