Christoph Spieß

Christoph Spieß (* 1558 in Altdorf ; † September 22, 1610 in Ochsenhausen ) was the 13th abbot of the Imperial Abbey of Ochsenhausen in today's Biberach district in Upper Swabia from 1593 to 1605 .

Life

After joining the Benedictine Abbey Ochsenhausen put Brother Christoph there in 1575 his Ordens- profession , and held until 1593, in which he the Convention was elected abbot, almost all the offices of the monastery. One of his concerns was to align the community of monks with the basic rules of the order and to strengthen the discipline within the convent to curb the monks' pursuit of private property.

Purchases

Wayside shrine in Bellamont

One year after taking office in 1594, the monastery acquired part of the tithe of Achstetten for 5900 guilders . Only one year later, in 1595, he acquired the village of Bellamont from Ludwig von Ratzenried with a dilapidated castle, Löhlis estate and the lower jurisdiction for 25,000 guilders.

He bequeathed a separate burial place for the dead to the monastic hospital in Goldbach, a place of residence near Ochsenhausen on the road to Reinstetten . He also had the hospital chapel repaired and embellished. Abbot Christoph built another hospital at the place where the monastery carpentry and dairy was.

Organ, rumble barrel and market law

In 1603 he had an organ built by an organ builder named Daniel Schiene in the rear choir of the church. In the same year Adam Aichelin painted the monastery church again.

In the same year he had a so-called rumble barrel set up in the tower of the monastery church in order to give the signal for the service in the last days of Holy Week . According to Christian tradition, the bells are silent from Good Friday to Easter , because they have all flown to Rome. Since the church bells mostly express a festive mood, it is not appropriate to ring them at the time of Jesus' death. However, in order to remind the residents of Ochsenhausen of the times of service, children and adolescents ran around the village with rattles or rattles during the service times. With the installation of the rumbling barrel, the tradition of ratcheting by the local youth in Holy Week ended.

In 1605 Ochsenhausen received at the initiative of Abbot Christoph Emperor Rudolph II. The market law . Within the monastery district, Abbot Christoph had a Michaelis garden laid out as early as 1602 and a tasteful apartment expanded, which he moved into after his resignation with considerable personal belongings contrary to his principles.

On September 20, 1605, at the age of 46, Abbot Christoph resigned.

literature

• Georg Geisenhof : Brief history of the former Reichsstift Ochsenhausen in Swabia. Ganser, Ottobeuren 1829 ( digitized version ).
• Volker Himmelein (ed.): Old monasteries, new masters. The secularization in the German southwest 1803. Large state exhibition Baden-Württemberg 2003. Thorbecke, Ostfildern 2003, ISBN 3-7995-0212-2 (exhibition catalog and essay volume).
• Volker Himmelein, Franz Quarthal (Ed.): Vorderösterreich, Only the tail feather of the imperial eagle? The Habsburgs in the German southwest. Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft, Ulm 1999, ISBN 3-88294-277-0 (catalog of the state exhibition).
• Heribert Smolinsky : Church history of the modern age. Part 1. 2008.
• H.-J. Reiff, G. Spahr, D. Hauffe: Ochsenhausen monastery. History, art, present. Biberach 1985.

predecessor	Office	successor
Johannes Ernst OSB	Abbot of Ochsenhausen 1593–1605	Urban Mayer OSB