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Founded: c. 1142Category: Religious sites in France
Historical period: Birth of Capetian dynasty (France)
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Le Reclus Abbey was a Cistercian monastery in the present Talus-Saint-Prix near Sézanne. It was founded by Bernard of Clairvaux in c. 1142 around the hermitage of Blessed Hugh the Hermit (Hugues le Reclus), from whom the abbey took its name. Hugh had at first retired from the world to an arid place in the parish of Saint-Prix known as Fons Balimi around 1128–1130, before being joined by a few companions. He was mentioned in 1176 in the cartulary of the Abbey of Saint-Pierre-d'Oyes (canton of Sézanne) in connection with the sale of a pond and of land to Le Reclus Abbey by Hugh, Count of Baye, who also confirmed his uncle Simon's gift of the rights of the forest of Talu to the abbey because of its extreme poverty. Hugo possibly died that same year; after his death the villagers kept his memory alive by burning a lamp on his grave. Probably also in that year Le Reclus became a daughter house of Vauclair Abbey.
Le Reclus was always a poor monastery, but nevertheless survived up to the French Revolution, when it was suppressed.
References:The Château du Lude is one of the many great châteaux of the Loire Valley in France. Le Lude is the most northerly château of the Loire Valley and one of the last important historic castles in France, still inhabited by the same family for the last 260 years. The château is testimony to four centuries of French architecture, as a stronghold transformed into an elegant house during the Renaissance and the 18th century. The monument is located in the valley of Le Loir. Its gardens have evolved throughout the centuries.
