Matthias Widmann

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the German historian and humanist with the same birth name, see Matthias von Kemnat (around 1430–1476).

Matthias Widmann (* 1661 in Neustift ; † March 24, 1721 ) was a Premonstratensian monk . From 1692 he was provost and from 1717 to 1721 abbot of the Neustift monastery near Freising .

Life

Matthias Widmann was born in Neustift in 1661. He attended the grammar school in Landshut and entered the Neustift monastery at the age of 17. After the novitiate he was sent to Ingolstadt to complete his studies , where he obtained the degree of a master's degree in philosophy. Ordained a priest in 1684, he went back to Ingolstadt and studied not only theology and canon law but also secular law.

In 1687 he became prior and in 1692 provost of his monastery. He had the old monastery church demolished and a new one built from 1705 to 1715. At the same time the pilgrimage and vicariate churches in Tüntenhausen and Haindlfing , Allershausen and Kirchdorf were restored. Before completion of the construction of the monastery church, he ordered a new organ, provided the music choir with new instruments and the church tower with five new bells. He enriched the library with valuable books. He also improved the living quarters of his confreres, which had been in ruins since the time of the Thirty Years' War.

At the general chapter of his order in Prémontré , he received the abbot title for himself and his successors on April 27, 1717, but only survived the increase in rank by four years.

Widmann is described as interested in literature. In 1702 he founded the literary association “Useful and Luster Awakening Society of Familiar Neighbors on the Isar River” in Munich.

literature

• Johann Baptist Prechtl : Contributions to the history of the city of Freising. Third delivery: the former Neustift monastery. Datterer, 1877.
• Rudolf Goerge: On the history of the library of the former Premonstratensian monastery Neustift near Freising . In: Amperland