Benedictine Abbey Saalfeld
The Benedictine Abbey Saalfeld was a significant medieval monastery of the Benedictine in Saalfeld / Saale in Thuringia .
history
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The East Franconian King and future Emperor Heinrich II donated the area around the royal court , first mentioned on March 11, 899 as salauelda , the provincia Salaveld , with other imperial estates and royal courts around an old place of worship and court near the high oak on the Saalfelder Höhe, In the wooded southern Orlagau (in superiori sylva) and around the Coburg mountain on an old military and trade route from the Saale to the Main in 1012, the Count Palatine Ezzo of Lorraine to equip his wife, the Emperor's daughter Mathilde , on the occasion of the reconciliation after an unsuccessful one Campaign against Ezzo. The strategically important trading center and royal court on the Rhine Duisburg and the Kaiserpfalz Kaiserswerth near Düsseldorf were added to this donation in 1016 . Ezzo's daughter Richeza bequeathed the property to the Archdiocese of Cologne in 1056 according to forged documents . Richeza's brother, Archbishop Hermann II of Cologne , was supposed to secure the family's inheritance through this transfer, but had died in the year it came into force.
When the new Archbishop Anno II took over the inheritance of Richeza, who died on March 21, 1063 in the royal palace of Saalfeld, he caused the canons, who were probably established in the original parish of St. Gertrudis , to found one of the St. Canons consecrated to Mary and the Apostles Peter and Paul. On the Grundhof on the Petersberg, a bank plateau south of the Palatine Chapel, there is said to have been a small early Christian chapel, over which the canons had the high altar of the collegiate church built. In 1071 Anno transferred the monastery to Benedictine monks from the reform abbeys of St. Michael on the Siegberg , the former ancestral castle of Ezzo, and St. Pantaleon in Cologne , which were supposed to implement a variant of Cluny's spiritual reform movement , the Siegburg Reform , designed according to his ideas .
With this he founded the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter and Paul . The abbey was endowed with spiritual power and extensive property in 1074 and confirmed by Pope Honorius II in 1124 and by the Archdiocese of Mainz in 1125 . The place quickly developed into the ecclesiastical center of power in eastern Thuringia and became the starting point for Christianization and settlement in the area. The imperial city of Saalfeld was founded by Emperor Friedrich I around 1180 separately from a settlement center near an old castle complex . A second hamlet, the fishing village of Altsaalfeld , was on the banks of the Saale. The abbey was now at the gates of the medieval city, which in 1208, pledged by King Otto IV to the Counts of Schwarzburg , lost its imperial status and became a fiefdom of the Schwarzburg in 1212.
The historian Lampert von Hersfeld , who stayed in the Saalfeld monastery for several weeks, reports on the founding of the monastery . For many years his chronicles are the only written sources on the history of the abbey and the region. It is documented that the monastery built Propsteien in Coburg (from 1075) and Probstzella (established as a prayer house in 1116, first mentioned in 1225 as a provost). The Saalfeld Abbey claimed the status of an imperial direct prince abbey , making it a secular principality and owning rich property in Thuringia. In 1497 the Roman-German King Maximilian I furnished the abbey with imperial regalia.
During the Reformation , the monastery was secularized in 1526 . The last abbot Georg von Thüna sold the monastery, which had been dissolved by the convent, to the Counts of Mansfeld . After the resale to the House of Wettin in 1532, the electoral Saxon administration of the Saalfeld district used the abbey buildings, which were partially destroyed and devastated during the occupation by Saalfeld citizens in the course of the peasant war in 1525. From 1677 to 1720 the residential palace in Saalfeld was built on the site of the former Benedictine abbey, the buildings of which, including the Romanesque basilica, were blown up and demolished in 1676.
literature
- G. Jenal: Archbishop Anno of Cologne and his political work. A contribution to the history of the imperial u. Territorial politics in the 11th century ; (= MGMA 8), 2Tle, 1974/75
- G. Brückner : Regional studies of the Duchy of Meiningen. Part 2: The topography of the country. Brückner & Renner, Meiningen 1853, p. 618
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 39 ′ 8.6 ″ N , 11 ° 21 ′ 30.6 ″ E