page_title: Cerisy-la-Forêt
section_title: Middle Ages
hierarchical_section_title: Cerisy-la-Forêt / History / Middle Ages
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Bataille de Formigny (1450).
context_page_description: Cerisy-la-Forêt is a French commune in the Manche department of Normandy in north-western France It has a population of 1, 034 inhabitants and possesses an important environmental and architectural heritage.
  The area has been occupied since antiquity and is linked to the foundation of the Saint-Vigor Abbey in the early 20th century. The 2,300 ha commune comprises several castles and manor houses and is bordered by Cerisy forest.
context_section_description: The earliest mention of Cerisy-la-Forêt dates back to the 6th century, when Gaul began to Christianize. Vigor, one of the first evangelists in the region, received from Volusian, the local lord, twenty-five villages, to thank him for having rid the region of a "horrible serpent that put to death men and animals". Around 510 AD he built a monastery dedicated to St. Peter and St. Paul on the site of what had been a Druid holy site.
  In the 9th century, Neustria was invaded by the Vikings, who in 891 plundered Bayeux, and Vigor's monastery was destroyed. King Charles III the Simple gave Rollo the countries of the lower Seine in the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte in 911, and then Bessin in 924.
  Cerisy became an important market town under the Normans, who build Cerisy Abbey. The abbey went on to consist of forty-eight parishes and eight priories, including two in England, (Sherborne and Peterborough). Dependent on the Holy See, Cerisy maintained close relations with monasteries in Mont-Saint-Michel, Saint-Ouen, Jumièges, Bec-Hellouin, Fécamp and of course Caen.
  In 1337, the dynastic rivalries between the Valois and the king of England precipitated the Hundred Years' War, which plunged the country into misery, aggravated by epidemics of plague. The Abbey of Saint-Vigor de Cerisy was fortified and a garrison settled there. In 1418, Richard de Silly, knight and captain of the abbey, was obliged to cede the abbey to the King of England, however, after the victory of the constable de Richemont over the English at the Battle of Formigny in 1450, Normandy returned definitively to the kingdom of France.
caption: The battle of Formigny
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