Metten Abbey: A Benedictine Monastery in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- German, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page20 sections
History
Metten Abbey is a Roman Catholic Benedictine monastery in Metten, Germany, near Deggendorf in the Diocese of Regensburg. Founded around 766, it became an important center for the Christian settlement of the Bavarian Forest and later for education, scholarship, and the revival of Benedictine monasticism in Bavaria.
Foundation and Early Privileges
Gamelbert, a priest and local landowner from Michaelsbuch, founded the abbey around 766. Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria may also have taken part in the foundation. A later tradition attributed the foundation to Charlemagne and placed it in the early ninth century, but the earlier date around 766 is historically supported. Gamelbert’s relative Utto became the first abbot. The first monks are usually thought to have come from Reichenau Abbey, although this cannot be established securely.
The early community was assigned the clearance and colonization of the Bavarian Forest and neighboring border territories. Charlemagne granted Metten royal protection and immunity in 792 and increased its landed property. Emperor Louis the Pious confirmed the abbey’s possessions and rights in 837. In 850, King Louis the German granted or confirmed its privilege of freely electing its abbot.
Medieval Reform and Administration
During the tenth century, Metten was less severely affected by the Hungarian invasions than nearby Niederaltaich Abbey. Canons replaced the monks for a period, but in 1157 Duke Heinrich II, known as Jasomirgott, transferred the canons to Pfaffenmünster near Straubing. He repopulated Metten with Benedictines following the Hirsau Observance, a reform movement that sought stricter communal discipline and religious practice.
After the Babenberg dynasty became extinct in 1246, Metten unsuccessfully sought Imperial immediacy, which would have placed it directly under the emperor rather than a territorial ruler. Its bailiwick rights eventually passed to the Wittelsbach rulers of Bavaria. Metten became a prelate monastery, a foundation represented in the territorial estates, while its monks increasingly combined land clearance with education and teaching.
The abbey was influenced by the Kastl and Melk Observances, two further Benedictine reform movements. At the Council of Basel in 1439, Abbot Andreas obtained the right to use pontifical insignia, the liturgical symbols and vestments associated with an abbot’s elevated ecclesiastical status.
Early Modern Learning and Secularization
After the disruptions of the Reformation era, Abbot Johannes II Nablas of St. Emmeram in Regensburg restored Metten’s religious and economic stability. During the eighteenth century, the monks taught at the abbey’s music school, joined the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich, and held professorships in philosophy and theology at Freising and Salzburg.
In 1803, secularization in Bavaria suppressed the monastery and confiscated its property. This state reorganization led to the progressive auction of the abbey’s possessions, with the sales completed around 1815. Johann von Pronath, lord of nearby Offenberg, acquired most of the former monastery over several years. He persuaded King Ludwig I of Bavaria to restore Metten on 1 June 1830 as the first Bavarian Benedictine monastery re-established after secularization.
Restoration and Benedictine Renewal
A Latin school founded in 1837 developed into St. Michael’s Gymnasium in 1847. Its boarding section continued until 2017, while the school itself preserved the abbey’s educational tradition. Metten was raised again to abbey status in 1840 and became a center for the restoration of Bavarian Benedictine monasticism.
Metten helped re-establish Scheyern Abbey in 1838, Weltenburg Abbey in 1842, Andechs Abbey in 1846, St. Boniface Abbey in Munich in 1850, and Niederaltaich Abbey in 1918. In 1846, Boniface Wimmer left Metten to work among German Catholic immigrants in North America. He founded Saint Vincent Archabbey in Pennsylvania, the first Benedictine monastery in the United States, and helped establish Benedictine monasticism there.
Metten initiated the re-establishment of the Bavarian Benedictine Congregation in 1858. This federation coordinates the religious and institutional life of Benedictine monasteries while allowing individual abbeys to retain their identity. The pre-secularization monastery had earlier declined to join the congregation out of consideration for the Bishop of Regensburg. Abbot Utto Lang served as the congregation’s first president from 1858 to 1870.
War, Scholarship, and Continuing Life
During the Second World War, Metten sheltered more than 1,000 refugees from eastern Europe. Abbot Corbinian Hofmeister belonged to the German resistance. He was arrested in 1943 and deported to Dachau concentration camp. In the final days of the war, fighting took place around the nearby Danube bridges between SS troops and advancing United States forces, but the monastery escaped the extensive bombing destruction experienced elsewhere.
Metten has remained associated with religious learning and scholarship. Its monks and former monks included teachers, philosophers, theologians, historians, musicians, botanists, church lawyers, and scholars of the Rule of Saint Benedict, the sixth-century guide to communal Benedictine life. Dom Edmund Beck was especially known for editing Syriac works by Saint Ephrem the Syrian. The abbey continues to run St. Michael’s Gymnasium and craft and service enterprises that include a laundry, electrical works, carpentry, metalworking, and a monastery garden. The veneration of Saint Benedict at Metten also contributed to the spread of the Benedictine Blessing.
Remains
The abbey complex stands between the foothills of the Bavarian Forest and the Danube valley. Its buildings developed over many centuries and enclose several courtyards north and east of the abbey church. Medieval, Baroque, and nineteenth-century phases remain visible in the arrangement of the church, cloister, convent buildings, library, festival hall, and former economic structures.
Abbey Church
Medieval Church
An earlier Carolingian church was followed by a medieval building. After a fire, the monastery and church were rebuilt in the thirteenth century, and the church was consecrated in 1264. A fifteenth-century Gothic hall church later replaced the medieval building. Its choir survives within the present church and forms part of the building’s layered architectural history.
