Abbazia SS. Pietro e Andrea

We are pleased to welcome you to the Abbey of Novalesa. We invite you to the Abbey to share in the prayer and work that have been at the heart of our life since 726, among the Alps of the Susa Valley.

The founding act of the Abbey of Novalesa dates to January 30th, in the year of our Lord 726. The monastery is dedicated to Saints Peter and Andrew, at a time when the Church of the East and West were not yet separated. The monks of Novalesa followed a “regula mixta” (of St. Columbanus and St. Benedict). It was from Novalesa, where he was abbot from 817, that Benedict of Aniane began the work of unifying the monasteries of the empire by imposing the Benedictine rule at the request of Louis the Pious. This makes Novalesa the driving center at the beginning of the Benedictine era that would mark the Middle Ages. Under Eldrad, who was abbot of Novalesa from 820 to 845, the community experienced its greatest period of spiritual flourishing. In 906, the monks fled to Turin to escape Saracen raids, settling in what is now the Sanctuary of the Consolata. The surviving monks later founded the monastery of Breme, from which, in the 11th century, some monks returned to repopulate the abbey. The Benedictines were replaced by the Cistercians from 1646 to 1798, when they were expelled by the provisional Piedmontese government. Napoleon entrusted the monastery of Novalesa to the monks of the Trappist Abbey of Tamié to care for the hospice of Mont Cenis. After the fall of Napoleon, the monastery was repopulated by some Benedictine monks who joined the Cassinese Congregation of Italy in 1821. The peace did not last long, because with the suppression laws of May 29, 1855, enacted by the Piedmontese government, the monastery was sold at auction and transformed into a hotel for spa treatments. In 1972, the complex was purchased by the Province of Turin and in 1973 entrusted to the care of the Subiaco Benedictine monks. The history of Novalesa is not only long, but also rich in changes and adaptations. In the monastery of Novalesa, Cassinese and Subiaco Benedictines, Cistercians, and Trappists have succeeded one another. It has been a monastic laboratory of continuous adaptation and reconsideration in the light of fidelity to the Gospel and to history, with its constraints and inspirations. The past can illuminate the present, giving the courage to undertake changes and adaptations for a monastic life that is both faithful and free. After all, monasteries are always a work in progress, not only in a material sense, but above all in a spiritual one.