Founded in about 1095 by monks that came from the Molesne abbey in Burgundy, the abbey affiliated itself to the Cistercians in 1136 after which it became one of the most powerful in medieval Savoie due its income from property rights.
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A crossroads for the great spiritual ideas of the late 11th century, a meeting place for saints and a crucible for monastic reform, it was from the abbey of Molesme in Burgundy that a group of monks set off around 1094. Their destination? A small possession of the Counts of Savoy: the Vallée d'Aulps (Vallée des Alpages in Latin), with the aim of founding a monastery in line with their spiritual ideal: "a laboratory of monasticism", as it were, more clearly oriented towards eremitism than...