The Loire Valley is renowned for its spectacular fairy-tale châteaux and their associated tales of chivalry. The Château de Saumur exemplifies this: its medieval glory is captured in the fifteenth-century masterpiece Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry. Although seen in an idealized version in that luxuriant manuscript, Saumur in person is very much the storybook castle, and it is heavily trafficked by tourists as such. But only a twenty-minute drive away in the Loire countryside lies one of France’s most important religious and historical places, Fontevraud-l’Abbaye, albeit one that figures less in the guidebooks. Here spirituality and monarchy converged in the pre-revolutionary age to create a remarkable complex, one of the largest surviving monastic settlements from the medieval period, but also a site that has been modernized in a most unexpected and rewarding way.

Tourists, mainly French on their August holidays, trickled in at opening. Before long, the small village around the abbey and the boulangerie opposite the abbey’s gates were busy with the arrival of further visitors, the later sightseers reflecting the broader international interest of the place. First and foremost, the abbey—the Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud, to give it its full title—was a royal tomb. Herein lies its greatest fame. Buried here between 1189 and 1204 are those towering figures of the Middle Ages: King Henry II, King Richard the Lionheart, and—respectively their wife and mother—Eleanor of Aquitaine. Alongside their surviving stone tombs is a more diminutive one made of wood, as befits its lower social status; this belongs to “Bad” King John’s second wife, Isabella of Angoulême, who died in 1246. Far from an inconsequential figure in her own right, she is nonetheless overshadowed by her sleeping companions and is often forgotten.

From the French perspective, therefore, it could be viewed as the French having ruled over England, always a happy thought.

In some ways it is bewildering why the French should flock to these tombs. For Henry and Richard were kings of England, not France, though they ruled over half of the latter, too. It is not something one would expect the French to venerate or celebrate. Henry II was, however, a Frenchman, hence his dynasty’s name: the Angevins (and, from there, the Plantagenets). By 1154, Henry Curtmantle, Count of Anjou, had fought his way to the throne of England, becoming Henry II. From the French perspective, therefore, it could be viewed as the French having ruled over England, always a happy thought.

Externally, the abbey church at Fontevraud appears large but does not prompt awe. This changes when one enters through the western portal. Internally, the church itself achieves great height and scale by having its floor lowered into the ground. One stands at the top of fourteen steps at the entrance and gasps at the vast interior, made all the more capacious by its complete emptiness, save solely for the four tombs in the nave, each royal effigy still retaining some color. For history enthusiasts—and even hardened professional historians like myself—it can create quite a moment of wonder and that clichéd tingling of the spine. The austerity of the church is emphasized by the pristine white limestones of the walls, recently cleaned. The atmosphere keeps the visitors hushed and respectful, not least when congregating around the tombs.

Of these tombs, the effigies of Richard and Eleanor attract the most attention. This is only to be expected, given their exceptionally colorful and dramatic lives. Richard was the chivalric paradigm of his age: the rex as miles, the king as knight, the crusader who fought his way to the walls of Jerusalem, which had been taken by Saladin, and who died on campaign from a crossbow-bolt. The Anglo-Norman poet Ambroise, a companion to Richard, describes the king as having “the valor of Hector, the heroism of Achilles”; “in courage he was the equal of Alexander and Roland.” Even Richard’s Muslim enemies recognized his qualities, with Ibn al-Athir claiming, “The king was the outstanding man of his time for bravery, cunning, steadfastness and endurance.” His capture and imprisonment by the Duke of Austria on his return home from the Crusades was also the stuff of legend, giving rise to the myth of the minstrel Blondel. Many modern historians have unfairly disparaged Richard for his warmongering; partial rehabilitation has come in the liberal age with claims that he was gay—a speculative assertion that reflects our times more than Richard’s.

The mother outlived the son; Eleanor went on to become an active octogenarian. Unfortunately, this was just long enough for her to see the Angevin Empire crumble in the inept hands of her youngest surviving son, King John. Before long, most of France finally came under the rule of the French monarch. Eleanor spent even longer in imprisonment than Richard, at the command of her husband Henry: some sixteen years, his death being her release. Her crime was supporting her sons in the struggle against their father. This patron of the troubadours and the arts, Duchess of Aquitaine, wife of two kings, and mother of two others was besieged at the age of eighty in the castle of Mirebeau, only to be rescued in John’s sole military success. She spent her remaining years at Fontevraud Abbey and now rests there in perpetuity.

The abbey’s early Gothic architecture bespeaks its distinguished age; its rejuvenated condition does not. It was founded at the turn of the twelfth century by Robert Arbrissel, an interesting religious character even by the standards of the day. His reformist mission was too zealous for some, the priest taking to an eremitic and barefooted life of self-mortifying ascetism in a forest, thereby earning an even greater reputation for piety. This, and the following he inspired, enabled him to found the abbey at Fontevraud, establishing no fewer than five religious communities in coexistence, including even ones for lepers and rehabilitated prostitutes. Abbesses headed the monastery from its outset, as decreed by Robert. Such far-sighted actions attract the sensibilities of the modern age but should not detract from the spiritual achievement of Robert and his singular devotion to his flock. A seemingly obvious candidate for sainthood, Robert remains uncanonized.

The abbey fell on hard times and was despoiled during the French Revolution, with royal bones suffering the indignity of being flung into lime pits. The desecration continued in 1804 when it became a notorious prison. During World War II, ten resistance fighters were shot here by German occupiers. The abbey’s glorious rebirth began in 1963 when the monastic complex came into the hands of the French Ministry of Culture. Lavish amounts of money were expended on it (nearly twenty million euros to date), and it was opened to the public only in 1975. It was money well spent.

The abbey’s chapter house, huge cloisters and refectory, and famous “beehive” kitchens are all noteworthy. But it is the church that leaves such a profound impression. Unfussy and uncluttered, it is a case of less being so much more. The ascetic Robert would not be unhappy to see it restored in its modern state.

Unexpectedly, the eclecticism does not jar: one readily accepts a Fauvist painting juxtaposed with an African mask.

One part of this abbatial complex now offers a seemingly incongruous twenty-first-century addition: the brand-new Musée d’art moderne housed in the abbey’s eighteenth-century stables. Opened in 2021 to display the impressive private collection of Martine and Léon Cligman, donated to the French state in 2018, it would seem an odd fit with a medieval religious foundation. But it works wonderfully: it is an inspired and harmonious enhancement of the Fontevraud experience. The substantial museum has 13,000 square feet of exhibition space and houses sculptures and paintings by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas, André Derain, Albert Marquet, Robert Delaunay, Camille Corot, Germaine Richier, and many others, which are displayed expertly and pleasingly in an impressive building. Unexpectedly, the eclecticism does not jar: one readily accepts a Fauvist painting juxtaposed with an African mask. In this setting, it just doesn’t seem to matter.

The pleasure of newly encountering some wonderful lesser-known artists adds to the charm of the visit. Although the appreciation of sculpture eludes me (there are many such pieces in the museum) and my artistic appreciation wanes as the twentieth century progresses, I still found an abundance of works to enjoy. The modern here ranges from Corot’s affecting Kitchen Interior in Mantes (1855–60) to Duilio Barnabè’s less engaging geometric Woman at Her Toilette (1957). Paintings among the collection that captivated me include Paul Sérusier’s Mauve Landscape: Châteauneuf-du-Faou (1917), Maurice de Vlaminck’s Flood at Ivry (1910), Eugène Carrière’s Still Life with Teapot (1887), Michel Kikoïne’s Village of Red Roofs (1922), and, perhaps most of all, Marquet’s gray Parisian scene The Quay of Grands-Augustins (1905). Léon Cligman died in May 2022, a few days short of 102 years of age. With the Musée d’art moderne, he and his wife have left behind a marvelous legacy for France.

As if all this were not enough, my summer visit coincided with a major Monet exhibition in the museum. Presented in collaboration with the Musée Marmottan Monet, which houses the world’s largest collection of Monets, this impressive show was entitled “Métamorphoses,” reflecting the artist’s progression from an impressionistic painter of solid, structured form to one more focused on fluid ultra-impressionistic works vibrating with color. This transition was reflected here in thirty-three works, from The Effects of Snow, Sunset (1875) to three versions of the Japanese Bridge (1918, 1918–19, and 1920–24), each one progressively becoming more indecipherable as solid objects merge increasingly into the surrounding foliage. The canvases in Monet’s later style are often huge (although still not on the gargantuan scale of his murals at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris). Giant water lilies and willows abound; it is these Giverny garden works that attract the most attention from the visitors. As Monet’s contemporary Arsène Alexandre wrote in his piece “Le Jardin de Claude Monet” for Le Figaro in August 1901: “The garden is the man. . . . What has inspired him in all this? The flowers. What has been his teacher? His garden.” This connection seemed intuitively understood by his admirers attending the exhibition. (Zola’s praise for Monet—“Here is a man in a crowd of eunuchs”—seems overly aggressive and masculinized for such a florally inclined artist.) Nonetheless, my tastes ran to the earlier works on display, especially the snow scene mentioned and Les Tuileries (1876), a masterly representation of Monet’s ability to render nature atmospherically. But something else happened on this magical day: I found myself warming to his great walls of color and understanding a little more of his genius. Such is, perhaps, the power of the place.

The day’s experience at Fontevraud was intensely moving. The restored freshness of the magnificent abbey combines with its tombs of medieval kings and queens to root it in the real world of power, both secular and religious. While the abbey’s cohabiting monastic communities have long since gone, it now has a new spiritually uplifting cohabitation—with modern art. There is much consolation to be taken in this continuity of artistic triumph amid the degrading madness of the contemporary world.

This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 41 Number 5, on page 41
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