St. Victor in Paris

With the patronage of King Louis VI the Fat, the canons regular built c. 1113 the monastery of St.-Victor in Paris. A dependency of the monastery founded by John Cassian, St.-Victor was established on the site of the hermitage of Basilia, and its first abbot was William of Champeaux, who founded the Victorine order. St. Bernard of Clairvaux helped to shape the rule by which the monks lived, and Bernard, Becket, and Abelard were, at various times, guests of the monastery. Under Guildin, the second abbot, the Victorine school of theology developed; among its proponents were Hugh of St.-Victor, Richard of St.-Victor, and Walter of St.-Victor. The Victorines were a small order with great intellectual influence. The monastery had many students, and in the XIII Century, it became a college within the University of Paris. In the following century, the monastery began to decline, and in the XV Century, the monks joined the Brotherhood of the Common Life, founded in Holland. After a brief revival in the XVI Century, St.-Victor joined the congregatioin of Ste.-Geneviève, while still trying to maintain a degree of independence. The monastery was suppressed and its buildings destroyed during the French Revolution.