A New French Abbey: Tradition’s Enduring Appeal

A New French Abbey: Tradition’s Enduring Appeal

The Europe that the monk Raoul Glaber saw with pride at the dawn of the year 1000, covered with “a white mantle of churches,” has entered a dark era of de-Christianisation. Church towers gave way to minarets, and city churches, gradually falling into disuse, were at best converted into trendy bars or contemporary art exhibition halls—when they were not destroyed once and for all. And what of the monasteries, those spacious buildings that once ho…