Münsterschwarzach Abbey

Münsterschwarzach Abbey (Abtei Münsterschwarzach, formerly often known as Kloster Schwarzach or Schwarzach Abbey), is a Benedictine monastery in Germany. It is located at the confluence of the rivers Schwarzach and Main in Bavaria.

The abbey, dedicated to the Holy Saviour, the Virgin Mary and Saint Felicity, was founded before 788 as a nunnery. It was a private foundation of the Carolingian ruling house: the abbesses were daughters of the imperial family, for example Theodrada (d. 853), a daughter of Charlemagne. After the death of the last Carolingian abbess, Bertha, in 877, the nuns left the abbey and it was taken over by Benedictines from "Megingaudshausen".

Münsterschwarzach became a centre of monastic reform during the 12th century, when Bishop Adalbero of Würzburg, who was in close contact with the reform movements of Cluny, Gorze and Hirsau, appointed Egbert of Gorze as abbot. Egbert not only reformed and renewed the spiritual life of Münsterschwarzach but then, through the spread of the subsequent Münsterschwarzach Reforms, exerted an influence far beyond it, from Harsefeld Archabbey () near Stade in the north to Melk and Lambach in the south.

In the 18th century a Baroque basilica was commissioned from Balthasar Neumann, with frescoes in the cupolas by Holzer; it was dedicated in 1743 by Bishop Friedrich Karl von Schönborn.

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