From the sixth to the eighth century, Gallo-Roman villas throughout the Merovingian royal fisc have been repeatedly donated as web sites for monasteries underneath royal patronage in Gaul – Saint-Maur-des-Fossés and Fleury Abbey provide examples. In Germany a well-known occasion is Echternach ; as late as 698, Willibrord established an abbey at a Roman villa of Echternach near Trier , offered to him by Irmina , daughter of Dagobert II , king of the Franks Kintzheim was Villa Regis, the “villa of the king”. Round 590, Saint Eligius was born in a highly placed Gallo-Roman family on the ‘villa’ of …