Abbey of Saint-Père-en-Vallée

Founded by Queen Balthild in the seventh century, it adopted the Benedictine rule in 954 and joined the Congregation of Saint-Maur in 1650.

The earliest document pertaining to Saint-Père-en-Vallée is the record of grants made to several clergy in 646 by Queen Balthild and a certain nobleman named Hilary.

In the second quarter of the eleventh century, Abbot Landry began to enclose the Bourg Saint-Père, a distinct suburb of Chartres growing up around the monastery.

By the seventeenth century, the abbey of Saint-Père-en-Vallée had the oversight of 24 priories and 80 curacies in the diocese of Chartres, Orléans, Évreux, Rouen, Sées and Coutances.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century, the conventual buildings were rebuilt, but by 1789 there only eight monks living in them and the abbey's revenues had dwindled to 23,000 livres.

The final section was compiled in 1772 by Dom Muley of the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Crépin de Soissons, while he was organizing the archives of Saint-Père.

Many manuscripts originally from Saint-Père were lost in 1944 during World War II, when the municipal library of Chartres was struck by a bomb and burned.

Among the other lost works was MS. 24, the Liber comitis of Audradus Modicus, which he wrote and illustrated in the basilica of Saint Martin at Tours towards 820.