According to local legend, the name "Maubuisson" was translated from Latin as French: Maudit buisson ("Cursed bush"), because of the prevalence of bandits in the surrounding woodland.

To breathe life into the abbey, from 1237 until 1242 Blanche of Castile devoted herself to a chapter of the Cistercians, and in 1242 she installed, in barely-finished buildings, a group of nuns from Saint-Antoine near Paris.

Blanche of Castile gave the Abbey three well-defined roles: In 1307, King Philip IV of France annihilated the Knights Templar, to whom he was deeply indebted.

On 14 September 1307 – the day of celebration of the True Cross – he issued the order for the trials of the Knights Templar from the abbey.

[2] From 5 to 8 September 1463, while touring the villes de la Somme [fr], King Louis XI (born 1423; reigned 1461–1483) stayed at Pontoise, and awarded Royal protection to Maubuisson Abbey by means of Letters Patent,[3] doing so again in December 1474.

At the start of the 16th century, under the auspices of Abbess Antoinette de Dinteville (1482 – 1523), new wings were constructed and the abbey numbered 120 nuns.

However, it was a trying time as the French Wars of Religion progressed: at least twice, in 1566 and 1588, the abbey and its associated land and buildings were ransacked by Protestant troops.

The French: vicaire général of the Cistercians gave Angélique Arnauld orders to leave the Abbey of Port-Royal des Champs and go to reform that at Maubuisson.

Later, Arnauld was replaced by Madame de Soissons, but, in Racine's words, she: ...n'avoit pas pris un fort grand soin d'y entretenir la régularité que la Mère Angélique y avoit établie...did not take a great effort to keep the routine that Mother Angélique had put in placede Soissons died in 1627.

From 1628, she fought against the influence of Molinism on some of the sisters, but with two nuns suspected of this heresy having been ejected, the orthodoxy and canons of the Cistercian Order were affirmed.

On 27 April 1769, Archbishop Christophe de Beaumont, the Duke of Saint-Cloud, visited the abbey to restore friendly relations between the abbess and her nuns.

[5] In 1786, Louis XVI decreed that the abbey had lost its religious function, and the French Revolution only entrenched that view.

The abbey is a project incubator lab: all year, it develops research, production and direction programmes along the three axes which make up its identity: architectural heritage, contemporary works, and natural history.

According to the writings of Noel Tallepied, dated 1584, the abbey church was an extremely tall building: il possédait deux ailes et un petit clocher pour remplacer un plus imposant détruit en 1540 par un incendie déclenché par la foudre It had two wings and a small bell-tower, which burnt down in 1540 when struck by lightningGrilles and woodwork separated the cloisters from the nunnery.

This forms the middle of a triptych composed of three hollow parts, each subdivided into boxes with wooden columns and statuettes representing Paradise, Hell, Purgatory and scenes from the Old and New Testaments.

The remains of Charles IV, husband of Blanche of Burgundy, and his second daughterJeanne d'Évreux (1372), in recumbent works by Jean de Liège, are at the Louvre in Paris.

The cloisters were enclosed by the abbey church, the chapel (built over the dormitory), the boilerhouse, the kitchen and the refectory, which were all enlarged.