Swiss Congregation

The Swiss Congregation of the Benedictine Confederation is a grouping of Benedictine monasteries in Switzerland or with significant historical Swiss connections.

The Congregation was founded, at the urging of the Papal legate to Switzerland, in 1602, with a significant reform agenda. Of the nine Benedictine monasteries in Switzerland which had survived the Reformation, seven had joined by 1604. Disentis Abbey was prevented at first by considerations of the sensitive politico-religious situation in Graubünden, but joined in 1617. Beinwil Abbey had been dissolved in 1554, but the community were still together, and at last, after it had been decided that a re-foundation would take place at Mariastein, joined in 1647.

The membership of the Congregation as at 1647 was thus all the extant Benedictine monasteries still in Switzerland:

The fortunes of Roman Catholic establishments in Switzerland were turbulent, especially in the 19th century. All were dissolved as a consequence of the French Revolution in 1798, but were restored by Napoleonic decree in 1803, with the exception of St. Gall, where the Prince-Abbot refused to make the necessary political concessions. The politics of the Swiss cantons brought about the dissolution of Pfäfers (1838), Muri (1841), Fischingen (1848) and Rheinau (1863), of which Muri was re-founded in 1845 at Gries in what is now the Italian province of South Tyrol and Fischingen not until 1977, as an independent priory.

The "Kulturkampf" caused the dissolution of Mariastein in 1874/75. The exiled community sought refuge first in France, and, exiled again in 1901, in Austria, where they settled at Bregenz, only to be deported yet again in 1941, by the Gestapo. The Swiss government then allowed them as political refugees to re-occupy their old monastery, which was however not re-established as such until 1973.

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