St. Emmeram's Abbey
| Imperial Abbey of St. Emmeram | ||||||||||
| Reichsabtei Sankt Emmeram | ||||||||||
| Imperial Abbey of the Holy Roman Empire | ||||||||||
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| Capital | St. Emmeram's Abbey | |||||||||
| Government | Theocracy | |||||||||
| Historical era | Middle Ages | |||||||||
| • | Abbey founded | c. 739 | ||||||||
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Separated from bishopric |
975 |
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| • | Gained Reichsfreiheit | 1295 | ||||||||
| • | Abbot raised to Reichsfürst |
1731 |
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Mediatised to new Archbishopric¹ |
1806 | ||||||||
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Ceded to Bavaria on Imperial collapse |
January 6, 1806 |
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| Today part of |
 Germany
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| 1: The Bishopric, the Imperial City and all three Imperial Abbeys were mediatised simultaneously. | ||||||||||
St. Emmeram's Abbey (Kloster Sankt Emmeram or Reichsabtei Sankt Emmeram), now known as Schloss Thurn und Taxis, Schloss St. Emmeram, and St. Emmeram's Basilica, was a Benedictine monastery founded in about 739 in Regensburg in Bavaria (modern southern Germany) at the grave of the itinerant Frankish bishop Saint Emmeram.
When the monastery was founded in about 739, the bishops of Regensburg were abbots in commendam, a common practice at the time which was not always to the advantage of the abbeys concerned. In 975, Saint Wolfgang of Regensburg, then bishop of Regensburg and abbot of St. Emmeram's, voluntarily gave up the position of abbot and severed the connection, making the abbots of St. Emmeram's independent of the bishopric. He was one of the first German bishops to do this, and his example in this was much copied across Germany in the years following. The first independent abbot was Ramwold (later the Blessed Ramwold). Both he and Saint Wolfgang were advocates of the monastic reforms of Gorze.
Saint Wolfgang, who was made bishop in 972, ordered that a library be constructed at St. Emmeram shortly after his arrival in Regensburg. An active scriptorium had existed at St. Emmeram in the Carolingian period, but it is not known whether it occupied a special building, and it appears that relatively few manuscripts of poor quality were produced there during the early tenth century. Over time, some works in the scriptorium were copied by monks, some works were preserved from the Carolingian period, and others were acquired as gifts. The library became well supplied with works by early Christian writers such as Saint Augustine, as well as by ancient writers such as Virgil and Seneca. In addition to works that had an overt religious or inspirational purpose, the library held a large collection of manuscripts used in the monastery school, focusing on subjects such as logic, arithmetic, rhetoric, grammar, and even astronomy and music. By the early eleventh century, the library at St. Emmeram had acquired a reputation for its collection. Neighboring libraries began requesting to borrow books for copying. An eleventh-century librarian at the monastery, Froumund of Tegernsee, referred to the book room as a bibliotheca, a term implying an extensive manuscript collection. The scriptorium of St. Emmeram's in the Early Middle Ages became a significant centre of book production and illumination, the home of works such as the sacramentary of Emperor Henry II (produced between 1002 and 1014) and the Uta Codex (shortly after 1002).
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