The abbey became too small for its members and it was necessary to send out bands to found new houses.

If Columbanus's abbey at Bobbio in Italy became a citadel of faith and learning, Luxeuil in France became the nursery of saints and apostles.

* 1382: Gdynia became property of the Cistercian abbey in Oliva, now Oliwa.

He had been a descendant of the Israelite tribe of Issachar ; he had been educated by his grandfathers, who had both been physicians to the court of Good King René of Provence ; he had attended Montpellier University in 1525 to gain his first degree: after returning there in 1529 he had successfully taken his medical doctorate ; he had gone on to lecture in the Medical Faculty there until his views became too unpopular ; he had supported the heliocentric view of the universe ; he had travelled to the north-east of France, where he had composed prophecies at the abbey of Orval ; in the course of his travels he had performed a variety of prodigies, including identifying a future Pope ; he had successfully cured the Plague at Aix-en-Provence and elsewhere ; he had engaged in scrying using either a magic mirror or a bowl of water ; he had been joined by his secretary Chavigny at Easter 1554 ; having published the first installment of his Propheties, he had been summoned by Queen Catherine de ' Medici to Paris in 1556 to discuss with her his prophecy at quatrain I. 35 that her husband King Henri II would be killed in a duel ; he had examined the royal children at Blois ; he had bequeathed to his son a ' lost book ' of his own prophetic paintings ; he had been buried standing up ; and he had been found, when dug up at the French Revolution, to be wearing a medallion bearing the exact date of his disinterment.

When Otto II became Holy Roman Emperor in 973 ( he was co-emperor with Otto I from 967 ), he appointed Gerbert the abbot of the monastery of Bobbio and also appointed him as count of the district, but the abbey had been ruined by previous abbots, and Gerbert soon returned to Rheims.

A document found at the abbey states that Richard became subprior in 1159.

In 1162 Richard became prior of the abbey and remained in this position until his death in 1173.

Winfrid taught in the abbey school and at the age of 30 became a priest ; in this time, he wrote a Latin grammar, the Ars Grammatica, besides a treatise on verse and some Aldhelm-inspired riddles.

In the 13th century, the abbey and the town became an independent principality, over which the abbots ruled as territorial sovereigns ranking as Princes of the Holy Roman Empire.

The abbey became the coronation site of Norman kings, but none were buried there until Henry III, intensely devoted to the cult of the Confessor, rebuilt the abbey in Anglo-French Gothic style as a shrine to venerate King Edward the Confessor and as a suitably regal setting for Henry's own tomb, under the highest Gothic nave in England.

In 1873, the head of the abbey came to an agreement with a Parisian cheese-seller granting exclusive rights of distribution, and the cheese soon became popular.

Henry designated Westminster, where St Edward had founded the abbey, as the fixed seat of power in England and Westminster Hall duly became the greatest ceremonial space of the kingdom, where the council of nobles also met.

The abbey eventually became the seat of the South Saxon bishopric, where it remained until after the Norman Conquest, when it was moved to Chichester by decree of the Council of London of 1075.

In the decades after its foundation the abbey was the recipient of considerable endowments, as seen from the dedication of 26 altars donated by individual benefactors and guilds and it was an important centre of pilgrimage after Dunfermline became a centre for the cult of St Margaret ( Malcolm's wife and David's mother ), from whom the monastery later claimed foundation and for which an earlier foundation charter was fabricated.

It was presided over by eleven abbots, and became financially unstable largely due to forward selling its wool crop, and the abbey was criticised for its dire material and physical state when it was visited by Archbishop John Romeyn in 1294.

When the abbey was dissolved, he retired, and later became 1st Bishop of Gloucester.

The abbey became part of the diocese of Lincoln in 1542 and was moved to the diocese of London in 1550.

With the reformation and the end of monastic services, the east end of the abbey church became redundant.

The abbey was founded in 1100 and became a double monastery, with both monks and nuns on the same site.

