Abbaye Notre-Dame de Fontgombault
Gregorian chant, sung seven times a day
Benedictine abbey founded in 1091, on the banks of the Creuse. Around sixty monks live here. The offices are sung in Gregorian chant and open to all.
Around the year 1000, a hermit named Gombaud settled in a cave near a spring. In 1091, Pierre de l'Étoile led monks to the far bank and founded the monastery. The abbey church was dedicated around 1145.
Nine centuries of highs and lows. Some twenty priories in the Middle Ages, then the Black Death, English occupation until Du Guesclin drove them out in 1372, Calvinist looting in 1569, down to five monks by 1741, sale as national property in 1791, the ruined church quarried for stone. Restoration in the 19th century, the monks dispersed in 1903.
And refounded in 1948, by Solesmes. The abbey church was rededicated in 1954.
Four monasteries have been founded from it since 1971, including one in Oklahoma.
What you come here for is the office. Sung Mass is at ten o'clock, vespers at six in the evening on weekdays and five o'clock on Sundays. The church is open, entry is free, the monastery itself is not open to visitors.
The shop opens between half past eleven and half past twelve, then again in the afternoon, except on Sundays.