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L'abbaye de moniales cisterciennes de Clairefontaine (Luxembourg)

2013; FRENCH ARCHEOLOGY SOCIETY; Volume: 171; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

2275-5039

Davy Herremans, Thomas Coomans,

Historical and Archaeological Studies

Near Arlon in Belgium (province of Luxembourg), the site of Clairefontaine, the ancient abbey of the Cistercian nuns, has been under excavation for ten years. Combining archaeological evidence and historical sources, the article presents an architectural synthesis of the monastic complex, rebuilt four times: Clairefontaine I (ca. 1247), Clairefontaine II (first half of the fourteenth century), Clairfontaine III (first half of the sixteenth century), Clairefontaine IV (late seventeenth to early eighteenth century), and finally its total destruction following the suppression of monasteries by the French in 1796. Such a stratigraphy is rare for a nun's church, but it is exceptional for the buildings around a cloister, because few feminine abbeys have been the object of programmed excavations on the scale of Clairefontaine. Each change is related to a particular historical context, linked with the successive princes who reigned in Luxembourg: the countess Ermesinde, Henri le Blondel, Jean the Blind, Christophe de Bade, Pierre-Ernest de Mansfeld, as well as the archdukes Albert and Isabelle who were great patrons and powerful protectors of this dynastic abbey inhabited by a small community of Cistercian noble women.