Photo:france-for-visitors.com
At 1190 m altitude, 2 km above the museum, the monastery can only be reached by foot. In 1084, St Bruno settled into a small hermitage in the base of this valley and, for over 900 years, it has been home to a monastic way of life…The Grande Chartreuse is the Order's Mother House. Since it was founded, over 350 Charterhouses have been created in the world. After the Reformation, only 200 remained. At the time of the French revolution, all the Charterhouses in France had to be closed. Today, 25 monasteries throughout the world are home to 350 monks and nuns.
Photo:cartusian.tripod.com
The mother-house of the Carthusian Order lies in a high valley of the Alps of Dauphine, at an altitude of 4268 feet, fourteen miles north of Grenoble. The monastery is located on open pasture. To the east the ridge of the Grand-Som towers above its roof, on the south the road approaches through a narrow gorge, while on the north and west the valley is shut in by heights covered with woods, due to the planting of the earlier monks. This land is now the property of France.
Photo:www.gdargaud.net
The first monastery, built by Saint Bruno in 1084 was located were the chapel of Notre-Dame de Casalibus now stands. It was destroyed by an avalanche in 1132, and the new buildings were erected on part of the site of the present grand cloître. The monastery was burnt eight times between 1320 and 1676.
Photo:www.chartreuse.fr
Some time after the last fire, Prior Innocent Le Masson, began to rebuild the greater part of it in the somewhat cold and heavy style of the period. His work was solid, and there is a severe monastic element about it. The buildings of today are substantially as he left them, though they have been extensively restored during the nineteenth century. They are on the typically Carthusian layout, with the addition of the great guest-houses and capitular hall, constructed to accommodate the Carthusian priors attending the general chapters.
Photo:secret-harbor.blogspot.com
The most ancient portions are the Gothic parts of the grand cloître (over 700 feet long) and the church, which dates in part from 1320 or perhaps earlier, but owes its present form to restoration in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The monastery, with a small portion of the surrounding pastures, was rented from the State till, in accordance with the Association Laws of 1901, the last Carthusians were expelled by two squadrons of dragoons on the 19th of April, 1903.
Photo:secret-harbor.blogspot.com
The monks of La Grand Chartreuse, driven into exile with the prior general, found refuge at Farneta, in Italy, until 1929, when Montrieux, the first of the French charterhouses to be restored, was reopened. Only in 1940 were the monks able to re-occupy La Grande Chartreuse.
http://cartusian.tripod.com/
http://www.musee-grande-chartreuse.fr/
Film Great Silence (2005)
This movie about la Grande Chartreuse shows for the first time the lives of these men who decided to live into Great Silence. Philip Gröning, the movie director, had to wait 16 years before being afforded the privilege to share their lives and make a film without music or commentary. More than a movie, this is a true invitation to meditation and silence.
162 min.
Philip Gröning. Germany, 2005. Jury's special award at the Sundance Film Festival 2006.
Bayerischen Filmpreis award for the best documentary of 2005 in Germany.
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