Abbey of Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye

The Abbey of Saint-Antoine was the mother abbey of the Hospital Brothers of Saint Anthony. It is located in Saint-Antoine-l'Abbaye, in the department of Isère, in France. It includes an abbey church and premises that once housed the monks' homes.

A knight by the name of Jocelin de Châteauneuf, son of the lord of La Motte-Saint-Didier in Viennois, was said to have been cured by Anthony the Great. When Anthony the Great appeared to him, he asked the knight to keep the promise he had made to accomplish the pilgrimage to the Holy Land and to bring back his relics of an anchorite from Thebaid who had conquered the fires of temptation. He left around 1074, with Guigues Didier. Jocelin set out to build a larger church but died before it was very advanced. His brother-in-law Guigues Didier continued the work. The pope ordered that the relics be deposited in a place conducive to worship. Guigues Didier called monks from the abbey of Montmajour and made a donation to them in 1083 to exercise curial functions in the parish of Notre-Dame and the church of Saint-Didier in the castle. Shortly after, the Bishop of Valence Gontard, administrator of the then vacant Church of Vienne, authorized the Benedictine monks of the Abbey of Montmajour to establish a priory at Saint-Antoine. In 1088, the monks of Montmajour settled in Saint-Antoine and began the construction of the priory and the Romanesque church. Pope Urban II authorized them to deposit the relics of Saint Anthony in their church. This first church was consecrated by Pope Calixte II on March 20, 1119. Guigues Didier was present at this consecration and swore to observe the privileges granted by the pope to the new church consecrated "to the praise and in the name of the holy and indivisible Trinity, in honor of the ever-virgin Blessed Mary, and under the patronage of Saint Anthony". An epidemic then struck Europe, giving the sick the impression of being burned alive and quickly gangrenous their limbs which, without bleeding, separated from the rest of their body. We then came to his relics to ask for the protection of Saint Anthony who had resisted the fires of temptation. In 1089 a young nobleman, Guérin de Valloire, s

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