abbaye de l'Amour-Dieu

A Cistercian convent of nuns once stood beside the Marne in Troissy from 1232 until the Revolution. Founded on an old leper hospital between Château-Thierry and Épernay, it became a Cistercian house in 1240 under Bishop Jacques de Bazoches and Queen Blanche of Castile. In 1763 the community moved to Montmirail-Bouquigny, taking over a Benedictine priory called Mont-Dieu. The French Revolution ended its life there in 1791. A few ruined walls near Troissy still mark the site where the first nuns lived. Historians such as Albert Noël have traced the abbey’s story in detail. Laurent Cottineau listed every topographical reference to the house in his 1939–70 directory. Bernard Peugniez later guided travellers through Europe’s Cistercian sites, including this one. A modern encyclopaedia of the order keeps the memory alive online. Local archives preserve charters and maps of the lands once owned by the nuns. Visitors today can walk past the low remains west of Troissy village. A farm now occupies the old precinct, but the name ‘L’Amour-Dieu’ still marks the track. The quiet lane leads to a cluster of farm buildings where only fragments of the 13th-century cloister survive. Beyond the fields the Marne flows eastward, the same river that once carried goods to the convent’s quays.