Ganagobie Abbey is a Benedictine monastery in Ganagobie in the department of Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, France. The first monastic foundation on this remote and mountainous site appears to date from the 9th or 10th century. Among the first documentary records is a bull of Pope Stephen VIII in 939 confirming the possessions of Cluny Abbey, among them the monastery at Ganagobie. It was suppressed in 1789 under the Ancien Régime and sold off in 1791 during the course of the French Revolution, after which large parts of the buildings were demolished.
In 1865 the Benedictines of Solesmes under Dom Prosper Guéranger founded the Priory of St. Madeleine in Marseilles, or Marseilles Priory. In 1891 the Comte de Malijay, by that time the owner of the priory site at Ganagobie, made a gift of to the Marseilles Priory. In the course of repair and restoration work on the new property, important medieval mosaics were discovered in 1898.
In 1901 however the community at Marseilles were forced by the Association Laws to leave France. They took refuge in Italy and did not return until 1922, when they took up residence at Hautecombe Abbey, of which Ganagobie was from then on a priory, of one or two monks only.
In 1987, after decades of restoration work, the whole community of Hautecombe decided to move to Ganagobie, which they did in 1992.
References:Saint-Georges de Boscherville Abbey is a former Benedictine abbey. It was founded in about 1113 by Guillaume de Tancarville on the site of an earlier establishment of secular canons and settled by monks from the Abbey of Saint-Evroul. The abbey church made of Caumont stone was erected from 1113 to 1140. The Norman builders aimed to have very well-lit naves and they did this by means of tall, large windows, initially made possible by a wooden ceiling, which prevented uplift, although this was replaced by a Gothic vault in the 13th century. The chapter room was built after the abbey church and dates from the last quarter of the 12th century.
The arrival of the Maurist monks in 1659, after the disasters of the Wars of Religion, helped to get the abbey back on a firmer spiritual, architectural and economic footing. They erected a large monastic building one wing of which fitted tightly around the chapter house (which was otherwise left as it was).