Valmagne Abbey is a former monastery

Monastery

Monastery denotes the building, or complex of buildings, that houses a room reserved for prayer as well as the domestic quarters and workplace of monastics, whether monks or nuns, and whether living in community or alone .Monasteries may vary greatly in size – a small dwelling accommodating only...

 located near Villeveyrac

Villeveyrac

Villeveyrac is a commune in the Hérault department in Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France....

, Hérault

Hérault

Hérault is a department in the south of France named after the Hérault river.-History:Hérault is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790...

 in south-central France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and is a designated historic monument under the French listing system

Monument historique

A monument historique is a National Heritage Site of France. It also refers to a state procedure in France by which national heritage protection is extended to a building or a specific part of a building, a collection of buildings, or gardens, bridges, and other structures, because of their...

.

Valmagne Abbey was founded as a Benedictine

Order of Saint Benedict

The Order of Saint Benedict is a Roman Catholic religious order of independent monastic communities that observe the Rule of St. Benedict. Within the order, each individual community maintains its own autonomy, while the organization as a whole exists to represent their mutual interests...

 abbey in 1138 but only twenty years later was attached to the Cistercian Order by decree of Pope Hadrian IV

Pope Adrian IV

Pope Adrian IV , born Nicholas Breakspear or Breakspeare, was Pope from 1154 to 1159.Adrian IV is the only Englishman who has occupied the papal chair...

, where it remained until the French Revolution

French Revolution

The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...

 when monasteries in France were confiscated

Confiscation

Confiscation, from the Latin confiscatio 'joining to the fiscus, i.e. transfer to the treasury' is a legal seizure without compensation by a government or other public authority...

 by the state and either sold or destroyed. Valmagne escaped demolition

Demolition

Demolition is the tearing-down of buildings and other structures, the opposite of construction. Demolition contrasts with deconstruction, which involves taking a building apart while carefully preserving valuable elements for re-use....

 and was sold intact to a Monsieur Granier-Joyeuse in 1791 who converted the abbey church into a wine cave

Wine cave

Wine caves are subterranean structures for the storage and aging of wine. They are an integral component of the wine industry world wide. The design and construction of wine caves represents a unique application of underground construction techniques....

 for the maturing of wine

Wine

Wine is an alcoholic beverage, made of fermented fruit juice, usually from grapes. The natural chemical balance of grapes lets them ferment without the addition of sugars, acids, enzymes, or other nutrients. Grape wine is produced by fermenting crushed grapes using various types of yeast. Yeast...

 in large barrels, a function it continues to serve today.

History

Valmagne Abbey was founded in 1138 by Raymond Trencavel

Raymond I Trencavel

Raymond I Trencavel was the Viscount of Agde and Béziers from 1130 and Viscount of Albi, Carcassonne, and Razès from 1150. He was a member of the Trencavel family, ruling the lands of the elder branch....

, Vicomte de Béziers

Béziers

Béziers is a town in Languedoc in southern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the Hérault department. Béziers hosts the famous Feria de Béziers, centred around bullfighting, every August. A million visitors are attracted to the five-day event...

, with monk

Monk

A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...

s from the Benedictine monastery of Sainte-Marie d'Ardorel near Albi. In 1145 the second abbot

Abbot

The word abbot, meaning father, is a title given to the head of a monastery in various traditions, including Christianity. The office may also be given as an honorary title to a clergyman who is not actually the head of a monastery...

, Pierre, requested that the abbey be placed under the authority of the Cistercian movement. Trencavel opposed the request but in 1159 Pope Hadrian IV affirmed the affiliation and the abbey took on the law of Saint Bernard

Bernard of Clairvaux

Bernard of Clairvaux, O.Cist was a French abbot and the primary builder of the reforming Cistercian order.After the death of his mother, Bernard sought admission into the Cistercian order. Three years later, he was sent to found a new abbey at an isolated clearing in a glen known as the Val...

, as a daughter house of Bonnevaux Abbey

Bonnevaux Abbey (Dauphiné)

Bonnevaux Abbey is a former Cistercian monastery in Lieudieu near Villeneuve-de-Marc in the Isère department of France, in the region of the Dauphiné, 25 kilometres east of Vienne and about 6 kilometres south-east of Saint-Jean-de-Bournay on the northern edge of the Forêt de Bonnevaux.- History...

.

Valmagne then experienced a time of rapid growth as local landowners bestowed both land and money on the monastery. The buildings were extended and a vineyard

Vineyard

A vineyard is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice...

 of 5 hectares (12.4 acre) was established by the monks. From the twelfth century to the beginning of the fourteenth century, Valmagne was one of the richest monasteries in southern France and at its peak was home to nearly 300 monks. As the monastery expanded the original Romanesque

Romanesque architecture

Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of Medieval Europe characterised by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque architecture, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 10th century. It developed in the 12th century into the Gothic style,...

 chapel became cramped so in 1257 permission was granted to build a new church. The new church was constructed over the next forty years in the Gothic style and aside from the removal of the stained glass

Stained glass

The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...

 has changed little since completion.

The Black Death

Black Death

The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...

 devastated the region in 1348, causing many monks to die and others to flee the abbey. The decline was compounded during the Hundred Years' War

Hundred Years' War

The Hundred Years' War was a series of separate wars waged from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet, also known as the House of Anjou, for the French throne, which had become vacant upon the extinction of the senior Capetian line of French kings...

 when Valmagne suffered attacks and looting by passing mercenaries

Mercenary

A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...

