A Cultural History

The «Monastère» of Vouvant, formerly the Visitation Convent, originally the Fief du Plessis

by Jean-Marie Grassin, professor emeritus

«Le Monastère» is the name given to the condominium established in Vouvant in the early 2000’s; it derives its name from the convent of Visitandine cloistered nuns who lived there from 1941 to 1997. It is not the Benedictine monastery founded in Vouvant by the Abbot of Maillezais Théodelin around 1018 at the request of William the Great duke of Aquitaine, but it is located on land cleared and developed by the monks in the early 11th century, and its entrance faces the original residence of the Lord Prior of the monastery. The locale was known as «le Plessis» until World War II, and «La Visitation» until it was transformed into a luxury residence.

1. The seignoral ramparts and grounds

The history of the property is closely intertwined with that of the «City and Castle of Vouvant» which was itself part of the history of France and England in the Middle Ages. Atits extremity close to the statue of the Madonna under the wall of the château of La Recepte, the property includes probably the oldest unadulterated historical landmark in Vouvant.
Before the foundation of Vouvant, the site was protected by a series of defences (castelets, bars, palisades, outposts, etc.) along the river Mère against the incursions of Normans (Vikings) or other pirates; at the turn of the river under La Recepte, there was one of these mottes (another one, a larger one, is still visible from the top of Mélusine Tower in a private property at Châteauneuf). A motte was a man-made mount surrounded by a bailey (a palisade, in French a «bail» as in «Le Bail», the enclosed area around the castle) with a wooden castelet at the top; the Monastère motte is now invaded by vegetation on the slopes, but its platform at the top is intact.
In the 10 century, some of these mottes were replaced by stronger constructions. So it was that around the year 1000, the duke of Aquitaine had a stone castle built at Vouvant in a campaign to secure his vast domain (at that time Aquitaine extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Rhône river, and the duke had actually more power than his liege the king of the Franks). He had already successfully settled Benedictines at Maillezais, so he decided to invite the monks to start a new colony on the plateau of Vouvant. There was a large galloroman «court» (in Latin curtis, or villa, an agricultural estate) nearby at Le Nay, but it could not be defended easily on flat terrain; the plateau of Vouvant on the contrary provided a living area naturally protected by escarpments (steep slopes) and the river. The foundational charter asserts that the name of Vouvant comes from the windings of the river (Volventus from the Latin verb volvere, to turn) although modern philologists rather tend to think it is derived from a Celtic word akin to the Germanic word in English wolf (Vouvant would be a part of the forest where the wolves roamed). Unlike its sister village Mervent whose origin go back to prehistoric times and other towns which developed naturally without a preconceived idea, Vouvant was planned as a fortified villa like the bastides of the Southwest of France, a place which could be defended against enemies, in which therefore a colony could be settled more safely and to which the people in the vicinity could seek refuge.
The original outlay of the settlement in the form of a gridiron according to the Roman colonial tradition is still more or less legible in the map of the village. At the entre, on the North (left) side of the church, a common area comparable to a Roman forum, was devoted to public activities. Probably in the Middle Ages much of the grounds of the Monastère there remained unconstructed as a market and farm area. The vault in the cellar of the Monastère seems to have been connected with the tunnel underneath the old Priory across the street towards the church, leading . A small building on the left into the lane called Ruelle is a probable location (pending further research in the archives) for the banal oven (actually there were three ovens there) where the Vouvantais were obliged to have their bread baked (and pay taxes); ovens were a privilege of the lords (two other ovens existed in Vouvant, one at the lord prior’s across the street, and the other at the lord provost’s, La Vieille-Cure). The banal ovens were auctioned away at the French Revolution when the privileges were abolished and all citizens were allowed to have their own oven (thus the oven in the Basse Rue could be built later by the middle of the 19th century).
