Charterhouse Notre-Dame du Val de Bénédiction: A Carthusian Monastery in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page24 sections
History
The charterhouse Notre-Dame du Val de Bénédiction is a medieval Carthusian monastery in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France, on the right bank of the Rhône opposite Avignon. Built for the Carthusian order, a Catholic community combining shared worship with highly regulated solitary life, it was dedicated to the Virgin Mary and developed during the fourteenth-century Avignon papacy, when the papal court was based in Avignon rather than Rome.
Foundation beside the papal residence
The monastery grew from the ambitions of Étienne Aubert, a jurist and counsellor of King Philip VI of France who became Bishop of Noyon, Bishop of Clermont, and a cardinal on 29 September 1342. Between 1342 and 1353 he acquired a threshing floor on a rocky rise belonging to Saint-André Abbey and built a cardinal’s residence there. Aubert was elected pope as Innocent VI on 18 December 1352, and the site subsequently became closely connected with his papacy.
From December 1352 to September 1356, additional land east of the residence was obtained through his nephew, Cardinal Ardouin Aubert. A papal bull, a formal papal document used to promulgate decisions such as foundations and privileges, established a Carthusian monastery adjoining the palace on 2 June 1356. Two monks from the order’s mother house, the Grande Chartreuse, had already been brought to Avignon on 26 January 1353 in connection with the planned foundation.
The first community consisted of a prior, twelve priests, fourteen lay brothers, and nine servants. Lay brothers, also called convers, generally carried out practical and domestic work rather than serving as choir priests. The church and cemetery cloister were consecrated on 19 August 1358 by Cardinal Guy de Boulogne, in the presence of Innocent VI, twelve cardinals, numerous prelates and chaplains, and many nobles. The original complex included the church, a large cloister with thirteen cells, a small cloister, and the chapter house, where the community met for readings, discipline, and administrative business.
The papal tomb and later medieval expansion
Innocent VI intended to be buried at the monastery. On 29 October 1360 he commissioned Prior Pierre de la Porte to build the Chapel of the Holy Trinity south of the church. Designed for the papal tomb, it consisted of a pentagonal apse followed by a nave bay. The tomb was commissioned during the pope’s lifetime, with its construction assigned from December 1361 to Bertran Nogayrol, director of works on the papal palaces.
The former papal palace burned in 1365. Buildings that had not yet been incorporated into the monastery were converted into monastic cells by Cardinal Étienne Aubert, the pope’s nephew. After Étienne Aubert’s death in 1369, Cardinal Pierre de Selve, also known as Pierre de Monteruc and another nephew of Innocent VI, completed the work. He enlarged the church and built the Saint John Cloister west of the large cloister, adding twelve cells. He died in 1385 and was buried in one of the chapels he had commissioned.
The Aubert family’s patronage, together with donations from other prominent local families, made the charterhouse exceptionally wealthy. Its estates included land and buildings at Les Angles, Aramon, Carpentras, Bédarrides, the Rhône islands, and in the Diocese of Uzès. During the sixteenth century, the monastery also acquired the drained ponds of Pujaut.
Land, wealth, and seventeenth-century building
Between 1611 and 1712, the Carthusians consolidated the drainage works at Pujaut and cultivated half of the reclaimed land. The estates produced wheat, barley, oats, grapes, and mulberry leaves for silkworm raising. Their income supported improvements to the monastery and regular food distribution to the poor. In 1633 the charterhouse founded the charterhouse of Marseille.
A monumental entrance portal was commissioned in 1648 and completed in 1649 by the architect François de Royers de La Valfenière and the sculptor Barthélemy Grangier, during the priorates of Dom Chryssante Paulin and Dom Louis de Lauzeray. Louis XIV passed through the portal ceremonially in 1660 while visiting the charterhouse with Cardinal Mazarin and a large retinue. In 1691 the monks commissioned thirty-eight choir stalls from Charles Boisselin, an Avignon woodcarver and sculptor.
