Dominican Priory of St. Stephen of Jerusalem (CSE)
- ERC337895-CSE
- Corporate body
- From 1884
On his return from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in April-May 1882, a Dominican, Father Mathieu Lecomte, submitted to the Master of his Order the plan to restore a convent of preachers in the Holy City. He wanted to open a house there for the assistance of pilgrims and the study of theology, in order to better understand the doctrine of Eastern Christians, Jews and Muslims.
On 27 December 1883, land was acquired for this purpose near the Damascus Gate, where a church dedicated to Saint-Etienne once stood. A convent was established there on 26 December 1884, the feast of Saint Stephen. Fr. Mathieu Lecomte died two years later.
His successor, Fr. Paul Meunier, proposed in 1886 to found a course in Sacred Scripture in this convent. The Provincial of Toulouse immediately promised him the assistance of Fr. Marie-Joseph Lagrange. When he arrived in Jerusalem at the beginning of 1890, Fr. Lagrange opened what he insisted on calling a practical School of Biblical Studies, intended to study the Bible within the framework of its development, on 15 November of the same year.
The Dominicans of Jerusalem constitute the monastery of Saint-Étienne (in France, we would speak of a "convent"), a community made up of about twenty brothers, most of them permanent, others who came for some time for study at the French Biblical and Archaeological School in Jerusalem, and some associate members.
The brothers and their friends celebrate religious services (Lauds, Mass and Vespers) in the Basilica of St. Stephen, rebuilt on the very remains of the 5th century Byzantine basilica. The entire estate is part of the holy sites of Jerusalem.