II L’Abbaye de Maillezais
Maillezais is but a memory, so far as its people and power are concerned. It is not even a Vendean town, as many suppose, though it was the seat of a thirteenth-century bishopric, which in the time of Louis Quatorze was transferred to La Rochelle.
Its abbey church, the oldest portion of which dates from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, is now but a ruin.
In the fourteenth century the establishment was greatly enlarged and extensive buildings added.
To-day it is classed, by the Commission des Monuments Historiques, among those treasures for which it stands sponsor as to their antiquity, artistic worth, and future preservation. Aside from this and the record of the fact that it became, in the fourteenth century, the seat of a bishop’s throne,—with Geoffroy I. as its first occupant,—it must be dismissed without further comment.