. As successive abbots were unable to balance the books, many of the abbey's lands and possessions were sold. From 1477 the abbots were appointed from outside the community and this led to a relaxation of the laws of religious life and a decline in the loyalty of the abbot for his abbey. During the French Wars of Religion

French Wars of Religion

The French Wars of Religion is the name given to a period of civil infighting and military operations, primarily fought between French Catholics and Protestants . The conflict involved the factional disputes between the aristocratic houses of France, such as the House of Bourbon and House of Guise...

 of the sixteenth century, the abbey was almost abandoned and in 1575, an attack by Huguenots broke all the windows of the church and caused considerable damage to other buildings, particularly the cloister

Cloister

A cloister is a rectangular open space surrounded by covered walks or open galleries, with open arcades on the inner side, running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth...

.

Preservation work was undertaken in the seventeenth century, and parts of the church were sealed to prevent falls. At the same time the cloister was repaired, but the abbey had fallen into debt and lacked the finance to restore the structures properly, hence many windows in the church were bricked up instead of being re-glazed. By the eighteenth century, the community was very small and during the French Revolution the abbey was sacked again and furniture, paintings and archives were burned. In 1790, the last three monks left Valmagne taking the few remaining valuable items and the abbey was confiscated

Confiscation

Confiscation, from the Latin confiscatio 'joining to the fiscus, i.e. transfer to the treasury' is a legal seizure without compensation by a government or other public authority...

. It was sold in 1791 to Monsieur Granier-Joyeuse who converted the church into a wine cave, installing large barrels in the apse

Apse

In architecture, the apse is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome...

 and side chapels of the church. On Granier-Joyeuse's death in 1838 Valmagne was acquired by Count Henri-Amédée-Mercure de Turenne and has remained in the same family ever since.

Abbey church

The present Gothic church was rebuilt in 1257 on the foundations of a smaller Romanesque chapel to a traditional plan with a nave and transept

Transept

For the periodical go to The Transept.A transept is a transverse section, of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In Christian churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform building in Romanesque and Gothic Christian church architecture...

, and nine radiating chapels off the semi-circular ambulatory

Ambulatory

The ambulatory is the covered passage around a cloister. The term is sometimes applied to the procession way around the east end of a cathedral or large church and behind the high altar....

. The nave

Nave

In Romanesque and Gothic Christian abbey, cathedral basilica and church architecture, the nave is the central approach to the high altar, the main body of the church. "Nave" was probably suggested by the keel shape of its vaulting...

 is preceded by a narthex

Narthex

The narthex of a church is the entrance or lobby area, located at the end of the nave, at the far end from the church's main altar. Traditionally the narthex was a part of the church building, but was not considered part of the church proper...

 flanked by two defensive towers. The main structure measures 83 metres (272.3 ft) long, 53 metres (173.9 ft) wide and 23 metres (75.5 ft) high.

Cloister

The groin vault

Groin vault

A groin vault or groined vault is produced by the intersection at right angles of two barrel vaults. The word groin refers to the edge between the intersecting vaults; cf. ribbed vault. Sometimes the arches of groin vaults are pointed instead of round...

ed cloister

Cloister

A cloister is a rectangular open space surrounded by covered walks or open galleries, with open arcades on the inner side, running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth...

 of Valmagne surrounds a large garden courtyard

Courtyard

A court or courtyard is an enclosed area, often a space enclosed by a building that is open to the sky. These areas in inns and public buildings were often the primary meeting places for some purposes, leading to the other meanings of court....

, with five large arches on each of the four sides.

The chapter house

Chapter house

A chapter house or chapterhouse is a building or room attached to a cathedral or collegiate church in which meetings are held. They can also be found in medieval monasteries....

 is on the east side of the cloister and is one of the oldest parts of the abbey. It is unusual in that it has a single-span vaulted roof and therefore does not need the internal columns which are typical of chapter houses in other monasteries.

On the south side of the cloister is an open octagonal structure containing a lavabo

Lavabo

A lavabo is a device used to provide water for the washing of hands. It consists normally of a ewer or container of some kind to pour water, and a bowl to catch the water as it falls off the hands. In ecclesiastical usage it refers to both the basin in which the priest washes his hands and the...

 fed by a spring. The lavabo is opposite the refectory so that the monks could cleanse their hands before meals.

Vineyard

The vineyard was originally established by the Cistercian monks in the twelfth century and vines have been continually cultivated on the land ever since. Today, the vineyard covers 75 hectares (185.3 acre) of which 30 hectares (74.1 acre) are classified appellation contrôlée. There are two distinct terroir

Terroir

Terroir comes from the word terre "land". It was originally a French term in wine, coffee and tea used to denote the special characteristics that the geography, geology and climate of a certain place bestowed upon particular varieties...

s within the domain; the first, of clay

Clay

Clay is a general term including many combinations of one or more clay minerals with traces of metal oxides and organic matter. Geologic clay deposits are mostly composed of phyllosilicate minerals containing variable amounts of water trapped in the mineral structure.- Formation :Clay minerals...

 and chalk

Chalk

Chalk is a soft, white, porous sedimentary rock, a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite. Calcite is calcium carbonate or CaCO3. It forms under reasonably deep marine conditions from the gradual accumulation of minute calcite plates shed from micro-organisms called coccolithophores....

, contains the AOC classified area and produces mainly white wines, whilst the second, to the north, is red sandstone

Sandstone

Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...

 and marl

Marl

Marl or marlstone is a calcium carbonate or lime-rich mud or mudstone which contains variable amounts of clays and aragonite. Marl was originally an old term loosely applied to a variety of materials, most of which occur as loose, earthy deposits consisting chiefly of an intimate mixture of clay...

.