Souvigny - Prieuré Saint-Pierre-et-Saint-Paul

In 915 Aymar de Bourbon, ancestor of the House of Bourbon, gave land in Souvigny to the Cluny Abbey for the construction of a monastery. At that time the "Abbaye de Cluny" was just 5 years old, as it had been founded 910 by William I, Duke of Aquitaine, (aka "William the Pious").

Souvigny was one of the first priories, dependent from the Cluny Abbey, so it was known later as "one of the five eldest daughters of Cluny".

Cluny developed into the most powerful abbey in the Middle Ages, when the Cluniac Reforms changed the monastic life in Europe. German historian Dr. Joachim Wollasch ("Cluny, Licht der Welt"), estimates that in its haydays, more than 10.000 monks were parts of this network´, that stretched all over Europe. The pelerinage to Santiago de Compostella was one of the great "themes", developed and strongly supported by Cluny.

The priory in Souvigny, located about 130kms west of Cluny, was such an important convent, that two of the powerful abbots of Cluny, Majolus (+ 994) and Odilo (+ 1049) died here. Their graves were a place of pilgrimage site soon after. To cope with the growing number of pilgrims, the priory´s church got enlarged already within the 10th century.

The church, probably built after the model of Cluny III, with five aisles structure and two transepts, got recently renovated. In the center (again since 2009) are the tombs of Saint Mayeul and Saint Odilo, the abbots of Cluny. The tombs, that got desecrated during the French Revolution, were reconstructed from the pieces found during excavations in the early 2000s.