Sainte Assise Castle

The Royal Abbey of Saint-Acire

The priory of Saint-Acire was founded around 1135 under the invocation of Saint Acire or Achérie ( Acerius ). It was not until much later that this name was corrupted in Saint Assisi . This priory soon became the royal abbey of Sainte-Acire, a subsidiary of the abbey of Preuilly , itself dependent on the abbey of Cîteaux .

Louis VII placed the abbey under his protection and donated a set of lands, including the neighboring forests of Sénart and Beaulieu ^[Where?] , in 1146 and 1147 . Numerous donations followed, confirmed by Pope Alexander III in 1164 .

In the 1150s , work was undertaken on a new abbey located in a healthier place, overlooking the Seine, called Barbeel or Barbeau (commune of Fontaine-le-Port). A magnificent monastery was built there, the abbey church of which was consecrated in 1178 . The abbey was then called Barbeau Abbey and Saint-Acire once again became a simple priory.

This priory was itself transferred, a few years later, on a height dominating the Seine, undoubtedly for the same reasons of insalubrity which had led the abbey to move.

The Château des Caumartin ⁽ 17th  century ) 

At the end of the 16th  century , the ^Caumartins , holders of the seigneury of Saint-Port, wanted to build a new castle because the feudal manor, built in the 13th  century , was in poor condition and badly located ^.

By exchange, concluded with the commendatory abbot of Barbeau, Benjamin de Brichanteau , Louis Lefèvre de Caumartin acquired in 1608 the land on which stood the priory of Saint-Acire. On the site of the buildings, of which he kept only the chapel, he had a magnificent castle built in the shape of a parallelogram confined by two pavilions, with three large terraces rising up to the Seine. For him, Henri IV established the seigneury of Saint-Port as a barony.

The barony of Saint-Port and the seigneury of Sainte-Assise passed in 1623 to the widow of Louis Lefèvre de Caumartin, Marie Miron, then in 1645 to his son, Jacques Lefèvre de Caumartin . In 1682 , his heirs sold the estate to Antoine de Benoist, whose widow, Catherine Goy, sold it in 1695 to the diplomat and poet Jean de La Chapelle ( 1655 – 1723 ).

Sainte-Assise in ^the 18th  century 

La Chapelle only rarely stayed in Sainte-Assise and sold the castle in 1700 to Jean Glucq (or Gluck), an industrialist of Dutch origin who had created a dye factory on rue de Bièvre in Paris and made a fine fortune by joining to François Jullienne , cloth maker, whose sister Marie Charlotte Jullienne he had married.