The Notre-Dame de Sénanque abbey, in the Vaucluse, was founded in July 1148 by a group of a dozen Cistercian monks from the abbey of Mazan, located at an altitude of 1,300 m in the Haut-Vivarais , in Ardèche. It was on the initiative of the bishop of Cavaillon, Alfant, that it was erected, under the protection of the lords of Simiane, suzerains of Gordes.
The abbey was born from this great momentum of foundation of monasteries, initiated in 1098 with the abbey of Cîteaux, in Burgundy. It is from the name of Cîteaux (place where cistels, that is to say reeds) grow that the term “Cistercian” is derived. The most famous monk from Cîteaux is Saint Bernard, founder of the Abbey of Clairvaux, in Aube.
The end of the 13th century marks the territorial apogee of the Abbey of Sénanque, which extended almost everywhere in Provence. The 14th century was its "great century", which is undoubtedly not unrelated to the influence of the papacy of Avignon, which spread throughout the region. Sénanque was governed by a succession of abbots (superiors) of high quality.
In the 15th century, Abbé Jean Casaletti founded a Cistercian college in Avignon so that young monks could study there. Then came the sad period of religious unrest, a prelude to the Wars of Religion, which would spread in Europe. In 1792, Sénanque, abandoned, without a monastic community within its walls, was bought by a private individual from Aix-en-Provence.
It was in 1854 that the abbey underwent a monastic revival under the impetus of Dom Barnouin, the new abbot of the monastery, who in 1869 moved to the island of Saint-Honorat, opposite Cannes: it was to be the abbey of Lérins, still inhabited by Cistercian monks today.
The laws of the Republic, in 1881, lead to a first expulsion of the monks, then a second in 1904. The monks returned to Sénanque in 1926, left the abbey in 1969 for lack of vocations for succession. From 1969 to 1988, the abbey, still owned by the monks of Lérins, housed a cultural center supported by Paul Berliet.
In 1988, the Abbey of Lérins sent a small group of monks there to perpetuate the vocation of the Abbey of Sénanque since its construction in the 12th century.