In the early years the Plantagenets were great benefactors of the abbey and while Isabella d ' Anjou was abbess, Henry II's widow Eleanor of Aquitaine became a nun there.

The abbey later became a prison from 1804 to 1963, in which year it was given to the French Ministry of Culture.

In 998 he established a Benedictine abbey at Sherborne and became its first abbot.

Ethelstan the Etheling, son of Ethelred the Unready, left " land at Mordune " to the abbey of Christ and St. Peter in his will of 1015, which became the site of the first Saxon parish church of St Lawrence.

In England the Viking Age began dramatically on 8 June 793 when Vikings destroyed the abbey on Lindisfarne, a centre of learning famous across the continent.

After the conversion, Canterbury, as a Roman town, was chosen by Augustine as the centre for an episcopal see in Kent, and an abbey and cathedral were built.

After a £ 5. 5 million renovation programme there is a new visitor centre with interactive exhibits which illustrates the history of the abbey and the lives of the monks.

The presence of Scone two miles ( 3 km ) northeast, the main royal centre of the Kingdom of Alba from at least the reign of Kenneth I mac Ailpín ( 843 – 58 ), later the site of the major Augustinian abbey of the same name founded by Alexander I ( 1107 – 24 ), enhanced Perth's early importance.

During the Middle Ages the town largely depended on the abbey but was also a centre for the wool trade until the 18th century.

Reading Abbey is a large, ruined abbey in the centre of the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire.

The Grade I listed site is now operated by English Heritage as 1066 Battle of Hastings, Abbey and Battlefield, which includes the abbey buildings and ruins, a visitor centre with a film and exhibition about the battle, audio tours of the battlefield site, and the monks ' gatehouse with recovered artefacts.

In 1321 he was given a relic of the Holy Cross by William de Gradisson, and the abbey became a centre of pilgrimage.

Waverley Abbey, the first Cistercian abbey in England, was founded in 1128 by William Giffard, Bishop of Winchester about one mile ( 1. 6 km ) south of the town centre.

* Dendemonde has a Benedictine abbey right in the centre of town.

The Kolomanbrunnen market fountain, which is a gift from the abbey to the city, is in the centre of the Rathausplatz.

After Trudo ’ s death, the abbey became the centre of a pilgrimage, which brought wealth to the neighbouring town.

Edward captured Aberconwy in March 1283 and decided that the location would form the centre of a new county: the abbey would be relocated eight miles inland and a new English castle and walled town would be built on the monastery's former site.

The centre of the line, where it crossed the main route north to Rome ( Highway 6 ) which followed the Liri Valley, was anchored around the mountains behind the town of Cassino including Monte Cassino, on which was situated an old abbey that dominated the entrance to the Liri Valley ( a main route to Rome ), and Monte Cairo which gave the defenders clear observation of potential attackers advancing towards the mouth of the Liri valley.

It is the main town in the borough of St Edmundsbury and known for the ruined abbey near the town centre.

In the centre of Bury St Edmunds lie the remains of an abbey, surrounded by the Abbey Gardens, a park.

Following the suppression of the Pilgrimage of Grace, from 1539, it met at the former house of the Abbot of St. Mary's Abbey, York ( founded by the Lord of Richmond ) in the centre of that city ; after the dissolution of the abbey, the building had been retained by the king who formally allocated it to the Council.

However, the town is generally considered as the built-up area to the immediate east and west of the M5 at junction 9, with the town centre, abbey and old town situated to the west.

Maxwell Woosnam's study concluded that he is more likely to have descended the steep hill off to the southwest of the abbey, rather than the town centre to the south.

He set out to transform the abbey from a neglected and undisciplined place into a centre of learning.

He probably had some attachment to the city's Benedictine abbey, the burial place for many of the kingdom's monarchs and an important centre for pilgrimage close to a major ferry-crossing en-route to St Andrews.

Parts of the abbey, which stand in an expanse of public grassland close to the centre of the town, date from the 11th century.