Redon

Redon grew at the meeting of the Oust and Vilaine rivers around the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Sauveur. Its position on waterways between Rennes, Nantes and Vannes made the town a centre of exchange as well as religious life. The abbey, founded in the ninth century, preserved a collection of charters that recorded the lands and families of early Brittany.

In 1622 Richelieu became commendatory abbot of Saint-Sauveur. The reformed Benedictines of Saint-Maur undertook the rebuilding of the monastic buildings in the seventeenth century, reshaping the old foundation and its cloister beside the river. The abbey had long played a part in the political and spiritual life of Brittany. During the Revolution the abbey's church became a parish church, continuing to serve the town after the monastic community had disappeared.