FONTEVRAULT or FONTEVRAUD (Lat. Fons Ebraldi), a town of western France, in the department of Maine et-Loire, 10 m. S.E. of Saumur by road, near the confluence of the Loire and Vienne. Pop. (1931) 1,053. The interest of the place centres in its abbey, since 1804 utilized and abused as a con vict prison. The church (12th century) has a beautiful nave formerly covered by four cupolas destroyed in 1816. There is a fifth cupola above the crossing. In a chapel in the south transept are the effigies of Henry II. of England, of his wife Eleanor of Guienne, of Richard I. of England and of Isabella of Angouleme, wife of John of England—Eleanor's being of oak and the rest of stone. Cloister, refectory and chapter-house date from the 16th century. The second court of the abbey contains the Tour d'Evrault (12th century), long called chapelle f uneraire, but in reality the old kitchen. Details and diagrams will be found in Viollet-le-Duc's Dictionnaire de l'architecture. There are three stories, the whole being surmounted by a pyramidal structure.
The Order of Fontevrault was founded about 11 oo by Robert of Arbrissel. The establishment was a double monastery, contain ing a nunnery of 30o nuns and a monastery of 200 monks, sep arated completely so that no communication was allowed except in the church; there were, moreover, a hospital for 12o lepers and other sick, and a penitentiary for fallen women, both worked by the nuns. The basis of the life was the Benedictine rule ; the abbess ruled the monks as well as the nuns. At the beginning the order had a great vogue, and at the time of Robert's death, '1'7, there were several monasteries and 3,00o nuns; afterwards the number of monasteries reached 57, all organized on the same plan. The institute never throve out of France ; there were attempts to introduce it into Spain and England : in England there were three houses—at Ambresbury (Amesbury in Wiltshire), Nuneaton, and Westwood in Worcestershire. The nuns in England as in France were recruited from the highest families, and the abbess of Fontevrault, who was the superior-general of the whole order, was usually of the royal family of France.
See P. Helyot, Hist. des ordres religieuses (1718) ; Max Heimbucher, Orden and Kongregationen (1907) ; the arts. "Fontevrauld" in Wetzer and Welte, Kirchenlexicon (ed. 2) , and in Herzog-Hauck, Realency klopadie (ed. 3) ; Edouard, Fontevrault et ses monuments for the later history see art. by Edmund Bishop in Downside Review (1886).