LÉRINS. - Cistercian abbey on a small island situated opposite Cannes in the department of the Alpes-Maritimes (France). Honoratus (d. ca. 430), a patrician originally from the Vosges, settled there with the consent of St. Leontius, bishop of Fréjus; he had as his companion an old man named Caprasius and founded a monastery that immediately flourished; from it came Sts. Lupus of Troyes, Eucherius of Lyon, Hilary of Arles, Maximus and Faustus of Riez, Caesarius and Virgilius of Arles; St. Vincent of Lérins, Salvian of Marseilles, St. Patrick and St. Augustine of Canterbury sojourned there; Lérins was therefore called the Island of Saints.
In 660 St. Aigulf is said to have introduced the Rule of St. Benedict at Lérins. Abbot Porcarius II was martyred together with about 500 monks ca. 732 by the Saracens, who were driven away from it in 975. In 1073 Abbot Adalbert II fortified the monastery, which however was plundered repeatedly in the 12th century and in 1400. In 1464 the regular abbots were replaced by Commendatory abbots.
In 1788 the bishops of Grasse and Senez obtained its suppression from Pope Pius VI. At the French Revolution, in 1788, the island was confiscated; the name it had assumed of St. Donatus was changed to that of Pelletier; in 1791 it was sold at auction; in 1859 it was purchased by the bishop of Fréjus, Msgr. Jordany, who re-established worship there, entrusting the monastery first to the Farming Friars of St. Francis of Assisi, then to the Cistercians of St. Peter in Chains, and finally to the Cistercians of the Immaculate Conception of the Congregation of Sénanque in Oct. 1871.
A characteristic of the island are the seven chapels, which perhaps constituted the first isolated groups of the monks of Lérins: the first is dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity, the second to the martyrs Cyprian and Justin, the third to the archangel St. Michael, the fourth to the Transfiguration, the fifth to St. Caprasius, the sixth to St. Peter, the seventh to Abbot Porcarius and his companion martyrs. Later the monastery would arise, of which the ancient cloister remains, on whose eastern side a chapel was built first dedicated to St. Leonard, then to St. Benedict; on the southern side the refectory.
Above the cloister was the chapel of the Holy Cross, containing precious relics and therefore called Sancta Sanctorum, and the celebrated library now dispersed. Near the cloister a museum has been established containing ancient inscriptions, architectural fragments and a Christian sarcophagus with columns representing the Redeemer among the twelve Apostles (cf. G. Wilpert, Restauro di sculture antiche e antichità moderne, in Riv. di arch. crist., 4 [1897], p. 100 ff.). Of the ancient buildings of Lérins only a tower of defense from the 11th century remains, along with two chapels dated to the 7th century, dedicated one to the Most Holy Savior and the other to the Most Holy Trinity; the one has a triconch plan with a dome, preceded by a kind of rectangular atrium, like the triconch cella known as that of Sixtus II in Callistus; the second is polygonal on the outside with a large apse opposite the entrance wall and six lateral niches.
