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Origin and history

The Saint-Mathieu Abbey of Fine-Terre, located on the extreme tip of Finistère in Plougonvelin, finds its origins in a legend dating back to the sixth century. According to tradition, St Tanguy, a monk and heir of lands extending to Pen ar Bed ("the end of the world"), founded a monastery there after a Breton fleet, returning from Egypt with the relics of St Matthew, had failed near the coasts. Although the evidence is lacking, this legend explains the attachment of the place to the apostle Matthew, whose skull would have been kept in the abbey until the Revolution. The remains visible today, however, date from the reconstructions of the 11th–13th centuries, with major alterations in the 14th–15th centuries.

In the Middle Ages, the abbey enjoyed exceptional influence thanks to the Viscounts of Leon, who established a right to break (taxation of wrecks) in the 12th century. In the 14th century, it became the heart of a prosperous city with more than 2,000 inhabitants, with an international port, before being regularly looted during Franco-English conflicts (the Hundred Years War, the War of the Succession of Brittany). The monks then strengthened the site, but the British attacks continued, culminating with the bag of 1558, where the abbey and the nearby town of the Conquet were burned, and the reliquary of St Matthew stolen.

From the 16th century on, the abbey declined under the influence of the abbots, appointed for their influence rather than their piety. Cosme Ruggieri, astrologer of Catherine de Medici, was even the abbot from 1585 to 1615, despite his sulphurous past. The Maurist congregation tried to raise in the 17th century, partially restoring the buildings and reviving the pilgrimages, but the difficult living conditions on this promontory beaten by the winds pushed the monks to ask for their transfer to Brest in 1692 – refused by the king for strategic reasons. The abbey then served as a military post, with a fire tower designed to guide the ships to Brest.

The French Revolution rang the glass of Saint-Mathieu: declared national in 1790, it was dismantled in 1796, its stones sold or looted. Only the ruins of the abbey church, the dungeon, and the remains of the convent buildings survived. In the 19th century, a lighthouse was erected nearby, replacing the fires maintained by monks for centuries. Modern excavations and restorations, since 1998, have made it possible to highlight the remains, revealing a juxtaposition of Romanesque, Gothic and Maurist elements, witnesses to the multiple reconstructions.

Today, the site offers a unique panorama of the ocean, where the ruins of the Abbey – a 13th century nave, transept and choir of the 14th–15th centuries – stand alongside the walls of the monastic gardens and the chapel Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, the last vestige of the medieval parish church. Ranked a Historical Monument in 1875, the abbey embodies both the past power of the Breton abbeys and their vulnerability to conflicts and uncertainties of history.

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