Fontfroide Abbey

[1] Shortly afterwards the Count of Barcelona gave it the land in Spain that was to form the great Catalan monastery of Poblet, of which Fontfroide counts as the mother house, and in 1157 the Viscountess Ermengard of Narbonne granted it a great quantity of land locally, thus securing its wealth and status.

The abbey fought together with Pope Innocent III against the heretical doctrine of the Cathars who lived in the region.

In 1901, because of the French legal changes, the community was driven out of France and went into exile in Spain: the abbey was abandoned.

[4] The premises, which are of very great architectural interest, passed into private hands in 1908, when the artists Gustave and Madeleine Fayet d'Andoque bought it to protect the fabric of the buildings from an American collector of sculpture.

Today wine is produced here of the AOC Corbières quality under the French appellations system.

Fontfroide Abbey: cloister
Fontfroide Abbey: chapter house
The abbey church
The Night , c. 1910-1911, part of a series of decorative panels by Odilon Redon , commissioned by Gustave Faret and located in the Fontfroide Abbey library [ 6 ]