The Benedicte Abbey of Ottobeuren

Ottobeuren is located in the region of Oberschwaben near the alpine region of the Allgäu in the province of Baden-Würrtemberg. The town is situated between within a flat valley, through which the small tributary of the Danube river, the Western Günz, is traversing. More broadly, Ottobeuren is situated in relatively close proximity to the Bodensee and the prominent monasteries of that region. In contrast to other municipalities, several hundred homesteads, a small church and a nobleman‘s fortification can be traced back to before the foundation of the convent.

The origin of the convent goes back to the year 764 when monks of Reichenau and Saint Gallen received a donation from the count (comes) Silach and his wife Ermenswint, in order to ensure continued prayer service to the dead of the family and a joint familial sepulchre. Since the monks did not receive any reliquaries with their foundation, the beginning of the monastery sees the theft of the relics of the martyr Saint Alexander from the Cathedral of Vienne by the two sons of count Silach, Gauzipert and Toto. Toto was the chamberlain of the Bishop of Vienne at the time, which not only explains the success of the operation but also exemplifies the interconnectedness of Carolingian Europe. Consequently, Silach also appointed his son Toto as the first abbot of Saint Alexander‘s monastery. He served until 815 or 817 and there is little known about his direct successors. In 830, the first reliable documentation mentions the convent in the fraternity book (Liber memorialis) of Reichenau, showing the continued connection to its motherhouse and attesting 22 monks at Ottobeuren. The convent was to grow to 100 members in the course of the century. Within the long history of Ottobeuren four Golden ages can be identified:

(1)In the course of the 10th century, the convent lost the privilege to elect its own abbot due to the domination of a local count. However, the count‘s nephew and Bishop of Augsburg, Ulrich, managed to receive imperial immediacy for the abbey from Emperor Otto I. in 972/3. In the following decades, Ottobeuren obtained large properties in the surrounding area with resulting economic growth.

(2)The 11th century brought moral decline to the abbey, which was just halted by the appointment of Rupert I and the instatement of the ‚reforms of Hirsau‘. These sought a moral renewal by appointing pious friars from other convents and founding a Scriptorium, as a means to keep the monks busy by copying manuscripts, instead of indulging in earthly vices. In the late 11th and early 12th centuries, the convent fell victim to fire twice and was rebuilt just as often. As of the 14th century and in face of the plague, Ottobeuren again experienced a steady decline, losing many estates to pay for the opulence of an almost temporal abbotship, reaching its lowest point in the 16th century. In the time of the German peasants‘ revolt, the abbey was sacked in 1525 and for a time, a mercenary installed himself as ‚abbot‘ exploiting and abusing the fraternity.

(3)But with the reinstatement of order, Ottobeuren developed to become a centre of early Humanism in southern Germany. Already in 1509, the monastery had a printing press and in 1540, it founded a public school dedicated to teaching oriental languages. In 1543, an attempt was made to found a University of Ottobeuren, which was, however, relocated in the following year to Elchingen. The convent was also remodelled in the style of the Renaissance. However, the Thirty Years War made an end to this steep progress, as Ottobeuren was occupied and raided several times by Swedish and French troops.

(4)Prosperity returned with the Baroque. In 1710 Rupert II Neß was elected to the abbotship. He regained the imperial immediacy of Ottobeuren, which had been lost to Augsburg, making Ottobeuren an imperial abbey, with respective elective rights in the imperial curia. In order to reflect this ascendancy, he undertook the large-scale reconstruction of the convent in the style of the Baroque, which can still be observed today. In the course of the Secularization, the convent was officially dissolved in 1802, however, 18 of the 48 friars were permitted to stay and continued their worship under difficult circumstances, until it was reinstituted in 1834 as a Priory – again under the authority of Augsburg. Finally, in 1918, Ottobeuren again became an independent abbey, which still persists today with currently 15 monks.

FORMAL ANALYSIS