From the windows of to-day’s entrance, one faces in the foreground what was until the beginning of the 20th century the horse market on Place Saint-Louis; further on the Place de la Mairie, there were the Romanesque «halles» (a 12th century covered market which was replaced at the beginning of the 20th century by a steel structure eventually demolished in the 1930’s); beyond stood the «Parquet», the barony’s court house, on the very spot of the house facing the pharmacy.
The Monastère was a part of the barony of Vouvant itself, and it is one of its administrators («Receveur général des terres et seigneuries et dépendances»), Jacques Claude Palliot, who founded the «Fief du Plessis» in 1705 where the Monastère now is (see below). A barony in this case was a seigneury directly dependant of the sovereign, the duke of Aquitaine, or the king of France, depending to whom the tenant gave its allegiance, hence the quarrels between France and England between 1152 and 1453.
The stone castle built by William the Great around the year 1000 was his direct property with a lord-provost (at to-day’s La Vieille-Cure) to administer the domains and the defence system. After the 12th century the final feudal outlay of Vouvant developed as such:
– the Mervent and Vouvant barony established in Vouvant with many dependent seigneuries in Poitou and two minor seigneuries intra muros with their own justice:
– (the Priory, across the street from the Monastère, originally in charge of land development and, until the French Revolution, charities to the poor,
– and the Prévôté – Provostship – held until the 16th century by the Puy-du-Fou family);
– the Petit-Château barony long associated with the Chabot family originally as provosts, then as lords (no connection with the Monastère; little is left of the Petit-Château as the owner sold the stones away in the 19th century).
At the end of the 12th century or the beginning of the 13th century ramparts are erected along the escarpments and around the cities in a number of places about Poitou:
the Plantagenet kings were eager to assert their independence as dukes of Aquitaine from their nominal liege the king of France. The ramparts of Vouvant are largely the work of the Lusignan family, associated with the legend of the fairy Mélusine, mother of Geoffroy-la-Grand’Dent («Big tooth»). The park of the Monastère runs along most of the well preserved walls of Vouvant including ten towers, two of them within the precincts.
These ramparts were assaulted five times:
– first by the king of England John Lackland in 1214 (against Geoffroy-La-Grand’Dent de Lusignan vassal of his overlord the King of France),
– then by the king of France Louis IX (saint Louis) in 1242 (after Geoffroy was rallied to king Henry III of England, duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitou),
– and by the Constable of France du Guesclin in 1372 on orders of Charles V;
– in 1415 Arthur III of Brittany count Richemont took the castle from the English on behalf of the king of France Charles VI;
– the last attack was made in 1588 by the Protestants who left 200 dead under the ramparts without taking the place (they are said to have burned the church and destroyed the Priory before that in 1563). The Rue Malicorne remembers the Catholic general who defended Vouvant at that time.
Vouvant had had a peaceful royal visit in 1152 by Louis VII with his wife Eleanor duchess of Aquitaine coming to receive the homage of their vassals in Poitou ; Eleanor was to become soon the queen of England after her divorce and remarriage with Henry II Plantagenet count of Anjou; the direct ownership of Aquitaine then was at the origin of the long-standing quarrel between the kings of France and England.
There also was an important visit in 1361 when John Chandos, the lieutenant of the much feared Black Prince, came to take possession of the castle for the king of England.
There is no doubt that these illustrious visitors frequented the Monastère site in some way; among them, it is saint Louis (king Louis IX) who is best remembered in Vouvant. The «chaise de saint Louis», a stone chair kept in the Monastère grounds, is said to be the throne in which the kings, especially saint Louis, or their constable, received the homage of their vassals when taking possession of the castle. After the «Wars of religion» in the 16 th century, Vouvant in ruin was neglected by its lords. Stones from the medieval buildings) were used to pave roads and build modern homes, including most probably the present Monastère («Le Plessis») in the 18th century. One can tell that a wall is a modern construction, or reconstruction, when it includes some limestones coming from the casings of doors and windows or the pillars in the old castle and the Priory.

