Ferrières Abbey
Ferrières Abbey was a Benedictine monastery situated at Ferrières-en-Gâtinais in the arrondissement of Montargis, in the département of Loiret, France. History Represented in the famous Monasticon Gallicanum, it seems clear that the abbey (despite a tradition based on the Acts of Saint Savinian and a forged charter of Clovis I, dated 508) was founded in about 630 by Columbanus, an Irish monk. The dedication was to Saints Peter and Paul. (According to Dom Mazoyer there was before then at Ferrières a chapel dedicated to the Blessed Virgin under the title Notre-Dame de Bethleem de Ferrières). It reached a height of prosperity in the time of the celebrated Lupus (Loup of Ferrières) (c. 850), when the abbey became quite an active literary centre, but the library was destroyed at the same time as the monastery, and only rare fragments survive. One of these, preserved at the Vatican library (Reg.1573), recalls the memory of Saint Aldric (d. 836), Abbot of Ferrières before he became Archbishop of Sens. The Carolingian kings Louis III and his brother Carloman held their joint coronation at the abbey in 879, and were later buried there. It was restored in the 9th century by Louis the Pious and