Saint-Mihiel

Saint-Mihiel grew beside the Meuse around the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Michel. Founded in the eighth century and moved down to the river in the ninth, the abbey became a centre of learning and religious life in the duchy of Bar. Its library brought together manuscripts and printed books over many centuries.

The sculptor Ligier Richier, born at Saint-Mihiel around 1500, worked for the court of Lorraine and created religious works for the town. A convert to Protestantism, he left for Geneva in the 1560s. The abbey joined the reforming congregation of Saint-Vanne in the early seventeenth century and was rebuilt after the devastation of war. Its library received new rooms around 1775; the Revolution dissolved the monastery, but many of its books remained together.