Luxeuil Abbey was one of the oldest and best-known monasteries in
Burgundy, located in the
"département" of
Haute-Saône in
Franche-Comté,
France.
It was founded in circa 585–590 by the Irish missionary Saint Columbanus. Columbanus and his companions first settled in cells at Annegray, in the commune of Voivre, Haute-Saône. Looking for a more permanent site for his community, Columbanus decided upon the ruins of a well-fortified Gallo-Roman settlement, Luxovium, about eight miles away. The Roman town had been ravaged by Attila in 451, and was now buried in the dense overgrown woodland that had filled the abandoned site over more than a century, but the place still had the advantage of the thermal baths ("constructed with unusual skill", according to Columbanus' early biographer, Jonas of Bobbio) down in the valley, which still give the town its name of Luxeuil-les-Bains. Jonas described it further "There stone images crowded the nearby woods, which were honoured in the miserable cult and profane former rites in the time of the pagans" [1].
With a grant from an officer of the palace at Childebert's court, an abbey church was built with a sense of triumph within the heathen site and its "spectral haunts" [2].
Under the intellectual and spiritual stimulation of the Irish monks, the abbey at Luxeuil, dedicated to Saint Peter, soon became the most important and flourishing monastery in Gaul. The community was so large that choir followed choir in the chanting of the office, and at Luxeuil the laus perennis imported from Agaunum went on day and night.
