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From the end of the Wars of Religion to the French Revolution, Menat, a Clunisian abbey dating back to 1107, ruled over the Sioule Valley in the northwest of the Clermont diocese. The monks were large landholders and developed a diversified and complex set of links with their neighbors, receiving feudal rights and providing work to the rural poor while maintaining daily contact with notaries public, merchants, and surgeons. While they did not directly manage the religious life of the faithful, they constituted a driving force within it through their setting up a parish clergy, providing alms and social services, and playing the role of intercessors. Until its suppression during the French Revolution, this Auvergne-based monastic community constituted a key element of the economic, social, and religious life of a local French territory under the Ancien Régime.