St. Guilhem le Desert, in Languedoc, in the south of France. The victim of the vandalism that was common at the beginning of the 19th century, fragments of the abbey are found scattered all over the region and even as far away as the Cloisters museum, north of New York City. Much reconstructed in the 20th century, the abbey today is the parish church of the small, picturesque village of Saint-Guilhem-le-Desert.


Saint Guilhem was the man who gave his name to the beautiful monastery in the Gellone valley, 30 kilometers northwest of Montpellier. Born sometime in the late 8th century, Guilhem was the grandson of Charles Martel, the Duke of Aquitane, and one of the Emperor Charlemagne's chosen knights. A devout Christian who ended his days (died 812 AD) in the monastery at Gellone, he endowed the abbey with a relic of the True Cross, given to him by Charlemagne. Left in possession of the remains of a man who had been so illustrious in his early life and so holy in his later years, and possessing this relic of the True Cross, the monastery soon prospered and became a popular place of pilgrimage in southern France.