The abbey of Royaumont was built following a promise made by the future king of France, Louis IX, to his father, Louis VIII. From 1228, a huge abbey (the largest after Saint-Denis) began to be built at a place called Cuimont, renamed Mons Regalis, then Mont Royal or Royaumont. Louis IX negotiated with the mother abbey of Cîteaux to send one hundred and fourteen monks and about forty lay brothers. A place of meditation and learning, the abbey welcomed a few years later the tutor of the royal children, Vincent de Beauvais, who wrote his encyclopaedia “Speculum maius” there.