Cloister of the Trinitarians
THE CLOISTER OF THE TRINITARIANS adjoining the church is one of the most ancient Gothic cloisters in the region between the Meuse, the Mosella and the Rhine. This cloister belonged to the monastery of the Trinitarians, founded in 1248. The mission of the Trinitarian order aimed at freeing prisoners in the Holy Land; it was founded by Jean de Matha and Felix de Valois, the statues of who are to be seen on both sides of the main altar in the Trinitarian church. The two founders wear the habit of the order, a white coat, bearing a red and blue cross.
The monastery belonged to the province of the Picardie and its income was divided into three parts: one third went to the monastery, another third to the St. Elizabeth Hospital and the remaining third was spent on the repurchase of prisoners. In 1766, the Trinitarian monk P.N. Mamer was triumphantly welcomed in Vianden, as he came back with 73 slaves he had repurchased from the Sultan of Morocco. This was the last redemption of that kind, as the monastery of the Trinitarians was abolished in 1783 by the emperor Joseph II of Austria. The convent and cloister were both sold by auction and transformed into private domains. It was not until 1955, that the cloister with its magnificent ribbed vaults, separated by three-cusped lancet arches, was pulled clear out of its wreckage and was finally restored.
Nowadays a retreat house takes up the site of the old Trinitarian convent. It was the Trinitarians who developed the cultivation of the vine. Documents mention a vineyard "in monte Viennense" as early as 698, and up to the beginning of our century people used to cultivate a wine of mediocre quality, called "Dreimännerwein" as, according to local lore, three men were needed to drink it: one man swallowed the wine, another one poured it down his throat and the third man held him back so that he could not escape.