Luxeuil-les-Bains, a charming spa resort on the southern flank of the Vosges, in Haute-Saône, was during the Merovingian period one of the beacons of European spirituality with an abbey that radiated throughout the West. Nothing remains of its prestigious past, apart from tombs and sarcophagi from Late Antiquity and the High Middle Ages, and some remains of a recently discovered church and crypt. They have just been the subject of a beautiful museum presentation: L’&cclesia.
The history of Luxeuil officially begins in 590 with the arrival of a monk, Colomban (540-615), accompanied by a dozen faithful, all from Ireland. At the request of Childebert II, King of Austrasia and Burgundy, he built a monastery at Luxeuil, but the suspicious religious who had fallen out with his successor, Thierry II, was expelled with his Irish companions. Only the Frankish and Gallic monks remain. Colomban and his family roam part of Europe, sowing monasteries and abbeys. With their heirs, they will create about fifty.
Manuscript transcription workshop
In Luxeuil, his successors, especially Valbert (595-670), gave their establishment considerable influence thanks to his manuscript transcription workshop, the scriptorium. An army of monks (several hundred) copied and illuminated works intended for all of Christendom. The Luxovian abbey is, until the 9the century, one of the places producing the most manuscripts in Europe. Within its walls, a new cursive and stylized writing with narrow and constricted letters is developed there. It is one of the roots of ours. If it was probably not invented there, it is from Luxeuil that a funny abbreviation sign: &, called ampersand, spread.
Excavations have uncovered 380 burials, including 150 sarcophagi dating from Late Antiquity and the Merovingian period, in an excellent state of preservation.
Then time passed. A new abbey replaced that of Colomban and Valbert of which only legends and uncertain memories remained. It took excavations carried out by the CNRS under a parking lot in the city center to bring out a whole little-known past. Four campaigns, from 2008 to 2015, made it possible to discover 380 burials, including 150 sarcophagi dating from Late Antiquity and the Merovingian period, in excellent state of preservation, all facing east awaiting the Last Judgment . But also part of the foundations of the Saint-Martin church and almost all of those of the adjoining crypt dedicated to Saint Valbert, added in the 600s. “This is the first time that we have had remains that refer to the monastery of Luxeuil. The scientific and heritage interest is exceptional,” insists Sébastien Bully, researcher at the Artehis laboratory (CNRS / University of Burgundy), responsible for the excavations.
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