St. Egidien, Nuremberg

St Egidien St Giles
St Egidien, Nuremberg
Basic information
Location	Nuremberg
Affiliation	Evangelical Lutheran Church in Bavaria
Country	Germany
Ecclesiastical or organizational status	Parish Church
Architectural description
Architectural type	Church
Architectural style	Baroque architecture
Groundbreaking	14 October 1711
Direction of façade	W

St. Egidien on Egidienplatz is the former Benedictine Abbey of Saint Giles (Egidienskirche), now a church in the former free imperial city of Nuremberg, southern Germany. It is considered a significant contribution to the baroque church architecture of Middle Franconia.

The first church building was probably built in the years 1120/1130 on the site of the second, northern Nuremberg royal court. The royal courts administered royal possessions, agriculture and forestry. Thus, it had the status of a royal church.

Around the year 1140 Emperor Conrad III and his wife Gertrud raised the foundation to the rank of a benedictine abbey and endowed it generously. They made Carus, Abbot of the Scots Monastery, Regensburg, their royal chaplain and the first Abbot of St Egidien. The monastery was rich immediately and subordinate in secular terms only to the Holy Roman Emperor. The first monks came from the Scots Monastery, Regensburg and St. James's Abbey, Würzburg.

It was a three-aisled basilica in the Romanesque style.

In 1418, the monastery was impoverished and in debt. The altar vessels were mortgaged, and the Scots Monastery, Regensburg no longer guaranteed the debt. The abbey was taken over by German Benedictines from Reichenbach After the take-over the monastery was partially rebuilt, and the church and chapels were renovated. The Irish monks had to come to terms with the new regime or leave the abbey.

At the Reformation in 1525 the monastery was dissolved, and the monastic estates transferred to the city authorities. After the Peace of Augsburg there were two unsuccessful attempts to recover the former monastic estates for the Benedictine order, firstly in 1578 by the Scottish Bishop John Lesley on behalf of Mary, Queen of Scots, and from 1629 to 1631 by a Commission for the Prince-Bishopric of Bamberg to implement a Roman Catholic Restitution Edict. On 6 and 7 July 1696 a fire destroyed the monastery and church.