Revolution, dispersal, and preservation
The February 1790 law suppressing monastic orders ended the community’s institutional life. The monastery was confiscated and auctioned on 17 March 1793 for 103,000 francs to André Dufour de Pujaut, who could not complete the purchase. The property was divided into seventeen lots and resold on 20 July 1794. The buildings then became private dwellings and were used for agriculture and animal raising.
As a residential settlement developed within Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, the former monastery was progressively subdivided. By the end of the nineteenth century, the fifteen-hectare complex contained 286 parcels, more than half of them within the former enclosure. In 1909 the architect Jules Formigé was commissioned by the historic-monuments authorities to survey the buildings and begin the first works. The state then spent more than eight decades acquiring the separate parcels, allowing the dispersed complex to be preserved and interpreted as a whole.
The monastery has several French historic-monument protections, including classifications dating from 1862, 1905, 1910, 1911, 1928, and 1939, and registrations dating from 1936 and 1937. These measures supported the preservation and gradual acquisition of the divided property. During the Second World War, on 8 August 1944, the German army shot down an American aircraft over the charterhouse. The pilot, Louis Capawana, fell into one of its courtyards and was trapped when his parachute caught on a chimney. The guardian Georges Puel and several others freed and concealed him in a house in the cemetery cloister. The Organisation of Army Resistance later evacuated him, and he reached Corsica eight days afterward.
A centre for culture and performance
Since 1973 the former monastery has served as a cultural meeting centre, first through the International Centre for Research, Creation and Animation. International summer events were held there from 1974. The National Centre for Performance Writing was established at the site in 1990, combining presentation of the monument with residences for artists. Its international programmes expanded from 2015, and in 2019 the Ministry of Culture designated it a reference venue for Francophone dramatic writing.
Library and dispersed artistic heritage
Innocent VI began the charterhouse library with donated books that included Bibles, works by Jerome and Augustine’s City of God, Gregory the Great’s Dialogues, Bernard of Clairvaux’s treatise on the Song of Songs, sermons attributed to Innocent III, letters of Seneca, and works of canon law. Cardinal Guy de Malesset added further books in 1407, including Anselm of Canterbury’s Meditations. The library held about 3,500 volumes in the mid-eighteenth century according to the Marquis de Cambis-Velleron, while the inventory of 1791 listed 9,200 volumes. Confiscated during the Revolution, much of the collection remained on site until the municipality of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon sold it in 1852.
The monastery’s furnishings did not survive as an intact collection after the Revolution and the conversion of the buildings into dwellings. Priest Jean-Baptiste Lhermite saved numerous works by storing them in the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame and the chapel of the hospice. A museum established in the hospice in 1868 moved in 1986 to a seventeenth-century mansion and became the Pierre-de-Luxembourg Museum. Some works were lost, while the revolutionary inventory of 7 January 1791 preserves evidence of others.
Remains
The surviving complex follows a Carthusian plan, with communal religious buildings arranged alongside individual cells and separate quarters for priests and lay brothers. Its layout includes an entrance pavilion, the Women’s Court, the monumental enclosure portal, Mulberry Avenue, the officers’ quarter, reception and library areas, the church square, the conventual church, several chapels, two principal cloisters, service buildings, gardens, and the concert quarter.
Entrance and outer court
Entrance pavilion and Women’s Court
The entrance pavilion was remodelled in the eighteenth century. It reuses the coats of arms of Étienne Aubert, Pierre de Selve de Monteruc, and the Carthusian order; these arms were hammered during the Revolution. Beyond it, the Women’s Court, also called the Court of the Commons, formed a threshold between the monastery and the outside world. The Rue de l’Amelier provided access for firewood and food deliveries, while another lane served the granaries.
Monumental portal
The court leads to the monumental enclosure portal made by François de Royers de La Valfenière and Barthélemy Grangier in 1648–1649. Its summit originally carried a vase of flowers and fruit decorated with acanthus leaves and pomegranates. During restoration in 1990–1991, the original was removed and replaced by a copy made by the Jean-Loup Bouvier workshop. The original was placed in the small cloister.
