Description : Saint-Maur-des-Fossés (French pronunciation: ) is a commune in the southeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 11.7 kilometres (7.3 miles) from the center of Paris. Saint-Maur-des-Fossés owes its name to an abbey founded in 638 by Queen Nanthild, regent for her son Clovis II, at a place called Fossati in Medieval Latin, Les Fossés in modern French, meaning "the moats". This place, located at the narrow entrance of a loop where the Marne River made its way round a rocky outcrop, was probably named after the moats of an ancient Celtic oppidum and later a Roman castrum; the site was known in medieval documents as Castrum Bagaudarum, at a time when the marauding Bagaudae had developed a legendary reputation as defenders of Christians again Roman persecution. Massive foundations, sited so far from a Roman frontier, were attributed by C. Jullian to a temple or a villa instead. In Merovingian times, Gallo-Roman villas in the royal fisc were repeatedly donated as sites for monasteries under royal patronage. The abbey, dedicated to Saint Peter, Saint Paul and the Virgin Mary, was called Sanctus Petrus Fossatensis in Medieval Latin (Saint Pierre des Fossés in French), meaning "Saint Peter of the Moats". In 868, King Charles the Bald invited the monks of the Abbey of Saint-Maur de Glanfeuil (in Le Thoureil, Maine-et-Loire, western France), who had fled their abbey due to Viking invasion, to relocate to Saint Pierre des Fossés with their precious relics of Saint Maurus. Later in the Middle Ages, the relics of Saint Maurus became very famous as they were supposed to heal gout and epilepsy, and Saint Pierre des Fossés became one of the most famous pilgrimage centers of medieval France. The rededication to Saint Maurus, in which abbey was renamed Saint-Maur-des-Fossés ("Saint Maurus of the Moats"), was justified by the story that during a drought in 1137, prayers to the Virgin and Saints Peter and Paul having been ineffective, prayer to Saint Maur brought the needed rainfall.
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