Fontfroide Abbey or l'Abbaye Sainte-Marie de Fontfroide is a former Cistercian monastery in France, situated 15 kilometers south-west of Narbonne near to the Spanish border. It was founded in 1093 by the Viscount of Narbonne, but remained poor and obscure until in 1144 it affiliated itself to the Cistercian reform movement. Shortly afterwards the Count of Barcelona gave it the land in Spain that was to form the great Catalonian monastery of Poblet, of which Fontfroide counts as the mother house, and in 1157 the Viscountess Ermengard of Narbonne granted it a great quantity of land locally, thus securing its wealth and status. The abbey fought together with Pope Innocent III against the heretical doctrine of the Cathars who lived in the region. It was dissolved in 1791 in the course of the F