Chartreuse
LA GRANDE (shärtrez'), a famous monastery of France, in the department of Isère, 14 miles N. of Grenoble, among lofty mountains, at an elevation of 3,281 feet above sea-level.
The access to it is very difficult. It was built in 1084, but having been several times pillaged and burnt down, the present building was erected after 1676. It is of vast extent, and cost an immense sum. During the Revolution, the monks were driven out, and their property, including a valuable library, confiscated and sold; but in 1826, the building, which had escaped the revolutionary tempest, was restored to its original destination, and was the chief monastery of the Carthusians until 1903, when the monks, as the result of the new Law of Associations of 1901, were expelled from France. The inmates, about 30 in number, derived their principal subsistence from the sale of the celebrated liqueur, which they manufactured under the name of Chartreuse, and in the composition of which enter many aromatic herbs.