Saalfeld Abbey

Anno II. in the Vita Annonis Minor (the Saalfeld Abbey is bottom left)

Saalfeld Abbey in 1650 to the right

The Benedictine Abbey of Saalfeld was an important medieval Benedictine monastery and Imperial Abbey in Saalfeld, Thuringia. As an imperial Abbey, the Monastery was under the direct auspices of the Holy Roman Emperor, and enjoyed a degree of sovereignty equivalent to a small micro state, within the Empire.^[1] The monastery existed from 1071AD until 1526, after the Reformation.^[2][3]

History

The Holy Roman Empire in 1400

Founded in 1071 (or 1074), The historian Lambert of Hersfeld, holds that Anno II, Archbishop of Cologne founded the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter and Paul In 1074 AD with religious independence and a bequest of land and assets. In 1124 by Pope Honorius II confirmed the founding as did the Archdiocese of Mainz the following year. His chronicles are the only written sources on the regions history for much of the High Middle Ages.

The monastery quickly became the ecclesiastical center of power in eastern Thuringia and was the starting point of the Christianization of the surrounding area, and the town grew round the growth of the monastic power. At its founding there was a hamlet, the fishing village Altsaalfeld, located nearby on the banks of the river, as the town grew the abbey was just outside the medieval town.

There is evidence that the monastery deaneries set up houses of prayer, about 1225 in Coburg (from 1075) and Probstzella. The Abbey at Saalfeld claimed the status of a direct imperial Fürstabtei and so was secular principality within the territorial area of Thuringia. Emperor Maximilian I in 1497 endowed the abbey with the National Regalia.

During the Reformation in 1526 the monastery was secularised. The last abbot Georg von Thüna sold the monastery to the Counts of Mansfeld. After the resale of the house it was destroyed during the German Peasants' War in 1526.

Between 1677 and 1720 a Royal Palace in Saalfeld was built on the site of the former Benedictine abbey, whose buildings were, including the Romanesque basilica for blasted and demolished in 1676. The abbey is today the site of Saalfeld Castle.

References

1. photo of Saalfeld Palace site of the Abbey.
2. G. Jenal: Erzbischof Anno von Köln und sein politisches Wirken. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Reichs- u. Territorialpolitik im 11. Jahrhundert; (=MGMA 8), 2Tle, 1974/75
3. G. Brückner: Landeskunde des Herzogthums Meiningen. Theil 2: Die Topographie des Landes. Brückner & Renner, Meiningen 1853, p618.