Montier-en-Der Abbey

The Abbey of Montier-en-Der (Haute-Marne, France) was formerly a Benedictine, later Cluniac, abbey, dissolved during the French Revolution, the grounds and premises of which, since 1806, have been used as the French National Stud Farm.

The monastery was founded in about 670, in deep oak forest on the banks of the river Voire, at a place that at first still carried its Gallo-Roman name of Puteolus ("little well") in the diocese of Châlons-sur-Marne. The site, which must have been an aristocratic Gallo-Roman villa, to judge from the quality of the ivory diptych found at the site in modern times (illustration, below right), was at that time in the borderlands of Champagne just north of Burgundy and west of Lorraine. The founder was the monk Bercharius/Berchaire, later canonized; The extensive site, which was part of Bercharius' inheritance, was in the forest of Der; Puteolus, the monasterium in Dervo became Montier-en-Der, which name also came to be applied to the commune that grew up around this important abbey.

The eighth century was a time of eclipse for this monastic community, and when the monastery reemerges in the ninth it was Carolingian property, given by Louis the Pious to the bishop of Reims, and the house was served by canons rather than monks. A monastic refounding was effected by abbot Hauto (827).

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