FÉCAMP, ABBEY OF

Originally a monastery for nuns, then a Benedictine abbey, on the English Channel, 24 miles northeast of Le Havre, France, Diocese of Rouen (Lat. Fiscamnum ). In 664 Count waningus founded the abbey for nuns. This monastery was destroyed by the Normans in 841, and the nuns who were not massacred fled to Picardy. Richard II, Duke of Normandy (996–1026), replaced the lax canons whom his father had established in Trinity Church there with Benedictine monks (1001) under william of saint-bÉnigne of dijon. John of Fécamp (1028–78), William's disciple, succeeded him in 1028 and gave a strong impetus to the abbey school (noted for its work in ecclesiastical chant). Generously endowed by Richard II, the abbey was prosperous during the 12th and 13th centuries; an abbey nullius, it possessed the three abbeys of bernay, Évreux in Normandy, and Blangy in Artois, as well as 30 parish churches and vast material domains in France, England, and Spain. Fécamp, itself, with its reputed relic of the Precious Blood was a pilgrimage center. The 12th- century Romanesque church was burned in 1168, and the present church was erected under Abbots Henry of Sully (1139–87) and Raoul of Argences (1187–1219), the lantern tower over the transept being built under Abbot William of Vaspail (1229–59). The abbey suffered great destruction during the Hundred Years' War. The abbots of the period included Peter Roger (1326–29), who became Pope clement vi; D'Estouteville (1390–1423), founder of the abbey's celebrated choir of chanters, which survived until 1791; and Gilles de Duremont (1423–44), a creature of the Duke of Bedford and one of the judges who condemned joan of arc. In the 16th century the Abbot Cardinals Jean Balue and Antoine Bohier, the three cardinals of lorraine, and François de Joyeuse continued to attract kings and royalty to Fécamp as before, but the abbey suffered much during the Wars of Religion. The 17th and 18th centuries were again prosperous times for Fécamp; the Maurist reform, desired by the monks as early as 1620, was introduced in 1650 despite the opposition of the grand prior. The church façade was redone in classical style in 1748. In 1768 the abbey numbered 27 maurists; it was suppressed in the French Revolution, and the abbey church became a parish church.

Bibliography: j. vallery-radot, "La Trinité de Fécamp," Congrès archéologique de France, 1900–1925 (Paris 1927) 405–458. j. leclercq and j. p. bonnes, Jean de Fécamp (Paris 1946). L'Abbaye bénédictine de Fécamp: Ouvrage scientifique du XIIIème centenaire, 658–1958, 4 v. (Fécamp 1959–63).

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