Descriptif
Notre-Dame d'Orval Abbey (or Orval Abbey) is a Cistercian-Trappist monastery located in Belgium in Villers-devant-Orval in the province of Luxembourg. Founded by Benedictines in the 11th century, it passed to the order of Citeaux in 1131, with the arrival of monks from the Abbey of Trois-Fontaines.
For four centuries, Orval saw the erased existence of a monastery lost in the solitude of the great Ardennes forest. In addition, located on the border between the Holy Empire and the Kingdom of France, Orval suffered the consequences of wars and conflicts from the 15th to the 17th century. The abbey was going through a major crisis linked to the development of Jansenism in its midst at the beginning of the 18th century, the crisis coming to light when in 1713 Clement XI condemned this doctrine.
At the end of the 18th century, the monks were driven out and the goods of the abbey were made available to the Nation as “national goods”. During the unrest following the French Revolution, the buildings were destroyed and abandoned.
The monastery was rebuilt and the monastic tradition raised, in 1926, by a group of Cistercians-Trappists from the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Sept-Fons. Dom Albert-Marie van der Cruyssen, monk of the Abbey of Notre-Dame de La Trappe, was then their prior. The monastery regained its rank of abbey in 1936.
History information
The site of the abbey (Aurea vallis) has been occupied since the Merovingian period. A chapel was built there in the 10th century. In 1070, a group of Benedictines, who came from Calabria (Italy), built a church and a priory there, on land given in usufruct by the Count of Chiny, Arnoul I.
Around 1076, the suzerain, Mathilde de Toscane, Countess of Briey, came to the region and ratified the donation made by her vassal to the Benedictine monks. It was around this time that the famous incident of the ring falling into a fountain and miraculously reappearing took place. From the passage of the Duchess of Tuscany, the abbey received its name 'Vallis aurea' (Golden Valley) and its coat of arms (gold ring in the mouth of a fish). Even today the Mathilde fountain perpetuates the memory.
At the end of forty years - and for unknown reasons - the Benedictines left the place. Count Othon replaced them, in 1110, with a community of Augustinian canons. A first church, dedicated to Notre-Dame, was inaugurated on September 30, 1124 by the bishop of Verdun, Henri de Blois. It is 53 meters long and 25 meters wide. The canons, however, wish to become monks.