L’abbaye de Fontevraud

Gérard Rondeau
L’abbaye de Fontevraud

Publisher : Robert Laffont
Release Date : 2001-11
ISBN : 2221096002
Book Size : 20 x 26 cm
Language : French
121 pages

Born in 1101 from the mystical enthusiasm of the Middle Ages, the royal abbey of Fontevraud has experienced nine centuries of eventful life, linked to all the highlights of French history. It bears within its walls the marks of its double destiny. Fontevraud was a monastery and a prison. Led by women, very powerful abbesses, who depended only on the Pope and the King, it was, on the eve of the Revolution, the richest abbey in France. Napoleon 1st made it a penitentiary. Tirelessly, in the heart and around the monastery, surveying the site day and night to thwart the shadows and the light, the obviousness and the depths, Gérard Rondeau knew, with the sensitivity and the gaze that we know him, capture the spirit and strength of the place. This book is the first work of photographs devoted to the royal abbey of Fontevraud.