The Cistercian Abbey of Maulbronn is the best preserved of those which owed their origin to St. Bernard throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The abbey church, the cloister, the refectory, the chapter-house, the cellars, the storerooms, the barns, and the abbot's lodging, the latter united to the other buildings by a covered gallery, still exist in their original condition. More manifestly even than Altenberg does the Abbey of Maulbronn prove that simplicity marked the proceedings of the Benedictines during the first years of the twelfth century, under the rule or influence of St. Bernard. From this period onward Cistercian brotherhoods multiplied with great rapidity in the provinces which were to form modern France. In the Ile-de-France the ruins of Ourscamp, near Noyon, of Chaâlis, near Senlis, of Longpont and of Vaux-de-Cernay, near Paris, bear witness to the monumental grandeur of once famous and important abbeys. The monasteries and priories of the twelfth century are numerous in Provence; we may name Sénanque, Silvacane, Thoronet, and Montmajour, near Arles, at the extremity of the valley of Les Baux. Among the abbeys founded in the thirteenth century were Royaumont, in the Ile-de-France; Vaucelles, near Cambrai; Preuilly-en-Brie; La Trappe, in Le Perche; Breuil-Benoît, Mortemer, and Bonport, in Normandy; Boschaud, in Périgord; l'Escale-Dieu, in Bigorre; Les Feuillants, Nizors, and Bonnefont, in Comminges; Granselve and Baulbonne, near Toulouse; Floran, Valmagne, and Fontfroide, in Languedoc; Fontenay, in Burgundy, etc. [Illustration: 141. CISTERCIAN ABBEY OF MAULBRONN (WURTEMBERG). PLAN] Towards the close of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth century other fraternities had been formed in the same spirit as that of Citeaux; "in the first rank of these was the Order of the Premonstrants, so named from the mother abbey founded in 1119 by St. Norbert at Prémontré, near Coucy."[50] [50] Anthyme St. Paul, _Histoire Monumentale de la France_. To this order the monastery of St. Martin at Laon, and others in Champagne, Artois, Brittany, and Normandy owed their origin. [Illustration: 142. ABBEY OF FONTEVRAULT. KITCHEN] [Illustration: 143. CATHEDRAL OF PUY-EN-VELAY. CLOISTERS] In the early part of the twelfth century Robert d'Arbrisselles founded several double monasteries for men and women, on the model of those built in Spain in the ninth century; that of Fontevrault was not more successful as a monastic experiment than the rest, but it gave rise to a number of superb buildings. The abbey itself contributed in no slight degree to the progress of architecture, which developed in Anjou at the dawn of the twelfth century, and manifested itself principally at Angers in works the supreme importance of which we have dwelt upon in the early part of this volume.