Ossiach Abbey: A Former Benedictine Monastery in Austria
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Austria
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Fortified Monastery
On this page19 sections
History
Ossiach Abbey is a former Benedictine monastery in Ossiach, Austria, on the southern shore of Lake Ossiach. Founded around 1024 by Count Ozi and his wife Glismod, it developed from a Romanesque religious foundation into a major medieval and early modern monastic center before its dissolution in 1783.
Foundation and ecclesiastical authority
Archaeological excavations indicate that a church may have occupied the site before the Benedictines arrived. In 878, King Carloman granted the estates around Lake Ossiach, known as the Treffen estate, to the Benedictine monastery of Ötting. For a long time, this grant was incorrectly interpreted as evidence that Ossiach Abbey had already been founded at that date. The estate later passed to the Bishop of Passau and then to Emperor Henry II, who transferred it to Count Ozi.
Ozi and his wife Glismod, also known in some accounts as Irenburg, established the abbey shortly before 1028, probably around 1024. Its first monks probably came from Niederaltaich Abbey in Bavaria. The first abbot whose name is documented was Wolfram, a monk from Niederaltaich. At first, Ossiach was a proprietary monastery, meaning that its founding family retained control over the institution. Ozi’s son Poppo, Patriarch of Aquileia, brought it under Aquileian authority, and Emperor Conrad II confirmed that arrangement in 1028. Ossiach gradually moved toward the sphere of Salzburg, while Aquileian ecclesiastical claims ended around 1280.
The abbey’s name was derived not from Count Ozi but from a Slovenian term for the region meaning “those on the shady side.” Its secular advocate, or Vogt, was initially a member of Ozi’s family. Count Otto of Cordenons transferred the family rights to his relative, Margrave Ottokar II of Styria. The advocacy passed to the Babenbergs in 1192 and to the Habsburgs in 1282. The Ortenburg family held it from 1305 until 1418, followed temporarily by Meinhard II of Gorizia-Tyrol, before the rights returned to the Habsburgs after 1460. The advocate exercised secular protection and related judicial or administrative rights, rather than serving as the monastery’s religious superior.
Medieval expansion and traditions
During the High Middle Ages, Ossiach enlarged its possessions around Lake Ossiach, Feldkirchen, the Rosental, Wallersberg, the Jauntal, and Lienz. It acquired estates in the Lungau in 1233. In 1267, the Patriarch of Aquileia granted the abbot the title “Archpriest of the Rosental,” which remained associated with the abbey until its dissolution. Duke Albrecht renewed Ossiach’s protection privilege in 1343, allowed the monastery to transport food from all Carinthian towns without paying duties, and limited the ducal judge’s authority over monastic property. During the abbacy of Ulrich I, Pope Boniface IX granted the abbots the right to wear the mitre and use pontificals. In 1436, Abbot Andreas I obtained lower jurisdiction for Ossiach from Duke Frederick.
Under Abbot Werner, who governed from 1307 to 1314, Ossiach became associated with a tradition of miraculous healing. Three crystal spheres attributed to the Virgin Mary were used in a treatment involving “burning,” intended for blind, deaf, mute, and supposedly possessed people. The spheres were later mentioned by Paracelsus and Valvasor. Only the smallest survives, now in the diocesan museum in Gurk.
Another tradition links Teuzo, described as the second abbot, with Boleslaus II the Bold, the eleventh-century king of Poland associated with the killing of Stanislaus, Bishop of Krakow. According to the story, the exiled king lived at Ossiach as an unnamed and mute penitent, revealing his identity only on his deathbed. The tradition entered Polish historical writing in the fifteenth century, but Boleslaus’s presence at Ossiach remains unresolved. From the sixteenth century, the grave identified with him became an object of devotion, especially for Polish pilgrims. Grave openings and later excavations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did not establish the occupant’s identity. Emperor Franz Joseph I laid a wreath there in 1856, Galicia and Lodomeria donated stained-glass windows to the church in 1905, and Polish soldiers erected a memorial stone beside the monument in 1945.
