Bernay

Bernay grew around the Benedictine abbey founded by Judith of Brittany, duchess of Normandy, in the early eleventh century. Its abbey church was among the first great Romanesque buildings in Normandy, and channels drawn from the Charentonne served the monastic precinct. The town lay in the county of Évreux and the diocese of Lisieux.

The abbey suffered during the Hundred Years' War and the Wars of Religion. In the seventeenth century monks of the Congregation of Saint-Maur undertook its restoration and rebuilt the conventual buildings in the classical style of their age. By the French Revolution only a handful of monks remained. Their community was suppressed in 1791 and its property, already nationalized, was sold; the church later served as a grain market.