REDISCOVERING AN
ORDER
The Canons Regular
are not well known in
France.
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Split into several autonomous
congregations and abbeys, they did not initially appear to be a single
Order. Canons were numerous and extremely widespread but, after
several centuries, they were dispersed by the Reform and then the French Revolution.
In France, they almost completely disappeared. Who is aware today, for
example, that in the Middle Ages, the Abbey of Saint Victor, famous for
its theologians, was where the Jussieu university and Botanical Gardens
now stand? How many pupils of the Henri IV lycee know that the Canons
Génovéfains used to pray on that spot and that their library, one of the
largest in Europe, forms the basis of the current Saint Genevieve library?
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