The Sainte-Marie de Mureau abbey is located in the commune of Pargny-sous-Mureau, in the Vosges department, 12 km west of Neufchâteau.
Welcoming both monks of the Premonstratensian order and nuns, a first monastery was founded in the 12th century by monks from the Abbey of Septfontaines (in the current department of Haute-Marne). Although fortified and notably having a tower built in the 14th century, the abbey was affected at the end of the Hundred Years' War.
In 1451, it came under the regime of commendation: it was therefore run by lay people.
One of them, Eric de Lorraine, began the reconstruction of the site, to the west of the current village, at the end of the 16th century. Furthermore, bishop of Verdun, he restored the monastery to its religious splendor and its intellectual… and land wealth.
Two centuries later, having in the meantime joined the Congregation of Antique Rigor, the abbey was rebuilt again in a neo-classical style in 1770.
However, during the Revolution, although it still having a dozen canons, the abbey was suppressed and destroyed. Only a porch tower and the arcades of the cloister are preserved. As for its library with 4,600 volumes, it was transferred to Neufchâteau.
The area of the monastery then turned into agricultural exploitation.
Major work began in 2018 to save and restore the tower, the rear pavilion and the old pediment.
These testimonies of the abbey which was in its time one of the most important in the region but which paid a heavy price for its geographical location, on the borders of the Duchy of Lorraine and the County of Champagne, can mark out a walk free or guided in a bucolic setting.
Information on +33 3 29 06 69 27.
