Garrigue villages

Aniane is a monastic settlement founded around 782 by Witiza, the son of Count Aigulfe of Maguelone and a friend of Charlemagne. When he became a monk at Saint-Seine near Dijon, out of devotion to the saint, he took the name of Benedict, the sixth-century founder of the Benedictines, Saint Benedict of Nursia. In 814, Louis the Pious asked him to undertake the reform of the Benedictine order and of monastic life throughout the empire, an essential element in the Carolingian renaissance.

In the early years of the 9th century he was, without a doubt, the most influential monk in the western Church and, when Guillaume decided to retreat to the wilderness in 804, Benedict became his spiritual counsellor. The villages of Aniane and Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert are closely linked as part of the consolidation of Carolingian power in Languedoc.

Aniane is also a village that can be considered as exemplary in terms of town planning. It is a true model of its kind. From the 12th century onwards indeed, the monastic settlement acquired enormous fortifications and the walls took in the parish of Saint-Jean-Baptiste (the former Penitents’ Chapel) as well as the Abbey of Saint-Sauveur (the present-day parish church). In the 14th century, the Hundred Years War and the mercenary armies ravaged the village.

During the 16th-century Wars of Religion, Aniane did not escape destruction including that of its abbey, which was razed to the ground and completely rebuilt in the classic Jesuit style when monks from the community of Saint-Maur restored it to life. The rebuilding was completed in 1714. It is monumental in its scale and quite unique in the Hérault Valley. The facade is flanked by two enormous volutes which break the regularity of the entrance pillars. Saint Peter and Saint Paul are represented beneath a Christ in Majesty carved in the centre of a semi-circular pediment.

In the 18th century the village underwent startlingly rapid economic development. As well as production of wine and oil, genuine village industries developed, tanneries, for example, were such an important activity that an entire district and a chapel (Regagnas) were built simply for this trade.

The founding of Aniane played a major part in the history of the whole Hérault Valley. Even though the 20th century was one more difficult period for the village, it has continued to be a place that is not to be missed, one which has influenced most of the neighbouring villages.


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