Mulberry Avenue and lay-brothers’ quarter
Mulberry Avenue runs toward the former prior’s lodging, now used for reception, and beside the lay-brothers’ quarter. The latter consists of buildings dating from the late sixteenth to early seventeenth centuries. They were constructed above a very large vaulted cellar known as the “twenty-five-toise cellar,” raising the dwellings to the level of the surrounding buildings.
Church and chapels
Conventual church
The conventual church was first dedicated to Saint John the Baptist and later to Saint Mary. Its first phase, dated 1353–1356, consisted of a single nave with three bays. In 1360–1361, a pentagonal apse and a nave bay were added south of the church for Innocent VI’s tomb. Two further bays followed in 1363–1365, and a third section for the lay brothers’ choir was built west of the two naves in 1372.
The apse collapsed during the nineteenth century. The church nevertheless preserves examples of fourteenth-century Avignon stonecutting, including masons’ marks on some lateral stones. Its transverse arches and ribs spring from sculpted corbels, projecting supports for arches or ribs.
Chapel of the Holy Trinity
The Chapel of the Holy Trinity, south of the church, contains the tomb of Innocent VI. The monument is made of Pernes stone and carries a white-marble effigy of the pope lying on a massive cube, his feet resting on a couchant lion. Arcades and niches decorate the base, which formerly held statuettes. Eight large pillars support the canopy, whose arcades and niches once contained twelve more figures. Three pinnacles above it carry alabaster figures of Christ holding a globe, Saint Peter, and Saint Paul. The latter is identified by his sword, book, beard, and bald head. Bartholomé Cavallier sculpted the effigy.
The tomb was damaged and stripped of many statues after the Revolution, when the chapel became private property and was used as a storage room. Prosper Mérimée saw it there in 1834. After his intervention, the monument was moved to the hospice chapel in 1835 and returned to the Chapel of the Holy Trinity in 1959.
Chapel of Saint Michael and Saint Bruno
The double Chapel of Saint Michael and Saint Bruno served as the burial place of Cardinal Pierre de Selve de Monteruc, who died in Avignon on 20 May 1385 according to the Julian calendar, corresponding to 30 May 1385 in the Gregorian calendar.
Chapel of Saint John the Baptist
The Chapel of Saint John the Baptist, also called the Chapel of the Frescoes or the Chapel of Pope Innocent VI, belongs to the former papal palace. It survives as a five-sided apse and preserves wall paintings by Matteo Giovannetti, an Italian painter who worked for the Avignon popes Clement VI and Innocent VI.
The vault once showed pairs of angels standing on clouds against an azure background, of which only weak fragments survive. The lower parts of the apse panels imitate marble. The remaining programme includes the angel’s announcement to Zachariah, the Visitation, the birth and circumcision of John the Baptist, a pope, three deacons, the twelve apostles, Innocent VI venerating the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion, John the Baptist in the Jordan, the healing of the blind and lame, the Feast of Herod, the beheading of John the Baptist, Salome presenting his head to Herodias, and the burial of John by four disciples.
In the scene of Innocent VI before the Virgin, the pope kneels while the Virgin, wearing a blue mantle, presents the standing Christ Child. The pope’s figure is worn away, although his tiara remains before him. In the Crucifixion, Christ hangs between the Virgin and John the Evangelist, with John the Baptist and a bishop behind them. An altar where the pope celebrated once stood before this painting.
Great tinel
The great tinel, a large hall used for communal or ceremonial purposes, originally served as a reception room in the papal palace and communicated with the Chapel of Saint John the Baptist. Its frescoes resembled those in the chapel. They disappeared almost entirely after the room was converted into a refectory and later a performance hall, although traces remain in some window embrasures.
Cloisters and monastic cells
Small cloister and chapter house
The small cloister belongs to the first foundation period. Its south gallery, known as the gallery of conversation, permitted the monks to speak briefly on Sundays and feast days despite the order’s normal silence. Although austere in appearance, it was the most luxurious of the monastery’s cloisters.
