L'Abbaye de Fontfroide

A view of Fontfroide, an old abbey near Narbonne, itself a provincial town enlivened by some beautiful architecture but depressed by dust, heat, and a rather medieval sense of xenophobia.

The abbey's name, which means cold spring, explains its presence in an otherwise bleak almost-desert of bare rocks and low, tough, vegetation. It's a beautiful landscape, but an uninviting one. The route from Narbonne took me through a Roma encampment, an old quarry, and past a mysterious stone fort.

For those that are interested in things medieval, the abbey stands out in the history of persecution. It was a monk of Fontfroide, Peter of Castelnau, whose murder provided the pretext for the Albigensian Crusade, and throughout the Cathar era the abbey served as a centre of Church orthodoxy.

One of its abbots, Arnaud Nouvel, would serve as papal legate in the trial of the templars, but also found the time to protect the rich and powerful against accusations of heresy. A nephew of Nouvel, Jacques Fournier, was also an abbot, and eventually went on to become Pope Benedict XII at Avignon. He was an unrelenting inquisitor, efficient administrator, and an adornment neither to church nor humanity.

Fontfroide lost three-quarters of its tenants during the Black Death, and did not recover until the 17th and 18th centuries, when new buildings were added in the elegant classical style of the period. The monks fled during the revolution, but the abbey's location saved it from harm, and it was refounded by Cistercians from Sénaque in 1858. Prior to the dissolution under the 1901 Law of Congregations, the final abbot of Fontfroide, Père Jean, acquired a saintly reputation.

In 1908 the symbolist artist Gustave Fayet, together with his wife Madeleine, purchased Fontfroide at public auction. There is a story that they wanted to preserve the abbey from the rapacity of such American collectors as George Grey Bernard, who did succeed in taking large chunks of the nearby monasteries Saint-Michel-de-Cuxa and Saint-Guilhem-le-Desért across the Atlantic, where they formed the nucleus of the Cloisters Museum in New York.

In any case, Gustave Fayet used the abbey as a private painting studio, and also lent it out to his friends, most notably the great printmaker Odilon Redon. It remains in private hands to this day.