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Origin and history

Notre-Dame de Clavas Abbey, founded at the end of the 12th century by Cistercian nuns, is located in the Clavarine Valley in Riotord, Upper Loire. Joined in 1259 at Mazan Abbey, it was built in an isolated and marshy site, requiring complex hydraulic installations: dams, ponds and mills to supply the community with water and protect buildings from flooding. A hamlet developed nearby, with twelve houses already in 1377, favored by the protection of Cardinal Pierre Bertrand.

During the Wars of Religion (16th century), the abbey was looted and burned, then restored: the vault of the choir and a south door were redone. In the 17th century, it welcomed local nobles as religious, accompanied by their domesticity. In 1764, faced with a crisis of vocations and mismanagement, the last six nuns left Clavas for the abbey of Sauve-Benite, leaving only one priest and one school. The Revolution led to the partial destruction of buildings, keeping only the abbey, the presbytery and the gate.

In the 19th century, the Abbey became the parish church of the hamlet: the nave was equipped with a ceiling in lattis (1845) and the rebuilt bell tower (1880). In 1956 she lost her parish status. In 2014, floods of the Clavarine, aggravated by the disappearance of medieval developments, damaged the restored altarpiece. The abbey, uniquely nave Gothic style and flat bedside, preserves a decor painted in trompe-l Since 1998, an association has maintained a medieval garden at the site of the old cloister.

The abbey, daughter of Mazan without descendants, was run by abbesses often from the local nobility (Clermont-Chaste, Montmorin). Among them, Agnes de Girin rebuilt the building after 1562, while Anne de Montmorin de Saint-Herem occupied this role at the end of the seventeenth century. Gabrielle de Saint-Chamond, forced to marry, left religious life. The site, registered with the Historical Monuments in 2003, illustrates the Cistercian adaptation to a hostile environment and the political and religious upheavals of its time.

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