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Origin and history

The Abbey of Gellone, founded around 804 by Guillaume de Gellone (or Guilhèm), Count of Toulouse and cousin of Charlemagne, implanted in an isolated valley near Aniane. This close friend of the emperor, after a military career, withdrew to create a Benedictine monastery dedicated to the Holy Savior, under the influence of Benedict d'Aniane. From the beginning, the site houses prestigious relics, including a fragment of the True Cross offered by Charlemagne, attracting pilgrims and devotion.

In the 11th century, the abbey obtained from Pope Urban II a privilege of exemption, subtracting it from the episcopal authority of Lodève. It became a major stage on the way to Santiago de Compostela (via the road to Arles), and flourished thanks to the cult of Saint William, canonized in 1066, and his relics. Its radiance is magnified by the Gesta of William of Orange, medieval epic celebrating a legendary Guilhem, warrior against the Saracens, far removed from the historical founder.

At the height of Gellone, in the 12th to 13th centuries, the abbey had up to a hundred monks and enriched with a cloister on two levels, decorated with Romanesque and Gothic sculptures. Pilgrims, attracted by the fragment of the Cross and the tomb of Saint William, transform the church: the monks abandon the nave for an elevated platform, accessible by the cloister. The abbots, like Pierre de Montpeyroux, adorn the abbey with sumptuous liturgical furniture, including a marble altar inlaid with glass paste (XII century).

The decline began in the 15th century with the beginning (1465) and conflicts with the bishops of Lodève. In 1568 Protestants looted the abbey, destroying the tomb of St. William and dispersing the reliquaries. Saved from the ruin by the Maurists in 1644, however, it was weakened: in 1783 the bishop of Lodève, Bishop de Fumel, obtained his fusion with his diocese. Sold as a national property in 1790, the abbey became a parish church, while the cloister was dismantled, its sculptures sold at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) in 1906.

Ranked a historical monument in 1840, then a UNESCO World Heritage Site (1998) for its role in the roads of Compostela, the abbey retains remarkable remains: an 18-metre-high Romanesque nave, a 12th-century porch, and a lapidary depot housing capitals and sarcophagi, including that of the founder. The successive restorations (XXth–XXIth centuries) preserved its medieval altar and fragmentary frescoes, while concerts today animate its walls.

The site, one of the most visited in Herault (305 000 admissions in 2010), bears witness to eight centuries of religious and artistic history, marked by tensions between the abbatial and episcopal powers, the jacquarian pilgrimages, and the upheavals of the Revolution. Its cloister, partially reconstituted, and its missing relics recall the past richness of this jewel of medieval Occitanie.

Future

The abbey of Gellone, or abbey of Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, is one of the 71 monuments as well as 7 portions of paths that have been inscribed since 1998 on the UNESCO World Heritage List under the official title "Chemins de Saint-Jacques-de-Compostelle en France".

It is on the way to Via Tolosana or "Toulousaine Way" which passes through Toulouse, hence its name, but its starting point is at Arles from where its other name of way to Arles (via Arelatensis).

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