Date

Circa 1910

Benedictine monastery in Murbach, southern Alsace, in a valley at the foot of the Grand Ballon in the Vosges. The monastery was founded in 727 by Eberhard, Count of Alsace, and established as a Benedictine house by Saint Pirmin. Its territory once comprised 3 towns and 30 villages. The abbey was important politically, and Charlemagne himself took the title "Abbot of Murbach" (in a secular sense) in 792, making it an imperial abbey. The buildings, including the abbey church, one of the earliest vaulted Romanesque architecture structures, were laid waste in 1789 during the Revolution by the peasantry and the abbey was dissolved shortly afterwards. Of the Romanesque abbey church, dedicated to Saint Leger (or Leodegar, Bishop of Autun, died 679), only the transept remains with its two towers, and the east end with the quire. The site of the nave is now a burial ground.