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  Another connection between Burgundy and England lies in the early history of the royal and Cluniac foundation of Reading Abbey. The abbey was founded by King Henry I, and the community started with a group of monks from Cluny (plus some from its daughter house at Lewes Priory), under Hugh of Amiens as the first abbot, in 1121. Abbot Hugh was then elected as Archbishop of Rouen in King Henry's Duchy of Normandy in 1129, and it was he who ministered to the King as he lay dying of "a surfeit of lampreys" in Normandy in 1135: the king's body was embalmed at Rouen and brought back to be buried at Reading Abbey. Archbishop Hugh spent a lot of his time in England, and was at the Council of Oxford in 1139, summoned by Henry of Blois, Bishop of Winchester and himself also a former monk of Cluny. When the great abbey church at Reading was finally completed, it was longer than Westminster Abbey and comparable in size and grandeur with Gloucester or Ely. Reading Abbey church wa
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  Berzé-la-Ville      La Chapelle des Moines, at Berzé-la-Ville (Saône-et-Loire), between Cluny and Mâcon, has a British connection which is rather recent.      The chapel was built by Hugues de Semur, the great Abbot of Cluny, as part of a monastic grange, in the 11th century. Raymond Oursel, in his Bourgogne Romane , speculates that it must have been one of Abbot Hugh's favourite places, as it is one of only three to be mentioned in his final testament, written at the end of his unusually long life (he was 84 when he died in 1109). It is famous for its frescoed apse, which was the product of the very best Cluniac artists:      Probably painted under Hugh's successor as Abbot, Ponce de Melgueil (1109-22), it shows Christ handing a no longer legible text to St Peter (who was the patron saint of the Abbey of Cluny), surrounded by the other apostles, and two smaller groups of saints with local connections below.      The chapel fell into a bad state of repair due to long-term neg
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  This year, the new house chapel has come into use, so that the Daily Office can be read there, and Mass celebrated on Sunday and major feast day mornings. / Nous avons aménagé une partie des dépendences en chapelle cette année, afin que nous puissions y célébrer les offices et la messe.
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