LÉRINS
. A small island (now known as Saint-Honorat) in the Mediterranean, just off the French
coast at Cannes, Lérins was the site of a monastery founded ca. 410 by Honoratus, who
had traveled east on pilgrimage and returned to found a monastic community. The
monastery at Lérins combined a community under an abbot with isolated cells for
hermits. A major center for monastic training, it provided both monastic leaders and
monk-bishops for the church, such as Caesarius of Arles, Hilary of Arles, Vincent of
Lérins, and Lupus of Troyes. According to tradition, St. Patrick was trained at Lérins
before embarking on his mission to Ireland. Lérins had a strong tradition of intellectual as
well as ascetic training, thus presaging the role that later monastic communities would
play in preserving and transmitting classical and Christian culture to the Middle Ages and
beyond.
Grover A.Zinn
[See also: CAESARIUS OF ARLES; MONASTICISM; VINCENT OF LÉRINS]
LESCUREL, JEHANNOT DE
(d. 1303). A trouvère credited with thirty-three chansons, ballades, rondeaux, and dits,
preserved with music, written to honor several ladies whom he describes with
conventional attributes, Lescurel was hanged in Paris in 1303 with several other men for
crimes committed against both religious and lay women.
Deborah H.Nelson
[See also: VIRELAI]
Langlois, Charles-Victor. “Jean de Lescurel, poète français.” Histoire littéraire de la France 26
(1927):109–15.
LESSAY
. A magnificent example of Romanesque architecture, the Abbatiale de la Trinité in
Lessay (Manche) was founded in 1056 by a Norman baron, Thurstin Haldup. A
certificate of 1080, confirming the foundation and ownership, constitutes the first
reference to this Benedictine abbey, built probably at the turn of the century. The church
features the first known occurrence of cross-ribbed vaulting in France. Whether this type
of vaulting developed in France at this time or was imported from England, after the style
of the cathedral of Durham (1093), has been a matter of debate.
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