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Luxeuil-Les-Bains

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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A town of eastern France, in the department of Haute-Saone, 18 m. N.E. of Vesoul. Pop. (1906) 5 1 95. It is situated in a region of forests on the right bank of the Breuchin. It has an abbey-church dating from the 13th and 14th centuries, containing a curious 17th-century organ loft in the form of an immense bracket supported by a colossal figure of Hercules. The abbot's palace (16th and 18th centuries) serves as presbytery and town hall. A cloister of the 15th century and other buildings of the 17th century also remain. There are several mansions and houses dating from various periods from the 14th to the 16th century. The Maison Carree, once the town hall, an interesting specimen of 15th-century architecture, was built by Perrin Jouffroy, father of Cardinal Jouffroy. The cardinal, who was born at Luxeuil in 1412, built the house with a graceful balcony and turret which faces the Maison Carree. The Maison de la Baille and the Maison Francois I. are of the Renaissance period. The fine modern Grammont Hospital is in the style of Louis Luxeuil is renowned for its mineral springs, of which there are seventeen, two being ferruginous, and the rest charged with chloride of sodium; their temperatures range from 70° to 158° F. The water is employed for drinking and for baths. The bathing establishment contains a museum of Gallo-Roman antiquities and there are also remains of Roman baths and aqueducts to be seen in or near it. Luxeuil has a communal college. Copper-founding, the spinning and weaving of cotton, lace-making, dyeing and the distilling of kirsch are carried on.

Luxeuil was the Roman Lixovium and contained many fine buildings at the time of its destruction by the Huns under Attila in 451. In 590 St Columban here founded a monastery, afterwards one of the most famous in Franche Comte. In the 8th century it was destroyed by the Saracens; afterwards rebuilt, monastery and town were devastated by the Normans in the 9th century and pillaged on several occasions afterwards. The abbey schools were celebrated in the middle ages and the abbots had great influence; but their power was curtailed by the emperor Charles V. and the abbey was suppressed at the Revolution.

See H. Beaumont, Etude hist. sur l'abbaye de Luxeuil, 590-1790 (Lux. 1895); Grandmongin and A. Garnier, Hist. de la ville et des thermes de Luxeuil (Paris, 1866), with 16 plates.