OUR LADYOF CAMBRON

Day 139: September 28

Our Lady of Cambron, France



The abbey of Cambron was founded on the River Blanche and was a daughter house of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. It was situated some leagues from Mons in Cambron-Casteau in Hainaut, Belgium, and took its name from the land on which it was built. Cambron, in its turn, had daughter houses in the abbeys of Fontenelle at Valenciennes and six other sites. The image of Our Lady formerly honored at Cambron was famous for a great number of miraculous cures. A chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Cambron, was built at Mons in 1550 in a part of the prince’s park.

In the following centuries the magistrates of Mons had a beautiful door built for the shrine and added other embellishments. In 1559, thieves broke into the chapel and stole everything of value to be found there. There was a small oratory that was very much frequented.

After the French Revolution when the State took over all properties given to religious services, this chapel of Our Lady of Cambron was also taken. It was demolished after all the wood, iron and lead was removed. The statue of the Blessed Virgin which decorated the altar, was then placed in the church of Saint Elizabeth at Mons. The abbey of Cambron was rebuilt in the 18th century, but was ordered to be vacated in 1783 by Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II. It was later sold to a wealthy Count who built a mansion on the property and the land remained in his family’s hands until it was sold in 1993 to a family who turned the holy and once revered site into the location of a public zoo known as the Pairi Daiza.


St Justin Russolillo Writes...

"With the whole Church, Militant, Suffering and Triumphant, we bow to you while contemplating the Blessed Trinity who dresses you with the sun and crowns you with stars, while the world becomes a footstool at your feet. Hail, O Full of Glory, O Mary."

(Spirit of Prayer, trans. Louis Caputo, Vocationist Fathers, New Jersey, 1996, p. 159)

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