War, fire, and reconstruction
During the Ottoman incursions of the late fifteenth century, the monastery and church were enclosed by a defensive wall with towers and loopholes. The monastery itself was apparently not attacked, although tradition recalls that monks were killed outside it. A later pilgrimage church, Heiligengestade, was built at the alleged place of their deaths. Ottoman forces devastated the abbey’s possessions in the Rosental in 1478.
A fire practically destroyed the monastery and church in 1484. The resident women’s convent was then dissolved. Abbot Daniel Krachenberger began rebuilding the complex, and under Abbot Erasmus Töttrer five church altars were consecrated by Erhard, Bishop of Lavant, on 5 September 1500. The late Gothic winged altar that had originally served as the high altar was commissioned during this period.
In 1530, war taxes imposed by King Ferdinand forced Ossiach to surrender a quarter of its property. Abbot Andreas Hasenberger nevertheless expanded and renewed the monastery, established a prelature, and brought the parish of Tiffen under its authority. He also built a small Venetian flotilla on the lake, whose principal vessel was a Bucentaur, a ceremonial galley used by the doge of Venice for state and ritual occasions. Emperor Charles V visited the vessel and the monastery frequently while staying in Villach during the summer of 1552.
Ossiach maintained a school, first mentioned in 1541. A report from 1549 stated that books and archives were being kept in underground caves because political conditions were considered insecure. Abbot Petrus Gröblacher undertook additional building work, including paneling the church ceiling, repairing the organ, and constructing a courthouse. His debts and the loss of the Lienz office led to his deposition in 1587. His brother and successor, Zacharias Gröblacher, wrote the Annales Ossiacenses and is credited with compiling the abbots’ book, which contains colored portraits, coats of arms, and biographical notes. The Archbishop of Salzburg forced him to resign in 1593.
Baroque transformation
Abbot Caspar Rainer recovered most of the estates that had been pledged and transferred Count Ozi’s tomb to the crypt around 1615. Abbot Georg Wilhelm Schweitzer enlarged the monastery’s property and built the surviving west wing with its rooms for prelates before 1628. A visitation in 1624 found the monastery in good condition.
Ossiach had belonged to the Benedictine Salzburg Congregation since 1641. In 1672, Abbot Christoph Caponig acquired Wernberg Castle together with its estates, fishing rights, and regional court. Most of the monks moved to Wernberg, while a smaller community remained at Ossiach to provide pastoral care and maintain the school. Abbot Edmund Ibelbacher, who served from 1682 to 1725, took part in the congregation’s higher administration and commissioned the high altar, pulpit, and Baroque organ.
A fictitious thousandth anniversary was celebrated on 23 October 1689, although the monastery did not exist in 689. Under Abbot Virgilius Gleißenberger, the library grew to more than 3,000 volumes. During the tenure of Abbot Hermann Ludinger, the monastery and church acquired essentially their present Baroque appearance. Ludinger employed the painter Josef Ferdinand Fromiller and stuccoworkers from Wessobrunn, a Bavarian center known for ornamental stucco. His successor, Roman Zusner, continued the embellishment but accumulated debts.
Dissolution and later uses
Emperor Joseph II ordered the dissolution of Ossiach through the Vienna Court Chancery on 5 December 1782. The abbey was dissolved in spring 1783 after nearly eight centuries. Its archive and library were removed from Ossiach and Wernberg. Many books went to the study library in Klagenfurt, while others were lost. The estates were divided or sold, and the abbey church, parish forest, and a few properties remained with the parish of Ossiach. The former monastery church has continued to serve as the local parish church since the dissolution.
Until 1810, the complex housed the district administration of the Religious Fund. It was then leased to the military and converted into a horse stud. The eastern monastery court and cloister were demolished in 1816, and material from the cloister was reused for stables. The church entrance from the monastery courtyard was walled up, while the Marian fountain and statue were removed. The statue was restored to the courtyard in 1916.
The remaining buildings served as a dragoon barracks from 1872 to 1879 and as a state breeding-stallion station from 1884 to 1915. After the military left during the war with Italy in 1915, the complex became a horse hospital. Italian troops occupied and plundered it after the war, and a horse-stallion office was established there in May 1920. Augustinian canons from Neustift in South Tyrol leased part of the complex from 1924 to 1927, but their planned re-establishment failed for financial reasons.
