Notre-Dame de Soissons

Ruins of the nunnery today

Notre-Dame de Soissonswas anunnerydedicated to theVirgin Mary(Our Lady) inSoissons.It was founded during theMerovingianera, between 658 and 666, but the community was dissolved and the building partially demolished during theFrench Revolution(1789–99).

The convent was founded byEbroin,themayor of the palaceunder the Merovingian kings, who appointed Aetheria, a nun fromJouarre,as its first abbess. Jouarre had been founded byAdo,a disciple of the Irish missionaryColumban,and Notre-Dame therefore stood in the Columbanian tradition of monasticism.In the 660s the nunnery received amonastic rulefrom the bishop of Soissons,Drauscius.It was amixta regula,a mixed rule, combining elements of theBenedictine ruleand therule of Columban.The text of this unique rule has not been preserved. During the 660s, the nuns also adopted the practice of thelaus perennis(perennial praise), whereby thePsalmswere sung constantly, day and night, by alternating groups of singers. This custom was pioneered at the monastery ofSaint-Maurice d'Agaune.

During theCarolingianera, the nunnery came under royal control.Charlemagne's daughterRotrude(died 810) became a nun there, and his sisterGiselabecame abbess.In 816–17 it adopted the reforms ofBenedict of Anianepropounded at thesynods of Aix-la-Chapelle.According tothe record of monasteriesmade around that time, theMonasterium sanctae Mariae Suessionisowed the statedona et militia,a monetary gift and military contribution (in the case of a nunnery, paid soldiers).In 858, an inventory (descriptio) of the monastery's possessions was made before the king's leading men (optimates) and signed by fifteen bishops and abbots. The document is preserved. Such inventories were made and confirmed by the king or other leading men to serve as proof and confirmation of possession.

The writer and theologianPaschasius Radbertuswas raised at Notre-Dame de Soissons—prior to 803/4, when Charlemagne made illegal the education of boys at nunneries.He dedicated his treatisesDe assumptione sanctae Mariae virginisto the Abbess Theodrada (abbess 810, died 846), a cousin of Charlemagne, and her daughter, Irma. After Irma succeeded her mother as abbess, Radbertus wrote theExpositio in Psalmum XLIVfor the nuns of Soissons. It is an exposition ofPsalm 44as anepithalamium.

Sources

• Lesne, Émile (1920)."Les ordonnances monastiques de Louis le Pieux et laNotitia de servitio monasteriorum".Revue d'histoire de l'église de France.6(31): 161–75, 321–38 and 449–93.doi:10.3406/rhef.1920.2144.
• McKitterick, Rosamond(1989).The Carolingians and the Written Word.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Poquet, Alexandre Eu sắc be (1855).Notre-Dame de Soissons: son histoire, ses églises, ses tombeaux, ses abbesses, ses reliques.Didron.
• Zola, Alan G. (2008).Radbertus's Monastic Voice: Ideas about Monasticism at Ninth-century Corbie((Ph.D. dissertation)). Loyola University Chicago.