ABSTRACT
Located in the Frankish kingdom of Burgundy, the monastery of Luxeuil was founded at the end of the 6th century by the Irish Abbot Columbanus and his companions in close corporation with the Burgundian royal house. Recent archaeological research demonstrates that Jonas of Susa exaggerated the deserted nature of the location and that when Columbanus arrived Luxeuil was in fact a small urban settlement with a Christian presence since the 5th century. With Columbanus’s nearby first foundation, Annegray, and a later house at Fontaines, Luxeuil formed a unity within which it was clearly the most prominent site. It grew into one of the most influential monasteries of the Merovingian era.
