Saint-Hubert Abbey (French: Abbaye de Saint-Hubert), officially the Abbey of St Peter in the Ardennes (Abbaye de Saint-Pierre en Ardennes), was a Benedictine monastery founded in the Ardennes in 687 and suppressed in 1797. The former abbey church is now a minor basilica in the diocese of Namur, Belgium. It was listed as built heritage in 1938, and as an exceptional monument in 2016.[1]
History
An 18th-century view of Saint-Hubert
The monastery was founded in the village of Andage in 687 by Pepin of Herstal and his wife, Plectrude, for the monk Bergis. It was dedicated to St Peter.[2]
The remains of St Hubert (died 727) were installed in the monastery on 30 September 825. Both the abbey and the town would as a result come to be generally known as "Saint-Hubert".
Because of St Hubert's status as patron saint of hunting, the Abbey was a noted centre of hound breeding and today's Bloodhound is believed to be descended from the hounds bred there.[3]
There were serious fires in the monastery in 1130, 1261, and 1525, and the building was sacked by Calvinists in 1568.[4] The final suppression of the monastery took place in 1797.
Chronicle
The monastery's chronicle, known as the Cantatorium of Saint-Hubert from the music book in which it was originally recorded, was published in 1906 in an edition by Karl Hanquet.[5] Originally composed in the years around 1100, it is a major source for the history of the investiture controversy in the diocese of Liège.[6]
^P. Bertrand, "Hubert (Saint)", in Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, vol. 25 (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1995), 23-24
^Karl Hanquet (ed.), La Chronique de Saint-Hubert dite Cantatorium (Hayez, Imprimeur de L'Academie, Bruxelles, 1906)
^Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, "Patrons and Gifts in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Chronicles from the Diocese of Liège: An Introduction", in The Medieval Chronicle: Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle, edited by Erik Kooper (Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1999), pp. 69-83.