2. Le Plessis

The modern history of the Monastère begins with Jacques Claude Palliot who was appointed Garde-Marteau («keeper of the royal hammer», an instrument used to mark the trees in the forest») in 1699; in 1702 he bought a few pieces of land king Louis XIV was selling to finance the war against England. That was little short of obtaining a title of nobility:
he and his descendants rendered homage to the king in the 18th century for what became to be known as «the fief of the Plessis». It could be that it was his second son Jean Louis Palliot du Plessis, also garde-marteau, who built the main building in the middle of the 18th century. One can trace only some slight modifications of the buildings successively in a general engraving of the village at the end of the 18th century, then on the 1836 cadastral survey, also in glimpses of the facade on some old pictures of the church ; the outbuildings like the pigeonnier with some brickwork are typically from the middle of the 19th century (Palliot constructions).
On the 15-16th of May, 1793, the great peasant Vendean army swarmed the grounds of the Monastère (and the rest of Vouvant of course) on its way to attack Fontenay-le-Comte.
The poor people of the West of France, the «Vendée militaire» (part of the départements of Vendée, Deux-Sèvres, Maine-et-Loire, and Loire-Atlantique) had revolted against the excesses of the French Revolution and the persecution of their priests. About 10000 men camped in Vouvant spending the night drinking and praying (saying the rosary). The artillery was set in front of the Plessis (Place Saint-Louis). All the major Vendean chiefs were present (some must have taken their lodgings in the Plessis). There was no looting (the inhabitants received royal vouchers in compensation for food and wine, more wine than food apparently).
On the eve of the 16th, the chiefs mustered their troops for a solemn mass in the church they had reopened before marching to Fontenay, with many peasant soldiers praying outside the church in front of the Plessis. They were defeated, but on the 24th, 35000 men from all the areas of the «Vendée militaire» passed again through Vouvant to attack Fontenay anew. They won. In the Summer of 1793, the Vendeans established some kind of royal government in Châtillon (to-day Mauléon, Deux-Sèvres) which probably had limited effect in republican minded Vouvant (the public records are suspended for that period).
In the 19th century, Charles Joseph Aimé Palliot du Plessis (1782-1834, a mayor 1823-1834) is praised in the parish archives of Vouvant for spending his fortune to clear and landscape the grounds below the ramparts around Vouvant (in order to provide work for the poor of Vouvant at a time when the country was impoverished after the Napoleonic wars. He is probably the one who designed the Monastère garden and the walk along the river His daughter Marie Justine Palliot du Plessis (1814-1903) was a generous donator and inspirer for the reconstruction of the church after 1876: it had been left almost in ruin after the destructions by the Protestants during the Wars of religion in the 16th century. She teamed with the vicar Father Laurent and the architect Loué to get the project under way and finance the operation. One of the stained glasses in Saint-Joseph’s chapel she donated in 1873 represents the martyrdom of her patron saint Justine. This remarkable woman is remembered by a monument in the cemetery (which is in peril; you should think about it, Monsieur le Maire).

3. The Visitation convent

In the 1930’s, a descendant of the Palliots, Marie Vinet, invited a group of working sisters of La Sagesse («The Wisdom», a community founded by followers of the Père de Montfort in the Vendée) to the «Plessis». Then, in 1941, the bombings of the city of Dreux (by the RAF?) led 27 Visitandine sisters (an enclosed order) to seek refuge in Vouvant. The Belgian baron Louis Begoën, also a descendant of the Palliots, sold the «Plessis» to them.
During World War II, the nuns (and the inhabitants of Vouvant of course) had to endure the presence of German soldiers not in the convent itself, but across the street in the old lord-prior’s house on Place Saint-Louis. In the course of the years, the nuns brought important modifications to the property, preferring what looked neat and modern to things of the past. Some Vouvantais regretted the wall they built in the recess of the facade sealing off the view to the garden and the countryside from the Place Saint-Louis. The main contribution of the nuns to the artistic treasures of Vouvant was the set of stained glass windows in their modern chapel which commemorated the hundredth anniversary of their former convent in Dreux in 1960.
Vouvant attracted the attention of the media when the famous ballet dancer Mireille Nègre came to live with the nuns; she installed her studio in the convent, dancing privately for God and giving a few lessons; a curtain covered the mirrors when she was not dancing not to offend the modesty of the nuns. Her activities in the convent became a matter of public controversy, and she had eventually to leave.
In the 1950’s the secular minded municipality installed artistic neon representations of historical or legendary figures to decorate the streets at night. The one maliciously?) set on the wall of Le Monastère was reminiscent of witches with an ominous black cat; people say that the sisters were not amused at all, but that they beared the possible offence with charity.
The nuns were well loved by the catholic population of Vouvant who liked to come to the offices in the public part of the chapel ; they were accustomed to the sound of the bell day and night ; they would bring presents from their garden or their home through the turning hatch («le tour») on the left side of the entrance to the convent. Vouvantais were very sad when the nuns left in 1997. Then «Le Monastère» opened a new chapter in the history of the Plessis. If one would sum the history of Le Monastère up, it would be tempting to relate it to the three basic meanings of the notion of culture in Latin: culture of land (agricultura) as in the origin of the Benedictine monastery perpetuated in the development of the park ; culture of the spirit (cultus) remembered down to the religious name of the property ; culture of the mind (cultura) through the consciousness of man’s endeavours in the past.