The east gallery leads to the chapter house, which has a two-bay ribbed vault. The room was used for confession and reading the rule of the order. It was originally undecorated but later received numerous paintings, most of which are now in the Pierre-de-Luxembourg Museum. One sculpted corbel depicts a monk and a goat, with the goat symbolizing the devil.
Large cloister and cemetery
The large cloister, also called the cemetery cloister or cloister of the dead, encloses a central green area. Its southern part served as the monks’ burial ground, and the Chapel of the Dead stands beside the cemetery. Twelve cells from the original foundation line its three galleries. Probably first built of wood, these cells were rebuilt in 1610.
Each cell had a small wooden serving hatch beside its entrance. The passage through the wall was oblique, preventing the brothers from seeing one another and discouraging conversation. A cell contained an Ave Maria room with a fireplace and oratory, a bedroom or cubiculum, and a room for manual work. A covered balcony and garden completed the living quarters. Former cells now accommodate writers, actors, directors, designers, and other artists associated with the National Centre for Performance Writing. One reconstructed model cell remains arranged for visits.
Laundry and prison
The laundry, or bugade, contains a large ground-floor room with a fireplace and well, a vaulted woodshed, and an upper room for drying clothes. The building was restructured in the seventeenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.
The prison contains seven cells of about twelve square metres, with three on the ground floor and four above. The original cells had latrines, while some later acquired fireplaces when the building was subdivided into private dwellings in the nineteenth century. Monks used some cells for penance or mortification, and the bishop could order members of the secular clergy who had committed offences to be confined there. Each cell has a hagioscope, an opening giving a restricted view of an altar or service, directed toward the altar of a chapel on the upper floor. It allowed a recluse to follow the service and see the elevation of the host.
Saint John Cloister
The Saint John Cloister occupies the site of the former courtyard of Étienne Aubert’s palace. After the palace was destroyed by fire, twelve monastic cells were installed there. A seventeenth-century fountain in the centre distributed water throughout the charterhouse. Underground pipes supplied the cemetery cloister, the sacristan’s court, and the lay-brothers’ quarter, while the basin is covered by an edicule dating from the late eighteenth century.
Former decoration and furnishings
The charterhouse formerly possessed extensive paintings and furnishings. Enguerrand Quarton’s Coronation of the Virgin, commissioned on 23 April 1453 for Innocent VI’s chapel, remained at the monastery until the Revolution and is now the principal work of the Pierre-de-Luxembourg Museum.
Other paintings associated with the monastery include Cesare Gennari’s Annunciation, Nativity, and Adoration of the Magi; works by Reynaud Levieux; and paintings by Nicolas Mignard, including a Virgin, Jesus in the Temple of 1649, Saint Anne and the Virgin with Saint Bruno of 1639, Mystical Marriage of Saint Catherine of 1651, and Saint Roseline. The group also included Nicolas Colombel’s Saint Bruno, Philippe de Champaigne’s Visitation and Christ on the Cross, Jacques Blanchard’s Tobias Restoring His Father’s Sight, Guido Reni’s lost Annunciation with Saint Charles Borromeo, and Simon de Mailly, also known as Simon de Châlons, Entombment with Innocent VI and Pierre de Selve de Monteruc of 1557. These works are now distributed among the Pierre-de-Luxembourg Museum, the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, the Palais des Papes, and unknown locations.
Surviving furnishings associated with the charterhouse include a carved panel from the fathers’ choir stalls and a lectern eagle by François Gasse of Rouen, now in the Calvet Museum in Avignon. The Pierre-de-Luxembourg Museum holds a seventeenth-century Dutch Louis XIII-style cabinet that formerly contained processional crosses and silver busts. The former high altar, sculpted in 1745 by Antoine Duparc, is now in the Collegiate Church of Notre-Dame. Its base carries a Carrara-marble relief of the dead Christ, while its tabernacle is surmounted by a Carrara-marble Golgotha with two grieving angels beside the summit cross.
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