After Austria’s annexation to Nazi Germany in 1938, the German Reich Forestry Administration took over the buildings. During the Second World War, the complex was used as a hospice, military training camp, and airmen’s convalescent facility; prisoners of war were held in the stables. British troops occupied it after 1945. The Austrian Federal Forests assumed control in 1947 and prevented demolition. General renovation of the church and monastery buildings continued into the 1970s, and the walled western church portal was reopened in 1974 and 1975. Since 1995, the complex has belonged to the federal state of Carinthia. The church, Baroque Hall, and Knights’ Hall have also served as venues for the Carinthian Summer music festival since its foundation in 1969.
Remains
The former monastery church
Plan and construction
The former monastery church, dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, stands beside Lake Ossiach and is enclosed on its lakeside by a late fifteenth-century defensive wall. Its Romanesque core was rebuilt in Gothic form after the fire of 1484 and remodeled in the Baroque period between 1737 and 1744. The building has a four-bay, three-aisled nave, a transept, and a one-bay choir ending in three Romanesque apses. A chapel extends from the south side of the transept, with the sacristy continuing eastward. A baptismal chapel is attached at the northwest, and a small fifteenth-century stair tower projects from the exterior of the northern transept.
The church measures approximately 31 metres long, 14 metres wide, and 10.3 metres high excluding the tower. The central nave is 5.5 metres wide and twice as high as it is wide. Broad arcades open onto the side aisles. During the Baroque remodeling, the Romanesque pier cores were heightened and articulated with pilasters. The nave is covered by a barrel vault with lunettes, while the side aisles have modified groin vaults. A masonry west gallery spans all three aisles and is groin-vaulted. The transept rises to the height of the central nave, and Gothic forms remain beneath the later decoration.
Tower, chapels, and crypt
The Romanesque-Gothic crossing tower, which rises above the intersection of the nave and transept, was endangered by soft ground and was stabilized in 1948. Its steep neo-Gothic spire and gables date from 1889. The west facade was constructed in the second quarter of the eighteenth century. Its entrance has a straight lintel and a bronze door from 1974. A Gothic pointed-arch window survives in the northern transept.
The fourteenth-century baptismal chapel opens through a broad round arch beneath the west gallery. It is one bay deep and ends in a five-eighths polygonal termination. Strongly molded cross-ribs, painted round bosses, deep wall consoles, and a seating niche enrich its interior. The south chapel, dating from the end of the fifteenth century, occupies the former transept extension. It has an approximately square plan, polygonal wall piers, and a Gothic star-rib vault. Four columns recovered when the crypt was exposed in 1937 stand there, three from the eleventh century and one from the fifteenth. Count Ozi’s sarcophagus is positioned on the west side.
Beneath the choir lies an Early Romanesque hall crypt, a chamber beneath the church used for burial or commemoration. Excavations exposed parts of it in 1937, although it was made inaccessible again in 1947 and 1948. The crypt may have been buried after the fire of 1484. Three burial crypts for abbots were inserted in the eighteenth century, and the central row of columns is polychromed. Early Romanesque capitals were reused in a later stairway, while four columns recovered in 1947 and 1948 were placed in the south chapel.
The sacristy occupies a hall in the southeast of the church. It contains a stairway and a window whose glazing was donated by Karl May in 1905. A room above the sacristy and another above the south chapel retain traces of Gothic vaulting beneath Baroque furnishings. The early Baroque sacristy cabinet, richly decorated with inlay, was restored and returned to the sacristy in 1994.
Baroque decoration and furnishings
Wessobrunn stuccowork covers the church interior, possibly by Master Jakob Kopf. Foliage-and-ribbon ornament, Rocaille scrolls, and related decoration appear on the vaults, ribs, lunettes, entablatures, arch reveals, and gallery parapets. The colors include salmon red, pale yellow, bluish violet, and emerald green. Frescoes by Josef Ferdinand Fromiller and his workshop fill the surfaces left unstuccoed. Their subjects include the Eye of God, scenes from the life of the Virgin, a painted dome with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the martyrdom of Saint Catherine, the exaltation of Saint Margaret, and the Assumption of the Virgin. The large Assumption fresco extends across two bays and relates directly to the church’s dedication.
