The Tiron Holy Trinity Abbey was imagined as defined based on the Saint Gall Abbey’s plans, drew in the IXth century and renowned because they inspired most of benedictine monastic houses in Europe during the Middle Ages.
Following this model and in accordance with the monastic way of life, who had to be isolated from the secular wolrd, all the buildings they needed for their various activities must be inside the abbey’s walls.
In Tiron Abbey, still following the ideal created in Saint-Gall, their circulation was optimized thanks to a cloister, a galery forming a square, often surrounding an open-air garden. This space was favourable for meditation but above all, it was usefull to access the main rooms, like the church where the monks had to go several times in a single day.
Like it was often the case during the Middle Ages, the abbey’s construction needed many years and several generations. Because of the community’s growth, the workers had to adapt their plans and regularity added new commons, to insure the monks won’t go outside to answer their needs.
If we can imagine these donors felt a real affection fo Bernard’s community, it is no less useful to remember the background of this time to understand their generosity. Indeed, during the Middle Ages, regularity touched by diverse scourges like wars and epidemics, when people sincerely believed in a God they must love as much they must fear, it was a good thing to maintain a proximity with the local monastic houses. When people survived these hard periods, it was not rare to see the landscape changing with new churches and chapels impulsed by a wave of faith. These gifts were as much marks of submission to God as prayers for a place Heaven.
The XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries had their importance in the tironensian community’s history. Around the year 1630, the brothers saw the arrival of new monks, from the Congregation of Saint-Maur, renowned for it erudition’s high level. Their installation gave birth to a first school dedicated to classical teaching inside the abbey’s Military School. The students education was partly under the monks responsability. Moreaover, the boys accompanied them in the religious protocole.
The abbey’s decline began with the French Revolution, charged with consequences for its religious communities, all the more the tironensian order, which maintained closed links with the monarchy. Everywhere in France, the abolishment of privileges entailed the sale of Church’s possessions. In Tiron the church closed its doors in 1792, the military school one year later. The commons fell successively with time
Only survived the roman church, whose proportions let us imagine the abbey’s extent, and whose soberty reminds us the brothers beliefs, based on moderation and humility. The Royal and Military School, recently restored by Stephane Bern shows us that a monument lives, dies and reborns sometimes, feeding an heritage we are responsible to maintain and pass to the next generation
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