ONE OF THE OLDEST
ABBEYS OF PREMONSTRATENSIANS...
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Founded in 1143 by Hasculfe de Subligny, a community of canons regular developed under the episcopate of Blessed Achard (1161-1171). Bishop of Avranches after having been abbot of Saint-Victor in Paris, a great intellectual center of the 12th century, Achard rests today in the abbey church of La Lucerne, of which he blessed the first stone in 1164.
After founding four Premonstratensian abbeys (Mondaye, Ardenne, Beauport, Cerisy-Belle-Étoile), Lucerne suffered the onslaught of the Hundred Years War and the Wars of Religion but always recovered.
...TOWARDS RUIN
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It is estimated that 650 canons made La Lucerne a place of liturgical and missionary influence, until the French Revolution when it was sold as national property. The abbey was then transformed into a cotton mill (destruction of the south aisle of the nave of the abbey church and part of the cloister to build an aqueduct) then into a stone sawmill. The East and South convent buildings were partially demolished from 1836 and a pillar in the nave of the abbey church collapsed, taking with it
the ribbed vault.