Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud also known as a Fontevraud Abbey or Fontevrault Abbey is situated near village of Fontevraud-l'Abbaye in Maine- et- Loire department of France. This Roman Catholic Monastery was found by Robert of Arbrissel (c. 1045–1116) in the years 1110- 1119. He also started an Order of Fontevrault around this time. Although he usually addressed under the title of "Blessed" he was never canonized due conflicting views of his life and alleged extreme ascetic life style.
Location: Maine- et- Loire Map
Tel. 02- 41 51 71 41
Constructed: 1101
Open: daily
Closed: Jan 1, Nov 1, Nov 11, Dec 25
Fontevraud Abbey, also known as the "Monastic City", is considered
the largest monastic building in Europe. The extraordinary architectural
ensemble was built on an area of 14 hectares.
The conception as a
mixed monastery initially existed with priority given to women. Later,
two separate monasteries coexisted, then eventually four:
"Le
Grand-Moûtier" was intended for the nuns dedicated to prayer and for the
"Saint Benoît" hospital,
"La Madeleine" for the lay sisters dedicated
exclusively to the abbey,
"Saint-Lazare" for the nuns who cared for
lepers (lepers) and
"Saint Jean de l'Habit" for men, brothers and
priests who lived apart from the convent.
While the women were to
devote themselves exclusively to prayer within a strict enclosure, the
necessary work was left to the men; among them clerics and lay people
lived together without separation. Robert von Arbrissel, who rejected
the title of abbot, initially headed the entire community as Magister.
He always went barefoot and wore clothes made of coarse cloth. The
community of Fontevraud received a huge following from all walks of
life; Above all, rejected wives, prostitutes and even lepers sought
refuge with Robert of Arbrissel. From 1115 onwards and for seven
centuries, according to the will of the founder, 36 abbesses were to
succeed one another at the head of the order. The abbey was exempt, that
is, it was not subordinate to a bishop, but directly to the pope.
From the beginning, the monastery had a strong connection with the
House of Plantagenet, the Counts of Anjou: they particularly encouraged
this monastery and made it their royal burial place. Eleanor of
Aquitaine retired to this monastery in old age and is also buried there.
The monastery also houses the tombs of her second husband Henry II of
England, their son Richard the Lionheart and the wife of his youngest
son John, Isabella of Angoulême.
The monastery was dissolved
during the French Revolution. After the dissolution and sale of the
ecclesiastical property had been decided in August 1792, the last abbess
Julie-Gillette de Pardaillan d'Antin left the monastery on September 25,
1792.
The former monastery buildings have been largely preserved,
even though they have been rebuilt in different styles over the
centuries. The Romanesque kitchen building and the Renaissance-style
cloister from 1522 with the chapter house and the refectory are
particularly noteworthy.
The abbey church consists of a choir, a nave, a transept with a
crossing tower and a western façade with two smaller, non-accessible
towers. In the course of the restoration of the outer walls, the
Romanesque stone carvings, mainly consisting of capitals and friezes,
were replaced in particularly badly weathered places with new
constructions in the Romanesque style, without completely replacing the
old substance.
The current condition of the interior is also the
result of a thorough restoration. The church building was already
damaged during the French Revolution. Under Napoleon, the monastery
became a prison and, curiously enough, remained so until 1963. From
1821, four ceilings were drawn into the church and workshops and
dormitories were set up; these works led to the demolition of the domes
and the enlargement of the stained glass windows to the north, which was
reversed during the restoration.
Apart from the pointed transept
windows, the church belongs to the Romanesque period. The choir was
built between 1106 and 1117 under the direction of the Prioress
Hersendis of Champagne and consecrated in 1119 by Pope Calixtus II. In
its simplicity, it resembles Romanesque churches in the Loire region. It
houses the cenotaph of the monastery founder Robert von Arbrissel, whose
ascetic spirit shaped the building. The choir has a colonnade similar to
that of Notre Dame la Grande in Poitiers, but with a more pronounced
vertical division. There, the gallery has an indicated groined vault
with connections to the chapels, and the barrel and half-cupola of the
inner choir begin just above the arcade. At Fontrevaud the barrel vault
of the ambulatory overlies the crests of the chapel attachments and has
belt arches. In the inner choir there is a triforium and clerestory
above the arcade.
The barrel vaults of the transept are typical
of the Romanesque style of south-west France.
A basilical nave
would actually have fitted in with the basilical choir. Instead, a
single-nave nave was chosen, built from 1125, with a vault of four
pendentive cupolas. This type of construction can be found in several
churches in south-west France and is traced back to Byzantine models.
When the nave was completed in 1160, the development of style had
already progressed; Angers Cathedral, built from 1148 onwards, has a
similar floor plan with rib vaults instead of unstructured domes and is
therefore considered the first large building of the Angevin Gothic
style.
To absorb the lateral thrust, the walls are constructed of
two shells (here not in the sense of thermal insulation); Wall pillars
are placed in front of the window wall, which are broken through by a
walkway. This type of construction can also be found in Romanesque
basilicas in Normandy and in numerous early Gothic churches outside of
France. Each pilaster has paired double services or half-columns on
three sides. This pillar shape can be understood as a special variant of
the cross pillar. The capitals belong to the late Romanesque style of
south-western France, both in the choice of their subjects and in their
execution, as can be found for example in the Cathedral of Angoulême, as
well as St-Eutrope and the Abbaye aux Dames in Saintes.
Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine are buried in the
central part of the nave in front of the entrance to the chancel in the
upper row, including Richard the Lionheart and Isabella of Angoulême,
the wife of John the Landless, whose tomb was the only one carved out of
wood. The other three are tuff-calcareous sculptures carved around the
time they died, i.e. the beginning of the 13th century (between 1200 and
1256). They are among the earliest funerary sculptures in which the
deceased are depicted as recumbent, as Gisants.
This burial place
of the English royal family of the Plantagenets is one of the most
important in European history and stands in a line with that of the
Salian emperors in Speyer, the Hohenstaufen kings in the Capella
Palatina in Palermo, the French kings in St. Denis and the other English
kings in Westminster Abbey.
The grave figures are all depicted in
an idealized form. Eleanor of Aquitaine, for example, is not depicted as
an 82-year-old woman at the end of her life, but in the prime of her
life. In contrast to the white coolness of the church, the funerary
statues are still in the original intense colors. The interior of the
church used to have this colour. The statues are larger than life, their
originators are unknown. Efforts have been made to preserve the majestic
character of the figures in their tomb statues. They are crowned and lie
on a display bed, in accordance with royal funeral rites. The two kings
of this group of four are each dressed in a tunic and in their gloved
hands hold a sceptre, the symbol of royal power; at her side lies a
knight's sword.
Eleanor of Aquitaine was also depicted reading on
her deathbed. This underlines her legendary learning, one of the most
important women of the Middle Ages.
Romanesque cuisine
As a
rare exception, the kitchen building in the Romanesque style has
survived in Fontevraud. The floor plan of the building is an octagon –
like the baptisteries – and the vault of the kitchen has also become
eight-sided thanks to a sophisticated nesting of geometric figures. A
stone kitchen was built not only for reasons of fire protection, but
also for reasons of representation. The kitchen, located just behind the
refectory, with its capitals in the form of crowns, underlined the rank
of the whole monastery as a royal abbey.
Due to the nesting of
the building, niches are formed in the walls, which were used as
fireplaces. A look directly into the unusual and high vault shows a
rather complicated construction for a kitchen. Even in this apparently
purely functional building, attention was not only paid to clean
workmanship, but also to numerical symbols. In the high vaults there are
vents for the smoke from the fireplaces and for the vapors from the
prepared dishes. The roof is made of stone in the Angevin Romanesque
style and is shaped like a pine cone.
Hersendis of Champagne (first prioress) 1100 to 1 December 1114
Petronilla of Chemillé (first abbess) 18 October 1115 to 1150
1150–1154: Mathilde I of Anjou († 1154), widow of William Ætheling,
daughter of Count Fulk V of Anjou, aunt of the English king Henry II
1155-1180: Audeburge de Haute-Bruyere
1180-1189: Gilles/Gillette
1189–1194: Mathilde II of Flanders, daughter of Dietrich von Alsace,
Count of Flanders (House of Châtenois)
1194-1207: Mathilde III. from
Bohemia
1207–1208: Marie I of Champagne (de Bourgogne)
1208-1209:
Ala/Alix of Bourbon
1209-1218: Adele of Brittany
1218-1228: Berta
1228–1244: Adelheid (Adélaide) of Blois, daughter of Theobald V the Good
(Thibaut V le Bon), Count of Blois (House of Blois)
1244–1265: Mabile
de la Ferte (or de Blois)
1265-1276: Jeanne de Dreux (de Brenne)
1276–1284: Isabeau I Davoir
1284–1304: Marguerite I de Pocey
1304–1342: Eleanor of Brittany, † 1342, daughter of Duke John II of
Brittany (House of France-Dreux)
1342–1349: Isabella of Valois, †
November 11, 1349, daughter of Charles I, Count of Valois
1349-1353:
Theophanie de Chambon
1353-1373: Joan of Mangey
1373: Adélaïde de
Ventadour
1373–1393: Eléonore (Aliénor) II de Parthenay
1393-1431:
Blanche d'Harcourt
1431–1451: Marie II d'Harcourt
1433–1434:
Marguerite de Montmorency, † 1434 (see Montmorency lineage)
1451-1457: Marie III. de Beaussault, † 1461 (see Montmorency lineage)
1457–1475: Marie IV of Brittany
1477–1491: Anne of Orléans, † 1491,
daughter of Duke Charles of Orléans
1491–1534: Renée de Bourbon, †
1534, daughter of Jean VIII de Bourbon, comte de Vendôme and Isabelle de
Beauvau
1534-1575: Louise de Bourbon
1575-1611: Eleanor de Bourbon
1611-1637: Louise de Bourbon-Lavedan
1637–1670: Jeanne-Baptiste de
Bourbon, * February 22, 1608, † January 16, 1670, illegitimate daughter
of Henry IV (France)
1670-1704: Marie-Madeleine-Gabrielle de
Rochechouart-Mortemart (House of Rochechouart), a sister of
Françoise-Athénaïs de Rochechouart-Mortemart, Marquise de Montespan, who
temporarily lived at the monastery
1704–1742: Louise-Françoise de
Rochechouart (House of Rochechouart)
1742-1753: Louise-Claire de
Montmorin de Saint-Herem
1753-1765: Marie-Louise de Timbrone de
Valence
1765-1792: Julie-Gilette de Pardaillan d'Antin, daughter of
Louis de Pardaillan de Gondrin, 2nd Duc d'Antin (House of Pardaillan)