Other paintings show Benedictine saints receiving visions of the Virgin, including Anselm, Rupert, Hermann, Ildefons, Peter, Damian, and Gregory. Sepia scenes of the Boleslaus tradition appear above the side-aisle windows. The northern aisle contains scenes of Christ presented in the Temple, the Rosary Madonna with Dominic and Catherine of Siena, and the burial and transfiguration of Saint Sebastian. The southern aisle depicts the Presentation of the Virgin, the Baptism of Christ, the Massacre of the Innocents, and an angel holding the Veil of Veronica within an illusionistic dome.
The high altar, dating from the last quarter of the seventeenth century, was transferred from Maria Elend in the Rosental in 1683. Its triumphal-arch design has a tall base with sacrificial portals, a three-axis concave center, a segmental pediment, and an acanthus cartouche. Beneath a fabric canopy stands a seventeenth-century enthroned Madonna, flanked by life-size figures of Saints Benedict and Scholastica. The upper painting represents the Annunciation. Two side altars from the mid-eighteenth century carry paintings by Fromiller. The left altar depicts the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, with Saints Anne and Joachim and Saint Martin above; the right shows Saint Sebastian with Saints Roch and Rosalia and Saint Stephen above.
An eighteenth-century left wall altar contains a 1912 copy of the Altötting devotional image of the Madonna on a repoussé silver base. The right wall altar depicts Pentecost, with Moses and a saint as side figures, while its main painting by Fromiller represents Saint Hemma. The pulpit, dated 1725, is made of marbled wood with partly gilded and silvered ornament. Its reliefs include the four Latin Church Fathers, biblical quotations, evangelists, Benedictine figures, and Saint Paul with a trumpet-blowing putto and globe. A dove representing the Holy Spirit appears above the canopy.
Altars, organs, and monuments
The late Gothic winged altar in the baptismal chapel was made around 1505 in an older Villach workshop and once served as the high altar. A winged altar is an altarpiece with hinged panels that open and close. This example contains carved figures of the Virgin and Child, Saints Catherine and Margaret, a Baroque bust of Saint Apollonia, late Gothic busts of Saints Agatha and Scholastica, and reliefs of the twelve Apostles. Its outer wings show the Annunciation, Nativity, Adoration of the Christ Child, Resurrection, and Death of the Virgin. The reverse includes a painted Jesse Tree, which represents Christ’s genealogy from Jesse through the kings of Judah, and a Veil of Veronica carried by two angels. The fixed wings and upper section are lost.
The organ balustrade shows King David, Saint Cecilia, and the Virgin giving Abbot Werner the three miraculous spheres. A Metzler organ from Switzerland, built in 1971 as the Wilhelm Backhaus Memorial Organ, stands on the west gallery. It commemorates Wilhelm Backhaus, who gave his final concert at Ossiach before his death. Beside the main nave is a restored choir organ from 1680, made in the workshop of Franz Knoller in Villach. Its three-part case has painted wings showing Saints Scholastica and Benedict, further images of Mary Queen of Angels and Saint Cecilia, and the coats of arms of Ossiach and Abbot Ibelbacher.
The church preserves monuments to several abbots. They include Andreas Hasenberger’s tomb monument, showing him in vestments, mitre, and crozier; Caspar Rainer’s late Renaissance tombstone; Hermann Ludinger’s coat-of-arms stone; Peter Gröblacher’s kneeling figure before a crucifix; Edmund Ibelbacher’s coat-of-arms panel; and the tombstones of Friedrich Hirschbacher and Christoph Caponig near the west portal. A slab from Count Ozi’s sarcophagus and his tomb monument are also preserved in the baptismal chapel. The monument is formed from a third-century Roman pilaster decorated with acanthus scrolls. Wolfgang Aichinger’s modern Good Friday triptych dates from 1979.
