SAINT-MIHIEL, ABBEY OF

A former Benedictine monastery in the diocese of Verdun, which according to a probably false tradition, is said to have been founded by Count Vulfoad, a powerful 8th-century Austrasian lord. In the same century it seems also to have been a dependency of saint-denis. About 815 the abbey was transferred to its present site on the bank of the Meuse by smaragdus, the author of many theological and ascetical works, who was abbot, from c. 809 until his death sometime after 825. Favored by the Carolingian and German sovereigns in the 9th and 10th centuries, the abbey remained prosperous throughout the Middle Ages and retained regular observance until the end of the 15th century, when it passed under a commendatory abbot (see commendation).

The church was completely rebuilt in about the middle of the 11th century according to a vast Ottonian plan still recognizable in the present edifice, built between 1700 and 1710. In 1606 the abbey was affiliated with the Lorraine congregation of Saint-Vanne and Saint-Hidulphe. In the 17th century it became an important center for the diffusion of jansenism, particularly through M. petit-didier, the author of an Apologie des "Lettres provinciales" de Louis de Montalte (1696–97) and Dom Monnier, who wrote the famous Problème ecclésiastique (1698). The abbey was suppressed in 1791.

Bibliography: j. de l'isle, Histoire de la célèbre abbaye de Saint-Mihiel (Nancy 1757). a. lesort, ed., Chronique et chartes de l'abbaye de Saint-Michiel, 4 fasc. (Paris 1909–12). c. almond, Les Nécrologes de l'abbaye de Saint-Mihiel (Bar-le-Duc 1923). r. taveneux, Le Jansénisme en Lorraine, 1640–1789 (Paris 1960).

[j. choux]