La Valsainte Charterhouse

In the Middle Ages it was the owner of a vast territory covering the greater part of the present communes of Cerniat and Charmey, over which by right of its lordship it exercised the high and the low justice.

In 1863, the local political climate had changed sufficiently to permit the return of the Carthusian community from La Part-Dieu Charterhouse, which had been suppressed in 1848, and the ruined site was in part restored but mostly rebuilt.

Around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries the anti-clerical laws passed in France resulted in the expulsion of Carthusian monks, and two additional ranges of cells were built at La Valsainte to accommodate some of them, in 1886 and 1901.

"Throughout the twentieth century, La Valsainte functioned as an influential centre of Catholic monasticism that attracted intellectuals with an interest in spirituality.

Several other Carthusian monasteries have taken inspiration from the restoration of La Valsainte for work on their own churches, notably the Montalegre Charterhouse near Barcelona.

The range of buildings latterly known as the novices' cloister, one of those constructed in haste around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries for the accommodation of exiled French monks, was discovered in the 1990s to be in danger of collapse, undermined by groundwater, and was demolished.

[4] The revived community at La Valsainte has included some distinguished members, and the inclusion of numbers of French religious has added to the vigour of Roman Catholic spiritual life in Switzerland.

This comedy, totally fictional as the Carthusian community owns the property, depicts nevertheless quite accurately the psychological challenges that would be encountered today by exclaustrated monks.

The graphic novel "Un bruit étrange et beau" (2016) by Zep (A Strange and Beautiful Sound) runs about a Carthusian monk who has to come back to modern Paris after 25 years and how an encounter with a young woman challenges his life option.