The abbey occupies, it is believed, the site of the Palatium Æmilianum, which served as a retreat for Savinus, son of a Count of Barcelona, and nephew of the Count of Poitiers, in the eighth century. The abbey was erected by Charlemagne, and here, so goes the legend, Roland fought and cleft from head to waist two Saracen giants, and constrained a third to submit to baptism. In 843 the terrible Northmen destroyed the monastery. Raymond I, Count of Bigorre, rebuilt it in 945; and he it was who granted the Valley of Cauterets to the monastery. It also possessed sole rights to the interment of the inhabitants of the Val d’Azun. When, on one occasion, these people ventured to bury one of their dead near the church of Arreins, the monks forced them to dig up the body, although in an advanced state of putrefaction, and transport it to S. Savin. It is probably in reference to this that Frossard, a Protestant pastor, and one of the first writers on the Pyrenees, says that the monks enjoyed “several privileges at once destructive to individual liberty and to sound morals.” The first appearance of S. Savin is eminently striking; the massive walls, the large rude blocks of which they are constructed, the lofty apse, the fine portal, and even the clumsy fifteenth-century tower, with its ill-shaped spire, are all impressive. The present church is of the beginning of the twelfth century, and the architecture is of the plainest and most severe Romanesque. On the tympanum of the west door is a figure of Christ between the evangelistic symbols, but so weathered as to be scarcely distinguishable. In the interior is the marble tomb of S. Savin; far more ancient than the present church, it is a rude, early sarcophagus. But what is of special interest are the two large paintings on wood, each in nine compartments, representing the legend of the saint, the inscriptions under each group are in patois. In the sacristy are preserved the hood and comb of Savin. A “bénétier des cagots” is a holy water vessel, near the entrance, supported by figures, supposed to represent members of the proscribed race. The organ case is of 1557, and is adorned with three faces that loll their tongues and roll their eyes, hardly to the edification of the congregation, when the bellows are worked. The village itself of S. Savin is small, silent, and deserted, and impresses one with a sense of melancholy. But the great beauty of S. Savin is the view one enjoys from it, especially from the chapel of the Pietà, of the upper portion of the basin of the Valley of Argelez. Villages and hamlets are strewn thick over it and on the mountain side opposite. One can see up the Valley of Isaby to the ruin of Saint Orens, and the Pic de Viscos towering as a pyramid above Pierrefite, where open the gorges of the Gave from Luz and from Cauterets. A scramble up the Valley of Isaby to S. Orens will repay the trouble.