Cemetery and Boleslaus monument
Defensive wall and Peace Chapel
A small cemetery surrounds the church. Its western, northern, and eastern sides are enclosed by a wall with loopholes, which was probably considerably higher in the fifteenth century. At the northern corner stands a three-storey round tower. Built as a defensive tower, it was later used as an ossuary and now serves as an artists’ studio. The cemetery’s Peace Chapel, built in 1988, contains a lindenwood Descent from the Cross group carved by Johann Probst of Sterzing. The sculpture came from the chapel of the priest’s house in Klagenfurt, which was demolished in 1956.
Boleslaus memorial
The monument associated with Boleslaus II is a large Roman marble relief of a horse set into the northern church wall. A Latin inscription around it identifies Boleslaus as the king who killed Stanislaus, Bishop of Krakow. Above the relief is a painted epitaph showing the king in armor and scenes from the Boleslaus tradition. The memorial stone erected by Polish soldiers in 1945 stands beside it. To the left is a faded Marian fresco dated approximately to 1600. The former northern church door beneath the painting was probably blocked during the Baroque remodeling.
Surviving monastery buildings
West wing and Princes’ Hall
The monastery buildings stand southwest of the church. Only the former western court survives, because the eastern wing and cloister were demolished in 1816. The almost square court is enclosed by a substantial four-wing complex of two and three storeys, with continuous ridge and eaves lines. Passages open to the north, east, and west, while the west portal serves as the main entrance. The courtyard and exterior facades date from the nineteenth century.
The three-storey west wing facing the lake is the former prelature wing. Abbot Georg Wilhelm Schweitzer built it before 1628, and it was remodeled between 1741 and 1749. Its facade has a five-axis central projection crowned by a triangular pediment. The marble portal is dated 1749, and the passage behind it has a groin vault. The first floor contains the Princes’ Hall, while the north and south corridors retain polychrome ceiling stucco from the middle of the eighteenth century.
The Princes’ Hall contains delicate late Baroque stucco and frescoes by Fromiller. Its ceiling depicts the homage of the Carinthian estates to Emperor Charles VI in 1728. Painted illusionistic architecture surrounds fourteen Habsburg figures connected with the abbey or Carinthia. Other scenes represent the installation of the duke at the Prince’s Stone and Emperor Maximilian I’s grant of Klagenfurt to the estates. The corners show fortified Klagenfurt, Ossiach Abbey, the Carinthian coat of arms, and the arms of Abbot Hermann Ludinger.
South and west rooms
The south wing has a Baroque courtyard facade with a central projection, Corinthian giant pilasters, a triangular pediment, and foliage-and-ribbon decoration. Its marble portal is dated 1741. Baroque sundials survive on the north and east walls, and an eighteenth-century ceremonial staircase leads to Benedict Hall. Fromiller’s illusionistic painting there depicts Saint Benedict’s assumption into heaven beneath an open sky, with the four cardinal virtues in the corners.
The former music room in the west corner contains Fromiller frescoes rediscovered in 1943. They depict the Transfiguration of Christ, Peter’s repentance, John on Patmos, Elijah with the ravens, and Moses before the burning bush. The coats of arms of Ossiach and Hermann Ludinger complete the decoration.
Eastern connecting wing and north wing
The former eastern connecting wing led to the second monastery court, which was demolished in 1816. Its passage has a round-arched barrel vault with lunettes and stone-framed side doors. The former refectory on the first floor retains late seventeenth-century stucco, a continuous frieze, door garlands, and strongly modeled decoration dated around 1680. Acanthus scrolls, angels, genii, foliate frames, and cartouches surround sixteen medallions containing seventeenth-century paintings of biblical meals. A central canvas represents the Resurrection of Christ and may be by Anton Zeller. The inlaid doors date from the eighteenth century, while ground-floor rooms preserve late Gothic star-rib vaults from the beginning of the sixteenth century.
The north wing contains the passage to the church. Its courtyard entrance has an early nineteenth-century basket-arched stone portal. Inside, the passage has a ceiling vault between transverse bands carried on chamfered half-piers. The interior rooms date from the late eighteenth century.
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