Fontevraud: Mysteries of the Abbey and the Village

PREFACE

Armed with a flashlight, I plunge resolutely into the arched passage that descends towards the abbey’s underground.

Two steps down, and I emerge into a corridor. On the left, about 10 meters (40 feet) away, an ancient wooden door closing off access to the Abbess’s gardens. On the right, a dark staircase where the last light of day is dying in this abyss leading to the bowels of the earth...

I go down the worn stairs, advance into the corridor which makes a sharp bend, and come to the first junction.

I leave the galleries on my left and in front of me, walled up a little further on, and take the main corridor on the right. Passing under a succession of beautiful pointed arches, I head toward a spot lit by daylight from above: a ray of light coming down from the main courtyard through a high chimney and a heavy, barred iron gate shows the crossing of four galleries.

I keep on going straight ahead. More galleries to the left and to the right, past a stairway that descends on the left, and I take the last corridor on the right. Under a round arch, whitish concretions cover the tuffeau stone. Over the years, seepage must have produced this pretty accumulation of mineral salts that sparkle under the light.

A little farther on, there are some stairs, then some steel rungs fastened into the wall, allowing me to reach the service duct. This modern underground passage serves the many buildings of the abbey that have been restored. The concrete corridor descends gently, bending twice towards the left.

I stop at the first turn on the right: at my feet, a cast iron slab, barely visible unless you are looking for it, which will let me into the mysterious place that I want to explore... The iron plate is heavy, but the lure of the mystery lying beyond gives me strength.

I thrust myself into the gaping hole, emerging into an old sewer where a person of average height has just enough room to move around. I start off in a southeasterly direction. My lamp lights up the walls of this narrow passage very well. And all of a sudden, the oblique light catches some markings carved in the soft stone. Right in front of me, there’s a strange cross, carved deeply into the wall.

Why a cross like this one in a place like this?

With its oh-so-symbolic form, what could it mean? Who carved it here, and when, and why?

The Royal Abbey of Fontevraud is certainly a place full of mysteries, a troubling spot, say some, and it does not leave its visitors indifferent. It would be more precise to say that there are many parts making up the whole, and from each part emanates a unique, highly specific atmosphere.

For my part, I have never experienced fear here. I have experienced a feeling of safety and often serenity, notwithstanding a certain coldness and austerity emanating from the abbey and the prison.

Revisiting the buildings and gardens, trying to know it better, reveals the monument’s secrets, but it also always brings up more questions. With its monastic peace and serenity, its spirituality, where the architecture itself becomes a call to prayer, with its massive walls that have perhaps maintained the memory of the suffering that was endured here, the abbey is at the same time both the prayer in stone that Marcel Jullian spoke of, and this somber, sinister immensity still full of the ghosts of the prisoners.

The walls speak and the stones speak, and they will continue to speak for a long time. The archives also have things to tell us. Among other things, there are the tales of many miracles.

In order to stay as faithful as possible to traditions and sources, I have often chosen to reproduce the original text, like that of Honorat Niquet, whose l'Histoire de l'ordre de Font-Evraud [History of the Order of Font-Evraud] (dating from 1642) can still be understood by today’s reader.

Sometimes it has been necessary to simplify the text, conserving the essential without altering the sense.

This seems to me the best and most honest way to go about it. Nothing, no personal interpretation, has been added that could spoil the authenticity of the original text. Sometimes a story is retold, but when this is the case, care has been taken to keep it in the storyteller’s own style. I have been vigilant in respecting tradition and maintaining authenticity.

While it cannot cover everything, this work assembles many well-known (or lesser-known) legends and stories that are often strange, perplexing or tenebrous, sometimes directly from the testimony of inhabitants or witnesses.

Events of the French Revolution are, of course, not in the domain of legends or miracles, but well-documented in official history. Here they are portrayed as they affected five individuals of that time in particularly surprising ways. The paths of these very active, but very different, lives crossed. Their lives richly deserve to be included in the singular stories of the abbey.

Illustrations were often selected among old engravings (mostly 19th century) and the impressions of graffiti taken by the author.

The illustrations are grouped together at the end of the book, separate from the narrative. In the narrative, the reader is directed to a given illustration via a hyperlink in parentheses, e.g., (Figure 1).

This has permitted the realization of a book with pictures and a collection of texts meant to introduce the reader to a different side of an abbey and a village.

Yes, many miracles have taken place at the abbey and in the village, and legends and enigmas abound... starting from the very origins of the site, which was the object of controversy, even back in the old texts.

Please join me in exploring the marvelous and the mysterious in this exceptional place and the village which surrounds it.

I - THE BEGINNING

AT THE DAWN OF TIME

Some inhabitants of the village of Fontevraud will tell you that at the top of a hill just north of the town, in the spot known as Les Champs Galais, there was a circle formed by standing stones.

As early as 1807, Louis-Marie La Réveillère-Lépaux referred to an elliptical enclosure formed by three or four rows of small blocks of 25-30 centimeters (10 to 12 inches) in height and very close to each other; perhaps dating from the first Iron Age in the locality known as le Poteau d’Arrée.

Would this be the same site? This collection of mysterious stones, methodically arranged, would indicate that human beings have been in this area since the most distant past. How do we begin to answer all the questions it raises?

