chapelle-de-l-abbaye-notre-dame-de-lure-saint-etienne-les-orgues-04230-alpes-de-haute-provence-1.jpg Painting by Cécile Labossière

Notre-Dame de Lure Abbey is a former abbey founded in the 12th century and located in the forest of the Lure mountain in the town of Saint-Étienne-les-Orgues, at an altitude of 1,200 m.
Legend has it that the hermit Saint-Donat, living near Peyruis, came to retire to this particularly isolated place and founded the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Lure there in the 6th century. It would have been destroyed in the 11th century, then given to the Abbey of Notre-Dame de Boscodon, which rebuilt it in 1166.
It was founded ex-nihilo from 1165 by spin-off from the abbey of Boscodon, itself a subsidiary of the abbey of Notre-Dame-de-Chalais (the mother abbey, near Voreppe in Isère). Its site was also given on this date by the local lords to Guigues, abbot of Boscodon, during an act signed at the foot of the village of Redortiers, then built, from 1166, under the responsibility of Guigues de Revel, to whom we also owes the abbeys of Boscodon and Prads. This act of donation was confirmed several times, in particular in 1207, in a charter which details all the priories of the abbey placed under the patronage of Sainte-Marie. There was mention, among other things, of a cellar, located near Saint-Étienne-les-Orgues, given by Guillaume IV de Forcalquier, in November 1191. To this were added the priories given to the abbey in the country d'Aigues, the region of Manosque and the Jabron valley.
At the beginning of the 14th century, the abbey and the canons of the cathedral of Aix-en-Provence were in conflict over the priory of La Tour-d'Aigues, followed by a trial which lasted from 1304 to 1306. As in 1303, the abbey of Chalais had integrated the order of the Cistercians, that of Lure asked Pope Benedict XI to attach it to the Dominicans of Aix. The case failed in Rome.
It was the papacy of Avignon and Jean XXII who settled the fate of Lure, in 1317. The abbey was attached to the chapter of the cathedral Notre-Dame des Doms d'Avignon which followed the rule of the Augustins. The abbot and twelve monks became canons of the church of Avignon, while continuing to reside there, while eight monks joined the city of the popes. In return, the chapter of Avignon now had the right to oversee the designation of the abbots of Lure.
From then on, the rule relaxed and there were fewer and fewer monks who stayed in the abbey during the winter. They preferred to go down to their cellar which was henceforth renamed the Abbadié (the abbey). In 1481, under the pontificate of Sixtus IV, Notre-Dame de Lure was secularized just like Saint-Paul de Mausole and Saint-Michel de Frigolet.
Now placed under the authority of a sponsoring abbot who did not reside, the abbey collapsed. It was burned in 1562 during the wars of religion, the same fate was reserved for the Abbadié in 1578. At the end of the 16th century, Lure was in ruins and only served as refuges for shepherds and woodcutters. But in 1636, the city council of Saint-Étienne and the local clergy decided to restore the place. Work was undertaken both on the abbey, on the hermitage, the fountain and the cistern. They ended in 1659.
Since then, it has mainly been made up of the abbey church, the best-preserved vestige of the initial work. The cloister and the convent buildings have disappeared. Of the outbuildings of the abbey, only two vaulted rooms remain. One of them constitutes the basement of the current hermitage.
To restore its luster to this place of worship, an annual pilgrimage was therefore organized. There were miracles and the Bishop of Sisteron passed this news on to the Pope. They were authenticated in 1656, and Alexander VII authorized the creation of the brotherhood of Notre-Dame de Lure.
In 1790, the sponsoring abbot saw himself stripped of his resources by the sale of agricultural land in Lure. The municipal council of Saint-Étienne, meanwhile, acquired, on April 4, 1791, the abbey and its outbuildings as well as the source. It was after the Concordat, in 1801, that the pilgrimage resumed. Gradually the surroundings were developed by the planting of 22 lime trees in 1824, the restoration of the hermitage in 1828, and that of the facade in 1879.
A new restoration campaign began in 1975 under the aegis of the Association des Amis de Notre-Dame de Lure, which for more than thirty years organized a site for young volunteers under the direction of the architect Chief of Historic Monuments.