The church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés stands amid streets that grew around a powerful early medieval abbey. Its surviving Romanesque structure carries traces of the monastery’s long religious and intellectual life, as well as the neighborhood that formed outside its walls.
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This church began as the center of a monastery beyond the early city. In 543, King Childebert founded an abbey dedicated to the Holy Cross and Saint Vincent; when the relics of Bishop Germain were placed here in 576, the institution became known as Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
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- The abbey was founded by Childebert in 543.
- Relics of Bishop Germain were placed in the basilica in 576.
- The Maurists made the abbey a major center of scholarship in the seventeenth century.
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