Rein Abbey, Austria

Rein Abbey (German: Stift Rein) is a Cistercian monastery in Rein near Gratwein, Styria, in Austria. Also known as the "Cradle of Styria" ("Wiege der Steiermark"), it is the oldest surviving Cistercian community in the world.

The monastery was founded in 1129 by Margrave Leopold the Strong of Styria and settled by monks from Ebrach Abbey in Bavaria under the first abbot, Gerlacus. It was the 38th Cistercian monastery to be founded. The previous 37 are all since dissolved, leaving Rein as the oldest extant Cistercian monastery in the world. The abbey has remained a Cistercian community ever since on the same site, except for the temporary exile of a few years during World War II when the premises were confiscated by the Nazis and the monks were evicted until they were able to return in 1945.

Rein was the mother house of Wilhering Abbey near Linz in 1146, and later of Sittich Abbey and Neukloster Abbey.

On 19 September 1276 the abbey was the scene of the Rein Oath (German: Der Reiner Schwur), when the Styrian and Carinthian nobility pledged allegiance to Rudolf of Habsburg, King of the Romans, thus furthering the establishment of the Habsburgs as rulers of Austria and the end of the rule of King Ottokar II of Bohemia.

From 1950 to 1990 the community at Rein also accommodated the exiled Cistercians of Hohenfurt Abbey in the former Czechoslovakia, and during that time was known as Rein-Hohenfurt Abbey, until the Czech monks were eventually able to return to the reopened monastery in the present Czech Republic, now Vyšší Brod Abbey.

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