Saint-Amand Abbey

[6] The abbey not completely restored until the 17th century, to an ambitious and much-admired plan implemented by Abbot Nicolas du Bois.

In 1616-1617 Peter Paul Rubens painted a new high altarpiece for the monastery church, the Saint Stephen Triptych.

[7] In 1672, Dom Mabillon discovered that, at the end of a manuscript of works of Gregory Nazianzen, there is a praise poem of the late 9th century in Old German, the Ludwigslied, which commemorates the victory of the Frankish army of Louis III over the Vikings on 3 August 881 at the Battle of Saucourt-en-Vimeu.

The same manuscript, now held at the municipal library of Valenciennes, was found to contain one of the earliest literary texts in vernacular French, the poem called Sequence of Saint Eulalia.

[9] The former courthouse (échevinage) and the exuberantly decorated church tower, which now accommodates a faience museum, survive and can still be visited.