\b0 Founded in the seventh century by a Benedictine monk from Saint-Wandrille in Normandy, the a
bbey of Moissac was ransacked several times. After the year 1000, however, it became one of the most prosperous in the congregation of Cluny. A stopover on the way to Santiago de Compostela and controlling lands which it exploited to the full, the abbey
could afford embellishments. Its twelfth-century cloister is one of the most beautiful in the West, with seventy-six bays formed of slender marble columns topped with finely carved capitals. From the same period, the sculptures on the tympanum of the abb
ey church are a masterpiece of Romanesque art at the moment of its transition toward the Gothic.\par
