Abbaye Saint-Maurice de Carnoët

The Abbey of Our Lady of Saint-Maurice or Carnoët of Carnoët is a former Cistercian abbey on the banks of the Milk-Clohars Carnoët, in the diocese of Quimper, founded between 1170 and 1177 in the heart of the forest of Carnoët. "The land was hostile, swampy, overgrown snakes, wolves traveled by ..." wrote the founder. The site was well chosen, however, served by the Laïta, then frequented by vessels from 10 to 60 tons with crews of up to 15 men who went back to the port of Quimper and were forced to wait up to the Abbey reversal of flow depending on the tide. Unlike most of the Cistercian abbeys, it does not settled in a "desert", especially since the site is also located 200 meters from the ancient Roman road of Hennebont in Bannalec, which was then still popular.

By 1170 the Duke Conan IV gave the Cistercian monks of the abbey of Langonnet several villages near the forest of Carnoët to establish a community. The deed of gift states that "the religious will, in the forest, take all the wood necessary for their use." They sometimes abuse this right, for example in 1566 they shot down a large quantity of wood, apparently intended for export, which will be worth to the abbot of time to be condemned by the royal court to pay damages of 2,600 pounds and interests.

Maurice Duault of Croixanvec (later Saint Maurice), then abbot of the abbey of Langonnet, founded in 1177 near the banks of the Laïta an abbey called Notre-Dame de Carnoët, which he was abbot until his death on September 29th, 1191 at the age of 76 and was two years after his death buried in the abbey church. A biographical account was written by a contemporary, anonymous and "Second Life", was written later by William, Abbot of Carnoët between 1323 and 1382. These writings paint a portrait of a peasant saint, true to its humble origins, although it is also a scholar who knows Latin. Many miracles of children, sailors and epilepsy, were awarded during his lifetime and in the decades following his death in Mauritius Duault.

The abbey later take the name Abbey of Saint Maurice Carnoët.

For six centuries, Cistercian monks go to support the area to allow maximum self-sufficiency by organizing the space around the abbey, rebuilt in the seventeenth century, probably during the reign of William the Abbot Riou, head of the Abbey from 1616 to 1641, but the destruction during the Terror during the French Revolution will devastate the abbey, then abandoned. On January 10, 1799 (21 Nivose, Year VII), a band of Chouans under the command of Jean Edme François Le Paige Bar, entered the abbey of Saint-Maurice Carnoët abuse and a former Cistercian nuns hid in the woods, Julien Launay and a servant of the abbey.

Sold as national property and become private property, his remains have served in part career, part being transformed into a castle in the course of the nineteenth century. Resting place for the German army during World War II, when it suffered heavy damage.
Hard hit during the Second World War, it was acquired, with its area of ​​120 hectares by the Coastal Protection in 1991.

The chapel chapter house, a relic of the thirteenth century, was listed as a historic monument by decree of May 2, 1956, all other buildings and the site was inscribed by order of August 8, 1995.