Monastery information | |
---|---|
Other names | Farnborough Abbey |
Order | Order of Saint Benedict |
Established | 1881 |
Dedicated to | Saint Michael the Archangel |
Diocese | Portsmouth |
Controlled churches | Saint Michael's Abbey Church |
People | |
Founder(s) | Empress Eugénie |
Abbot | Dom Cuthbert Brogan |
Important associated figures | |
Site | |
Location | Farnborough, Hampshire, United Kingdom |
Coordinates | 51°17′48″N0°44′59″W / 51.296645°N 0.749662°W |
Grid reference | SU873560 |
Public access | Yes |
Website | https://farnboroughabbey.org |
Saint Michael's Abbey (French: Abbaye Saint-Michel) is a Benedictine abbey in Farnborough, Hampshire, England. The small community is known for its liturgy (which is sung in Latin and Gregorian chant), its pipe organ, and its liturgical publishing and printing. This abbey is also known for enshrining a Pontifically crowned image of Saint Joseph.
Public tours of the abbey take place every Saturday at 3pm, with the visit comprising a tour of the church and a visit to the crypt.
Following the fall of the Second French Empire in 1870, Napoleon III (1808–1873), his wife Empress Eugénie (1826–1920) and their son the Prince Imperial (1856–1879) were exiled from France and took up residence in England at Camden Place in Chislehurst, Kent, where Napoleon III died in 1873. He was originally buried at St Mary's Church in Chislehurst. Following the death of the Prince Imperial in 1879, the grief-stricken Empress Eugénie set about establishing a monument to her family.
She founded the Abbey in 1881 as a mausoleum for her husband and son, wishing that the burial site should be a place of prayer and silence. [1] The Abbey included an Imperial Crypt, modelled on the crypt of Saint-Denis basilica near Paris, where the Emperor had originally desired to be buried. [1] Empress Eugénie was later buried alongside her husband and son. All three rest in granite sarcophagi that were provided by Queen Victoria. [2]
The Abbey Church itself was designed in an eclectic flamboyant gothic style by the renowned French architect Gabriel-Hippolyte Destailleur, and it contains the thigh bone of St Alban, the largest relic of the saint in England. After the church and monastery were founded, they were initially administered by Premonstratensian Canons. In 1895, the Empress replaced them with French Benedictine monks from St Peter's Abbey, Solesmes. Dom Fernand Cabrol, a noted scholar, became prior and afterwards abbot (1903), remaining in the post until his death in 1937. Dom Henri Leclercq and a small group of French monks joined the house at the same time, and Leclercq and Cabrol collaborated for many years in scholarly endeavours. The medievalist and liturgist Dom André Wilmart (1876–1941) was a monk of the abbey.
The church's present two-manual organ was installed in 1905, built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll & Company. The instrument's origins are shrouded in mystery. Although installed after the death of Cavaillé-Coll, it bears his name rather than that of his successor, Charles Mutin, and the internal works are of a quality which identifies this model with the highest standards of workmanship of the high days of that company.
The community, once famed for its scholarly writing and musical tradition of Gregorian chants, became depleted in number by 1947, and most of the remaining monks dispersed to houses of the Solesmes Congregation, in particular Quarr Abbey. Farnborough was once more resettled, this time by a small group of English monks from Prinknash Abbey in Gloucestershire. The last French monk, Dom Leopold Zerr, for many years the abbey's organist, [3] died in 1956. In 2006, the community elected the first English Abbot of Farnborough—the Right Reverend Dom Cuthbert Brogan.
The Catholic Central Library was set up by the Catholic Truth Society after the First World War. It was maintained for many years by the Graymoor Friars in Westminster until they were obliged to withdraw. It moved into the care of St Michael's Abbey in 2007 for a probationary period pending a final decision on its future. In 2007, it was renamed the Catholic National Library, and it is one of the finest collections of Roman Catholic books in England. In 2015, the collection was relocated to Durham University Library. [4]
The National Shrine to Saint Joseph at Saint Michael's Abbey is cared for by the monks of Farnborough. A statue of Saint Joseph in a side chapel to the right of the high altar in the monastery church initially belonged to the Mill Hill Fathers, founded by Herbert Vaughan in 1866. At Vaughan's request, Pope Pius IX granted a canonical coronation for the statue, conducted by Henry Cardinal Manning on the occasion of the dedication of the chapel of St Joseph's College on 13 April 1874. [5]
The Missionary Institute of London was established in the late 1960s to consolidate training facilities for the various mission societies in Britain. St Joseph's College was closed in 2006. [6] The property was subsequently sold, and the Society relocated to Maidenhead. Farnborough Abbey agreed to receive the Shrine's statue and altars, and the present National Shrine was erected in 2008. [5] (A second statue of St Joseph, formerly at the entrance to the Mill Hill property, was sent to the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham.)
Napoléon, Prince Imperial, also known as Louis-Napoléon, was the only child of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French, and Empress Eugénie. After his father was dethroned in 1870, he moved to England with his family. On his father's death in January 1873, he was proclaimed by the Bonapartist faction as Napoleon IV.
Eugénie de Montijo was Empress of the French from her marriage to Napoleon III on 30 January 1853 until he was overthrown on 4 September 1870. From 28 July to 4 September 1870, she was the de facto head of state of France.
