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Origin and history

The Abbey of Fontainejean was founded around 1124 by Milon de Courtenay, lord of Cerdagne, as the 8th daughter of the Cistercian Abbey of Pontigny. The first monks, led by Abbé Stephen, settled in branch cells before drying out the swamps and building the abbey from 1140. In 1148 Peter I of Courtenay, brother of Louis VII, made it a royal abbey, and the church was consecrated to Notre-Dame in 1173. At its peak in 1189, it housed 80 monks and 400 students, attracting pilgrims thanks to the canonization of Guillaume de Bourges in 1217.

During the Hundred Years War (1359), the Englishman Robert Knolles destroyed the monastery, forcing the monks to take refuge in their abbey house in Montargis. The abbey, already weakened, was plundered again in 1422. In the 16th century, she passed under commende: Odet de Coligny, who became a Protestant, massacred the monks in 1562. Despite partial restorations, the abbey declined until its sale as a national property in 1790. His stones were scattered, and his royal tombs desecrated.

The current remains, recorded in 1925, include columns of the Courtenay mausoleum, an abbey grid, and fragments of the early Gothic church (84 m long, sexpartite vaults). The site also preserves relics and a plaque marking the location of the heart of Helen de Courtenay, the last descendant of the lineage. The excavations of the 19th century revealed bones and broken statues, testimonies of his past greatness.

The architecture of Fontainejean, combining primitive Romanesque and Gothic, was distinguished by its capitals carved of oak leaves and its alternately round and square pillars. The monastic estate extended over ponds, mills, and villages until its accelerated decline by religious conflicts and the Revolution. Today, the ruins — the southern wall of the nave, the eastern side of the transept, and the tithe barn — recall its spiritual and political role in the Centre-Val de Loire.

The controversy over the date of construction of the church contrasts historians: Abbé Jalossay (1894) reads 1173 on the high altar, while Marcel Aubert (1943) proposes 1233. A hypothesis evokes two successive churches, a Romanesque replaced by a Gothic incorporating ancient elements, such as the door of the dead still visible. The inventory of Historical Monuments (1925) retained the beginning of the thirteenth century.

Fontainejean was also a burial place for the Courtenays, a family seeking royal recognition. Their mausoleum of black marble, destroyed in 1794, housed James II and John II of Courtenay, as well as the heart of Helen, transported from Paris in 1768. The tombs, sold as building stones, remained only by fragments exhumed in 1858.

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