St. Victor's Abbey, Marseille

The Abbey of Saint Victor is a late Roman former monastic foundation in Marseille in the south of France, named after the local soldier saint and martyr, Victor of Marseilles.

Tradition holds that in about 415, John Cassian founded two monasteries of St. Victor at Marseille, one for men (the later Abbey of St. Victor), the other for women. While Cassian certainly started monastic life in Marseille, he is probably not the founder of the abbey, as the archaeological evidence of Saint Victor only goes back to the end of the 5th century. Tradition also has it that it contains the relics of the eponymous martyr of Marseille from the 4th century. In reality, the crypta preserve highly valuable archaeological evidence proving the presence of a quarry exploited in Greek times. In the 5th century the monastery of St. Victor and the church of Marseille were greatly troubled by the Semipelagian heresy, that began with certain writings of Cassian, and the layman Hilary and Saint Prosper of Aquitaine begged Saint Augustine and Pope Celestine I for its suppression.

In the 8th or 9th centuries both monasteries were destroyed by the Saracens, either in 731 or in 838, when the then abbess Saint Eusebia was martyred with 39 nuns. The nunnery was never re-established. In 977, monastic life began again, due to bishop Honorat and the first Benedictine abbot Wilfred who submitted the abbey to the rule of Saint Benedict. It soon recovered, and from the middle of the 11th century its renown was such that from all points of the south appeals were sent to the abbots of this church to restore the religious life in decadent monasteries.

Saint Isarn (d. 1048), a Catalan monk successor as abbot to Saint Wiffred, began extensive building. He constructs the first upper church to which the tower belongs (called Isarn tower), today the access to the church. Isarn was instrumental by his intercession with Ramon Berenguer I, Count of Barcelona, in obtaining the release from Moorish captivity of the monks of Lérins Abbey. Blessed Bernard, abbot of St. Victor from 1064 to 1079, was one of the two ambassadors delegated by Pope Gregory VII to the Diet of Forchheim, where the German princes deposed Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. He was seized by one of the partisans of Henry IV and passed several months in prison. Gregory VII also sent him as legate to Spain and in reward for his services exempted St. Victor's from all jurisdiction other than that of the Holy See.

...
Wikipedia