SAINT MARTIN’S PREDICTION

(Translator’s Note: The names of well-known historical or canonical figures are generally translated to English. Saints’ names are left in French because place names are frequently based on them, and this makes it possible to relate the information in the book to the name on a map, street, or building. For the more doctrinally-inclined reader, some English equivalents are provided in the Index of Names of People at the back of the book.)

They say that Saint Martin, the great evangelist of Gaul, had announced that the sinister Forest of Bort, called Cutthroat Copse, would one day be transformed into the Woods of Worship.

It would be more than seven centuries after his death in Candes before his prediction would finally come true...

The dense woods, populated by ferocious wild beasts, was also home to a band of brigands who lived near a spring, at the bottom of a valley. Their chief’s name was Evraud. They terrorized the countryside, attacking and holding travelers and pilgrims for ransom.

They even say that they would light a lantern at sundown from the top of their lair, a strange blackened pyramidal tower (Figure 1), in order to lure travelers who had lost their way in the night into their trap. The travelers had their purses emptied and their throats slit.

The blood-soaked forest was feared by all. One day, however, Evraud came across a man sleeping peacefully at the foot of a tree, not far from the spring.

The footpads surrounded the unfortunate man and were ready to slay him when their chief recognized Robert (Figure 2), the celebrated monk and accomplished sermonizer from Brittany (he was born in Arbrissel, near Rennes), known for having preached crusade in Angers.

Evraud fell to his knees before the holy man and saved him from the axes of his followers crying, Reprobates, do not kill this Man of God!

The bandits lay down their arms. It was the miracle of conversion.

A large, strange crowd of disciples followed Robert d'Arbrissel, several hundred strong; men and women of all ages and social conditions. They moved into the forest and the small valley where, around the spring, they established a vast encampment, cleared land and began construction of a large abbey. (Figure 3)

The murderous forest became the celestial forest. And yet the place would bear the name of the bandit: Fontevraud, the fountain of Evraud.

THE BRIGAND AND THE HOLY MAN

The conversion of the brigand when faced with the holy man he had been on the verge of killing constitutes one of the great legends of the Church, a recurring theme in Christian chronicles.

This theme is taken up again in the English legend of Robin Hood confronted by his sovereign, Richard the Lionhearted.

Chance or Coincidence?

Latinized to Evraldus, the very name of Evraud is highly symbolic: patronym of Germanic origin (Eberwald > Ebroald), it originally signified boar.

Another hypothesis has been put forward, positing a possible connection between the word boar and the forest of Bort and this personage, adding that the animal has always been associated with a certain brutality.

The name Robert, also Germanic in origin (Hrodberth > Rodberht), signifies glory and brilliant, illustrious.

The two personages probably received their respective names without anyone knowing at the time the precise significance of the origins of these names.

But the fact that the chief of a band of outlaws is called by the name of the wild pig living in the forest, and that, conversely, the holy founder was designated illustrious by his very name, can this be due solely to chance?

FONTEVRAUD OR FONTEVRAULT?

The place bears the name of the bandit. Fontevraud means the fountain of Evraud.

Starting in the 12th century, the Latin forms most often used by chroniclers and historians to refer to the site included the following: Fontem-Ebraldi, Fons-Ebraldi, Fontis-Evraudi or Fontis-Ebraudi, Fonte-Evraudi, Fonte-Ebraudi, and Fonte-Ebraldi, the latter apparently being the most usual form. It is the form that corresponds with Evraud spelled with a d in modern-day French.

Although they were starting to spell the name with ault in the 16th century, and it was spelled that way in official documents, correspondence and memoirs, the older version with aud was still used in the 17th century by scholars such as Father Honorat Niquet, whose work was published in 1642 under the title Histoire de l’ordre de Font-Evraud [History of the Order of Font-Evraud], and Father Jean Lardier, a Fontevraud monk, who wrote La Saincte famille de Font-Evraud [The Holy Family of Font-Evraud].

The new spelling, Fontevrault, rapidly prevailed and became the most widely used spelling until the 20th century.

In the second half of the 20th century, some scholars studied the question, deploring the spelling in use as an uncalled-for alteration of the original. They called, in a highly official way, for a return to the original spelling.

Pursuant to a municipal council resolution of November 1966 and a letter addressed to the highest authorities, the sub-prefect of Saumur made the following response in January 1968:

I have the honor to inform you that, following deliberation of the Municipal Council cited in reference, that in a letter dated 20 January 1968, Monsieur the Minister of the Interior informed Monsieur the Prefect that the commission charged with revision of town names, having verified the legitimacy of your request, has agreed to the modification of the spelling of the town name, which shall henceforth be written:

FONTEVRAUD-L’ABBAYE

Monsieur the Director of Archival Services and Monsieur the Director of the Post-Telephone-Telegraph have been informed of this decision which will be entered into the prefecture’s Compendium of Administrative Acts.

G. Labrunie, Sub-Prefect

ROBERT, A SPRING AND MIRACLES

Another story told of the origins of the abbey omits the personage of Evraud and, in very symbolic fashion, attributes the apparition of the spring to Robert.

Deep in the heart of the unsettling forest of Bort (or Born), Robert d’Arbrissel (Figure 4) founded and erected his abbey. Men and women began to clear the thick foliage in order to put up quick, temporary habitations: huts made of branches (cabins which could only be built of earth or tree branches) and lodgings carved into the stone, on the slopes of the small valley.

They lived on the donations of food that flowed in to them. But there was not enough water, and Robert took a hand. The miracle