Luxeuil Abbey

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".

[2] 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".

[3] 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.

In 603, a synod accused Columbanus of keeping Easter by the Celtic date, but his severity and the inflexible rule he had established may have been the true cause of friction with the Burgundian court.

Luxeuil sent out monks to found houses at Bobbio, between Milan and Genoa, where Columbanus himself became abbot, and monasteries at Saint-Valéry and Remiremont.

About 732, a raiding party of Moors under the general Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, governor of Al-Andalus, penetrating from Arles deep into Burgundy, briefly took possession of Luxeuil and massacred most of the community, including Abbot Mellinus.