Abbey of St Victor, Marseille

The crypts of the abbey contains artefacts indicating the presence of a quarry that was active during the Greek period and later became a necropolis from 2 BC onward until Christian times.

[4] Saint Isarn (d. 1048), a Catalan monk and successor as abbot to Wiffred, began construction work in 1020, building the first upper church, tower and altar.

[1] Isarn was instrumental by his intercession with Ramon Berenguer I, Count of Barcelona, in obtaining the release from Moorish captivity of the monks of Lérins Abbey.

Blessed Bernard, abbot of St. Victor from 1064 to 1079, was one of the two ambassadors delegated by Pope Gregory VII to the Diet of Forchheim, where the German princes deposed Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor.

[4] Blessed Guillaume Grimoard, who was made abbot of Saint-Victor on 2 August 1361, became pope in 1362 as Urban V. He enlarged the church and surrounded the abbey with high crenellated walls.

[5] However, the behaviour of the monks generally did not improve, and after their highly unsatisfactory conduct during the plague of 1720, during which they barricaded themselves inside their walls instead of providing any assistance to the stricken, Pope Benedict XIII secularised the monastery in 1726, converting it into a collegiate church with a community of lay canons under an abbot.

The relics were burned, the gold and silver objects were melted down to make coins and the building itself became a warehouse, prison and barracks.