Founding to dissolution According to legend, on 25 June 1115 the Cistercian monk
Bernard was sent from
Cîteaux Abbey with a group of twelve other monks to found a new monastery at Vallée d'Absinthe.
Hughes I, Count of Troyes and a relative of Bernard, donated this valley to the Cistercians. The monastery was dedicated to the Virgin Mary on October 13, 1115, which became the feast day of Our Lady of Clairvaux. Bernard was installed as first abbot by
William of Champeaux,
Bishop of Châlons-sur-Marne. The abbey developed rapidly, eventually reaching its peak in numbers at 700 members belonging to Clairvaux alone, thus the largest Cistercian abbey in France. Many daughter monasteries followed. In 1118
Trois-Fontaines Abbey was founded from Clairvaux on land donated by Hugh de Vitry. Many nobles were buried there. Later, Clairvaux founded
Foigny Abbey (1121), and
Cherlieu Abbey was founded in 1131. During Bernard's lifetime over sixty monasteries were founded from Clairvaux all over Europe and reaching into Scandinavia. Construction of the abbey in its roughly current form (named
Clairvaux II by historians) began in 1135, and the abbey church was dedicated in 1174. However, the only building surviving from this time is a large 12th-century lay brother's building, eventually converted into a barn. By the end of the Middle Ages, it had founded 530 abbeys across Europe. As the mother of so many, Clairvaux occupied a central place in the Cistercian world.Clairvaux continued to attract promising monks; one of them became a pope (
Eugene III), twelve became cardinals, and over thirty were elevated to the episcopacy. Research about the monks' literary and theological studies have led to a research project that seeks to reconstruct the abbey's medieval library. In the 13th century, Clairvaux Abbot
Stephen Lexington founded the
Cistercian college at the University of Paris and it remained under the abbey's responsibility for generations. The works were wide-ranging, and records indicate that construction was not complete upon the arrival of the revolution. Clairvaux's library was of particular note, it expanded continuously through the Middle Ages and early modern period. At the time of its dissolution, it housed 40,000 volumes. Its collection of medieval manuscripts inventoried by Abbot Pierre de Virey, of which 1,115 of 1,790 survive, constitutes the largest of its kind, and is exceptionally well-preserved. This collection is today housed in the Troyes-Champagne
Médiathèque, the
Bibliothèque nationale de France, and the University of Montpelier's Faculty of Medicine. The relics of Bernard of Clairvaux were moved from the abbey church to
Troyes Cathedral.
Having become state property according to the decree of 2 November 1789, the abbey was purchased in 1792 and converted into a glassworks, which was repossessed by the state upon its bankruptcy in 1804 and turned into a prison. This fate was not uncommon for former monasteries following the penal reforms of Napoleon, it also befell others like
Fontevraud and
Mont-Saint-Michel. Because the abbey church was sold off as a quarry in 1812, a small new chapel was built inside the former
refectory in 1828. During the 19th century, the abbey held 2,700 prisoners, including 500 women and 550 children. Deplorable conditions at the abbey inspired Victor Hugo to write his short story "
Claude Gueux", based on a real prisoner at Clairvaux, in 1834. Following a reform in 1875 that required individual cells for prisoners, "chicken cages", cells measuring 1.5 x 2-meter (5 x 6.5 ft), were installed, they remained in use until 1971. Renovation of the historic Abbey buildings has been underway since 2021, the 20th century correctional additions will be demolished as part of the conversion of the campus to a tourist site. ==List of abbots==