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Heritage classified

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Origin and history

The Convent of the Irish Capuchins of Sedan, founded in the 17th century, was a religious building linked to the conversion to Catholicism of Prince Frédéric Maurice de La Tour d'Auvergne in 1639. Originally installed near the Meuse, it was rebuilt in the fortified enclosure of the horn of Floing after 1657, under the impulse of Governor Fabert d'Esternay, near Louis XIV. The latter laid the first stone of the new convent, an austere building flanked by a cloister and a chapel, housing a funeral crypt for Fabert and his family.

The crypt, the only vestige of the convent, presents a mixture of architectural styles: cradle vaults and late Gothic warheads, with a Tuscan central pile. It houses the black marble tomb of Dinant d'Abraham de Fabert, damaged during the Revolution when the bodies were exhumed and thrown into a mass grave. The convent, which became a military hospital in 1802, was razed in 1970 to give way to modern buildings, keeping only the crypt classified.

The Irish Capuchins, settled in Sedan to avoid tensions with the French Capuchins, left the city in 1681 after the edict expelling foreign religious. Replaced by French capuchins, the convent became a place of knowledge with a library frequented by encyclopedists. Closed in 1791 after the religious refused to join the civil constitution of the clergy, the building then lost its religious vocation before its transformation into a hospital.

Today, the crypt, located at the foot of the Les Fougères tower in the Résidence des Ardennes, remains inaccessible to the public outside of exceptional openings. No signposts mark its location, preserving an unknown heritage but witnessing the political and religious upheavals of Sedan, between independent principality and integration into the Kingdom of France.

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