Les Écharlis Abbey

Les Écharlis Abbey (French: Abbaye des Écharlis) is a former Cistercian monastery in Villefranche, Yonne, France. It was founded in the 12th century by a secular priest with two companions who wanted to live a monastic life. Soon afterward, the monastery joined the Cistercian order as a dependency of Fontenay Abbey.

An initial site, quickly deemed too small for the growing numbers of monks, was soon abandoned in favor of a more suitable site located a few kilometers away. The abbey grew rapidly, thanks especially to the fame of the peasant saint Saint Alpaïs whom the monks had befriended and whose vita was written around ca. 1180 by a monk named Peter. However, the abbey experienced numerous changes and hardships thereafter: the Hundred Years' War, the French Wars of Religion, abbatial appointments in commendam, and repeated destruction. It was dissolved in 1791 and sold as a so-called bien national during the French Revolution.