Abbaye de Thoronet

May 4, 2026 – Roquebrune-sur-Argens to Lorgues – 26 kms – Carnets de Voyage
May 5, 2026 – Lorgues to Montfort-sur-Argens (with a visit to Abbaye du Thoronet) – 28 kms – La Cachette du Compte

Today our route passed the twelfth century Monastery of Thoronet. I once imagined the lives of medieval monks as pastoral, isolated, and deeply communal, their simple, quiet existence shaped by vows of poverty, chastity, and prayer. That picture began to shift when I read The Kingsbridge Series by Ken Follett, and changed more profoundly when I walked my first Camino de Santiago through France.
Monasteries, I came to understand, were rarely just places of contemplation. They were also centers of power, wealth, and influence. In some cases, that wealth was acquired in ways that feel strikingly unspiritual today. The Abbey of Sainte-Foy in Conques, for example, secured its fame and fortune by taking the relics of Sainte-Foy from another monastery.  Apparently this practice was not uncommon in the medieval competition for pilgrims.

I was struck by the vast vineyards and forests associated with the Thoronet as I cycled. At one time its lands stretched almost to the Mediterranean. Founded by the Cistercian Order, Thoronet was not an exception to the broader pattern of wealthy Orders. The Cistercians, inspired and guided by Bernard of Clairvaux, sought a more austere and disciplined life than that of the more excessive Benedictine Order.  Yet even with their emphasis on simplicity and restraint, Thoronet, at it’s peak grew into a substantial landholding institution with significant economic and political reach. It also maintained a strict class structure that separated lay monks, drawn from the peasant class, from their “brothers” the choir monks, who often came from the higher classes.  These groups even had separate doors to access the Church. Medieval monasteries, regardless of their founding ideals, often became deeply embedded in the structures of power and wealth that shaped their world. 

Before visiting Thoronet, Gord and I met up for lunch and waited out a rain shower under a tree together. There is a reason the countryside gleams with fresh green growth in the Spring.  We finished the day at the remarkable, and undiscovered, town of Montfort-sur-Argens.  It has a tight medieval centre reminiscent of a Greek chora.