Anchin Abbey was a Benedictine monastery founded in 1079 in the commune of Pecquencourt in what is now the Nord department of France.
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Aquicintum, later Aquacignium and then Anchin (or Enchin), was a 25 hectare island forming part of the territory of Pecquencourt, between the marais, the river Scarpe and the Bouchart brook.[1]
The hermit and confessor Gordaine[2] built his hermitage on the island in the 8th century)[3] and is sometimes considered the abbey's founder: an anonymous 12th century painting in the church of Saint-Gilles at Pecquencourt shows his miracles.[4]
In 1096 the abbey was the site of a large tournament, the Tournoi d'Anchin, at which 300 knights from Ostrevent, Hainaut, Cambrésis and Artois fought.[5] An important cultural centre from the 11th to 13th centuries, it produced many manuscripts and charters.[6]
In 1562 Anchin College[7] was built by the Jesuits under the abbey's patronage. It was suppressed in the French Revolution, declared state property by the decree of 28 October 1790, sold to François-Joseph Tassart of Douai on 27 March 1792 for 47,700 livres and demolished later that year.
A 13th century gilded copper priest's cross, found at Anchin in 1872 in a tomb, is now in the musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes. The Anchin Retable is a polyptych on wood of c.1551 by the artist Jehan Bellegambe, now held at the musée de la Chartreuse de Douai.[8] The Lille painter Bernard Joseph Wamps also produced many works for the abbey, including many sketches destroyed by fire in the First World War.