Abbey of Saint-Evroult Notre-Dame-du-Bois

The nobility of ruins that once served as such a great school.
Crumbling walls, green with ivy, upon which a playful sun casts its golden dust; memories of arcades swaying beneath the trees by the pond's edge. These beautiful abbey ruins, haunted by a long period of neglect and the charm of an enchanting landscape. A lovely spot for a stroll. But be sure to take note of the stele erected in memory of the famous medieval monk, historian, and chronicler Orderic Vitalis.

In the 560s, an officer at the court of the Merovingian king, Evroult withdrew to the Ouche forest where he founded a hermitage. Rebuilt after the year 1000, the abbey experienced a second golden age, one whose vestiges recall its Gothic grandeur and the renowned monastic school where Orderic Vitalis studied the grammar of his art, and from which five masters departed to spread the gospel of their knowledge across the Channel. Five monks who settled in a barn in Cambridge to teach rhetoric and theology. A school in Cambridge! A prestigious university, daughter of Saint-Evroult—a place forever imbued with the breath of the Spirit.