From the sixth to the eighth century, Gallo-Roman villas within the Merovingian royal fisc have been repeatedly donated as websites for monasteries beneath royal patronage in Gaul – Saint-Maur-des-Fossés and Fleury Abbey provide examples. In Germany a widely known occasion is Echternach ; as late as 698, Willibrord established an abbey at a Roman villa of Echternach near Trier , presented 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 positioned Gallo-Roman family on the ‘villa’ of …