Abbot Jean Aubert lived as a hermit on the site of the priory and the chapel of the Sainte-Victoire mountain, which he founded, from the start of their construction in 1661. In 1664, he was briefly assisted in his priesthood by four monks from the Carmelite Brothers Congregation of the Order of Saint-Benoît in Aix-en-Provence, replaced by episodic hermits until the installation of another group of four monks, of the Camaldolese Order, from 1681 to 1683. After the death of Jean Aubert in 1692, hermits continued to provide occasional religious services in the 18th and 19th centuries until the last of them, Brother Elzéar, left the premises for good in 1881.