Abbaye cistercienne de Vaucelles

Vaucelles Abbey was built on land donated by Hugh of Oisy, Lord of Oisy and Crevecoeur, Chatelain of Cambray. The first stone was laid on 1 August 1132 by Bernard of Clairvaux.
It is the thirteenth founding father of the church.

Its construction took place over many years by the successive addition of buildings. At its peak, it had the largest Cistercian church in Europe.
Relics were entrusted to the custody of the abbots, like a thorn from the crown from Christ delivered by St. Louis in 1257.

Succeeding the first Romanesque building with a flat apse (plan or says claravallien Bernardine) high from 1140 to 1149 and destroyed in 1190, the Gothic abbey church accused of extraordinary dimensions (length: 137 m, transept: 64 m). She had a choir ambulatory, unearthed during excavations in 1988, and radiating chapels. Vaucelles surpassed all the great Gothic cathedrals of Ile de France, Picardy and Champagne: the largest church of the Cistercian order was here. Father Godescale was, however, removed from his seat by the general chapter abbey and the abbot of Clairvaux was even punished for allowing this project not consistent with the principles laid down by the founders of the order, simplicity and poverty.

Early in the twelfth century, two cloisters existed. The small, one of the novitiate and the infirmary cloister of 1179 or the conservation, the great cloister, the monks' choir in 1204. Abbot William of Ghent (1252-1261) began and completed the reconstruction of large cloister on a more spacious. The 39th abbot, John of Epinoy (1482-1492) made the repair, performed through the quests in the area by the monks themselves. The devastation of the sixteenth century forced the abbot Gilles de Noblecourt to reconcile the church, the cloister and courtyard in the presence of visitors of Clairvaux. In the seventeenth century, extensive repairs concernèrent yet the church and cloister. In the eighteenth century under Abbot Bruno Platel (1741-1753), the abbot of Clairvaux himself, Peter Mayeur noticed the lack of building maintenance.

The demolition of the early eighteenth century caused crowding an enormous amount of rubble which should have no doubt the current ground level (1.50 m). The altar, of Carrara marble has been used by the revolutionaries for the worship of Reason, and was subsequently transported in the choir of the Church of St. Gery of Cambrai. Some books in the library, which had 40,000 volumes in 1257, are held at Cambrai.

The abbey was almost completely destroyed during the Revolution and the early twentieth century.