Chislehurst is a suburban district of south-east London, England, in the London Borough of Bromley. It lies east of Bromley, south-west of Sidcup and north-west of Orpington, 10 miles (16 km) south-east of Charing Cross. Before the creation of Greater London in 1965, it was in Kent. According to the 2021 census, Chislehurst has a population of 15,600.
Farnborough is a town located in the Rushmoor district of Hampshire, England. It has a population of around 57,486 as of the 2011 census and is an important centre of aviation, engineering and technology. The town is probably best known for its association with aviation, including the Farnborough International Airshow, Farnborough Airport, Royal Aircraft Establishment, and the Air Accidents Investigation Branch.
Paul Louis Denis Bellot was a French monk and modern architect.
Quarr Abbey is a monastery between the villages of Binstead and Fishbourne on the Isle of Wight in southern England. The name is pronounced as "Kwor". It belongs to the Catholic Order of St Benedict.
Dom Joseph Pothier, O.S.B. (1835–1923) was a worldwide known French prelate, liturgist and scholar who reconstituted the Gregorian chant.
Solesmes Abbey or St. Peter's Abbey, Solesmes is a Benedictine monastery in Solesmes, Sarthe, France, and the source of the restoration of Benedictine monastic life in the country under Dom Prosper Guéranger after the French Revolution. The current abbot is the Right Reverend Dom Abbot Geoffrey Kemlin, O.S.B., elected in 2022.
Prosper Louis Pascal Guéranger was a French priest and Benedictine monk, who served for nearly 40 years as the abbot of the monastery of Solesmes. Through the new Abbey of Solesmes, he became the founder of the French Benedictine Congregation, which re-established Benedictine monastic life in France after it had been wiped out by the French Revolution. Guéranger was the author of The Liturgical Year, a popular commentary which covers every day of the Catholic Church's liturgical cycles in 15 volumes. He was well regarded by Pope Pius IX, and was a proponent of the dogmas of the Immaculate Conception and of papal infallibility.
Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek Abbey or Clear Creek Abbey is a Benedictine Abbey in the Ozark Mountains near Hulbert in Cherokee County, Oklahoma. It is located in the Diocese of Tulsa.
Dom André Wilmart O.S.B. was a French Benedictine medievalist and liturgist, who spent most of his career at St Michael's Abbey, Farnborough. He was a leading expert on medieval spirituality in the decades between the World Wars. He studied at the University of Paris and the seminary of Saint-Sulpice at Issy. After an extended stay at the Abbey of Solesmes, he decided to become a monk, making his profession in 1901. Shortly after he entered Solesmes, the monks left for England due to ongoing conflict between the Catholic Church and the government of the Third Republic. Wilmart was ordained as a priest in 1906. Soon afterwards he was sent to Farnborough, which was his home for the rest of his life. In addition to Wilmart's work as a scholar, he knew and was influenced by Catholic public intellectuals such as Charles Péguy and Baron von Hügel.
Fernand Cabrol was a French theologian, Benedictine monk and respected expert on the history of Christian worship.
St Cecilia's Abbey, Ryde is an abbey of Benedictine nuns in the Isle of Wight, England.
Farnborough Hill is a Roman Catholic private day school located in Farnborough, Hampshire. The school educates girls aged 11-18. It was established by the Religious of Christian Education order of nuns in 1889 and moved to the current site when the order purchased the house and grounds in 1927. It is now set in an expansive park including Grade I Listed buildings.
The Abbey of St. Maurice and St. Maurus of Clervaux, founded in 1890, is a Benedictine monastery in Clervaux, Luxembourg. It is a member of the Solesmes Congregation in the Benedictine Confederation.
Napoleon's tomb is the monument erected at Les Invalides in Paris to keep the remains of Napoleon following their repatriation to France from Saint Helena in 1840, or retour des cendres, at the initiative of King Louis Philippe I and his minister Adolphe Thiers. While the tomb's planning started in 1840, it was only completed two decades later and inaugurated by Emperor Napoleon III on 2 April 1861, after its promoter Louis Philippe I, architect Louis Visconti, and main sculptors James Pradier and Pierre-Charles Simart had all died in the meantime.
Henri Leclercq was a French Catholic priest, theologian, and church historian who spent most of his adult life in the United Kingdom.
The Église Saint-Leu-Saint Gilles is a Roman Catholic church on the Rue Général Leclerc in the French town of Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, about 14 kilometers north of Paris. Commissioned by Emperor Napoleon III, the church houses the tomb of his father, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, King of Holland, as well as those of his two brothers.
The Church of Saint-Philibert de Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu is an abbey founded in the 9th century by Benedictine monks and located in Saint-Philbert-de-Grand-Lieu, France. All that remains is the abbey church and a few buildings around it.
St Mary's Church is a Roman Catholic parish church in Chislehurst, the Borough of Bromley, London. It was built from 1853 to 1854, and was designed by William Wardell. Wardell, a friend of the architect Augustus Pugin, built the church in a similar Gothic Revival style. It is located on the corner of Crown Lane and Hawkwood Lane to the south of Chislehurst. The church is a Grade II listed building.