Abstract

The ancient abbey of St. Antonin in Rouergue was located in the valley of the Aveyron, from which came the name Nobilis Vallis, or Noble Val, by which the site has been known since at least the thirteenth century. During the thousand years or more from its reputed foundation in the eighth century until its dissolution at the time of the French Revolution, the abbey went through two major crises. The first, with which this article is largely concerned, was its transfer in the late eleventh century from a house of monks into a chapter of regular canons. The second was during the Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century, when the town of Saint-Antonin was a center of the Protestant reform movement. In 1570 the church and the collegiate buildings were destroyed and the canons expelled. When they returned in the seventeenth century, and in 1661 joined the reformed Congregation of France at Ste. Geneviève, they occupied a new building in the center of the town, and the old site on the river was used as a garden and more recently for a thermal establishment and an old people’s home