Abbaye de Perseigne

Neufchâtel-en-Saosnois

Buried in the state forest of Perseigne, in the north of the Sarthe, a clearing keeps the memory of a spiritual adventure more than eight centuries old. In 1145, William III Talvas, Count of Perche, gave the land needed to found the first Cistercian abbey in Maine, a daughter house of Cîteaux. The monks cleared the forest, built a network of eighteen granges by 1198 and made Perseigne a radiant intellectual centre: between 1165 and 1189, the monk Thomas of Perseigne wrote there a commentary on the Song of Songs that would circulate throughout Western Christendom, while Abbot Adam of Perseigne, from 1188 to 1221, became a respected correspondent of popes and kings of England. Eight years of catastrophic harvests, from 1193 to 1201, tried the community sorely, prelude to a decline that the Hundred Years' War would complete. Suppressed at the Revolution in 1791, the abbey fell little by little into ruin; its remains, listed as a monument historique in 1932, stand silent today among the beeches and bracken, away from the tourist trails. The place keeps a singular atmosphere of mossy stones and monastic memory, where the walker still senses, in the silence of the forest, the echo of the white monks' work and prayer.

Getting there : Ruins in the state forest of Perseigne, reached on foot by waymarked paths, free access

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound