The abbey declined during the Hundred Years' War, which devastated the region. Modern era 18th century house in front of the Abbey Church of St Pierre, decorated with various sculpted elements from disappeared 15th and 16th century buildings. With the beginning of the fifteenth century, the abbey gradually crumbled. Beaulieu became the seat of the conflicts for power between the Lord Abbot, the middle-class and the Viscount of Turenne. Beaulieu became an important commercial place from which emerged a true bourgeois community that aroused the desires of the Lords of Castelnau and Turenne.įrom 1213, saw the end of the Cluny stranglehold, with the abbey losing power little by little. From the monastic enclosure, districts developed outside the walls: the Faubourg de la Grave, towards the Dordogne, where the former hospital was located the main district at the site of the old village of Vellinus the Barri du Trou in which the deceased were buried and the Mirabel district near the ancient orchards of the abbey. From the end of the 12th century, a village was built around the conventual buildings protected by a wall, punctuated by towers and bordered by a ditch. The powerful abbey, under the protection of popular saints, was located around fertile lands, an indispensable condition for the village inhabitants to develop. In the fourteenth century, a separate western steeple was erected: this also acted as the town's belfry. Annexed to the Cluny Abbey around 1095, it was reformed and experienced a favourable period and the construction of the great abbey church was begun and it continued for nearly half a century. As its wealth grew, the independence of the abbey was threatened by neighbouring feudal lords and it was defended against their depredations by the bishops of Limoges. Beaulieu became an essential stage on the roads uniting Limoges to Aurillac and Figeac, leading to Conques, Moissac, Toulouse and Compostela.

Endowed with a treasure trove of relics (Saint-Prime and Félicien), and although it suffered from secular lusts, it had a spectacular rise that allowed the development of pilgrimages. Thanks to the pious donations of the Counts of Quercy, the Viscounts of Turenne, their multiple vassals, the area of the abbey consists of a third of the Bas-Limousin. The first monks came from the abbey of Solignac, near Limoges. Like those at nearby Uzerche and Limoges, the abbey of Saint Pierre at Beaulieu was a Benedictine foundation and flourished largely because of its proximity to the Way of St. From the great Solignac Abbey, he invited a team of monks to set up a new monastery and participated with his wide kin in the building of the abbey's heritage. The cartulary of the abbey reported that at the sight of the place's splendour, he could not help but baptise it 'bellus locus'. After a vain attempt at Végennes, he turned to Vellinus. In the midst of the War of succession at the head of Aquitaine, around 855, Rodolphe de Turenne, Archbishop of Bourges, rallied to the legitimate cause embodied by Charles the Bald, was committed to establishing a monastic foundation on his family lands.

History Middle ages Chapelle des pénitents (left) in the village of Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne across the river from Altillac. The commune is limited on its entire eastern border by the Dordogne, and watered to the north by its tributary the Ménoire.

Brive-la-Gaillarde is 38 km away and Collonges-la-Rouge is 20 km to the northwest. It is located on the D940 road on the banks of the Dordogne river, south of the Limousin. The inhabitants of Beaulieu are called by varies names: Beaulieusard, Beaulieurois, Bellilocien, Bellieurain, Bellilocois, Belliloquois, Belliloqueteux, Belliquière, Berlugan, Beloudonien.īeaulieu is in the south of the Corrèze department. Toponymy īeaulieu comes from the Latin 'bellus locus', 'lieu beau', a nice place to live.

Geography One of the arms of the Dordogne river crossing the village. On 1 January 2019, the former commune Brivezac was merged into Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne. Beaulieu is a medieval city, originally dominated by its great abbey of St Pierre, of which only the abbey church remains. 1 French Land Register data, which excludes lakes, ponds, glaciers > 1 km 2 (0.386 sq mi or 247 acres) and river estuaries.īeaulieu-sur-Dordogne ( French pronunciation:, literally Beaulieu on Dordogne Occitan: Belluec) is a commune in the Corrèze department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, central France.

Map dordogne elevation