Baroque Interior
Between 1712 and 1729, under Abbot Roman II Märkl, the church was remodelled in the Baroque style according to plans by Jakob Ruesch. The long Gothic choir was shortened by raising the high altar at the center of the space. The sacristy and monks’ choir were placed behind the altar wall. The nave was widened and rebuilt as a four-bay wall-pier hall, a nave in which projecting piers help support the vaults.
At the west end, a semicircular entrance projection contains an entry hall and organ gallery between two onion-domed towers. Two oval chapels flank the projection, which closes with a half-dome. The west portal, dated 1724, bears the arms of the abbey and Abbot Roman II. Franz Josef Holzinger installed the interior stucco in 1722, while Wolfgang Andreas Heindl painted the frescoes. The entrance hall depicts the foundation of the monastery, the nave shows Totila meeting Benedict of Nursia, and the choir presents Christ before his mission of salvation.
Jakob Schöpf made the high altar in 1713. It carries Cosmas Damian Asam’s painting of the Archangel Michael, created around 1715. Asam also painted the Rosary Altar picture around 1726 to 1730. Christian Wink, a Munich court painter, created the Benedict Altar painting in 1778. Martin Speer of Regensburg painted the remaining altar pictures, showing the Crucifixion, the stoning of Saint Stephen, the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, and the handing over of the keys to Saint Peter. The pulpit was probably made by Franz Josef Holzinger around 1725.
Bells and Organ
The church’s five bells were cast in 1948 by the Rudolf Oberascher foundry in Munich. The large Michael bell hangs in the north tower, while the four smaller bells hang in the south tower. Because the large bell emerged a semitone too high from casting, the complete peal follows the unusual sequence B, C-sharp, D-sharp, E-sharp, and G-sharp.
Sandtner of Dillingen built the present organ in 1989. It is a purely mechanical instrument with 43 stops distributed across three manuals and pedal. Its case front derives from Johann Konrad Brandenstein’s organ of 1726.
Cloister and Convent Buildings
Cloister Quadrangle
The quadrangle containing the cloister on the north side of the church is the oldest part of the monastery. Its eastern wing contains a simple chapter house on the upper floor, where the community meets for chapter business and discipline. Renovated ground-floor rooms in the western wing became the modern Benedictus Chapel in 1997. Joseph Michael Neustifter created the chapel’s furnishings.
Convent Building
East of the cloister stands the three-winged convent building, constructed in the early seventeenth century around a courtyard beside the church choir. A second upper floor was added in the nineteenth century as the community required more space. The refectory, the monastery’s communal dining room, occupies the ground floor of the north wing and was remodelled during the 1930s.
A fourteenth-century granite high tomb for Blessed Utto stands in the corridor before the refectory. Until 1646, the tomb stood in front of the high altar of the abbey church.
Baroque Library
The east wing of the convent building contains the Baroque monastery library. Its original long, two-aisled seventeenth-century hall was divided between 1722 and 1726 under Abbot Roman II Märkl into a principal room flanked by two side rooms in a 2:3:2 arrangement.
Franz Josef Holzinger created the stucco, and Innozenz Anton Warathy painted the ceilings. The entrance portal is flanked by allegories of Faith and Science and crowned by a bust of Christ and an inscription presenting the library as a temple of divine wisdom. Pairs of atlantes, sculpted male figures used as architectural supports, carry the vaults in the main room, while angels perform the same function in the side rooms.
The fourteen ceiling frescoes form a theological and doctrinal program responding to the early Enlightenment’s emphasis on reason and secular sciences. Their subjects corresponded to books originally placed beneath them. The Evangelists represented biblical texts, the four Western Church Fathers represented patristic writings, and Saint Benedict represented works connected with his Rule.
The library contains an estimated 200,000 volumes in theology, philology, and history. A manuscript from 1415 helped clarify the abbreviations in the “Vade retro satana” formula found on medals of Saint Benedict. The collection also includes an illuminated Gregorian chant manuscript from 1434, handwritten on sheepskin parchment.
During secularization, many books were transferred to municipal and university libraries, and the library room was used to store grain. After the abbey was restored, some books returned and others were acquired from estates and dissolved monasteries.
Courtyards and Economic Buildings
Large Monastery Courtyard
The large monastery courtyard lies north of the cloister and convent building and extends through the depth of the complex. Its layout originated in the Baroque period, while its present representative appearance results largely from nineteenth-century rebuilding and the addition of upper floors. The former economic buildings around the courtyard now accommodate the abbey school.
Festival Hall
The east side of the large courtyard is formed by the Baroque festival-hall building. Its eastern part incorporates the former Baroque brewery. Benedikt Schöttl and his son, Brother Albert, began the festival hall in 1734, and construction was completed in 1759 after interruption during the War of the Austrian Succession, a European conflict fought from 1740 to 1748 over the succession to the Habsburg lands.
The two-storey hall occupies the first floor of the central pavilion. Its plan approaches the oval form favored in the late Baroque, with rounded eastern and western walls. Large windows on both sides provide even lighting. Mathias Obermayr created the rich Rococo stucco, and Martin Speer painted the 1755 ceiling fresco of the beginning of the Last Judgment with allegories of the virtues.
In the nineteenth century, the hall was converted into a church for the monastery seminary. Its original wall paintings were removed, new religious paintings were installed, and an organ gallery was added on the west. Postwar restoration removed these changes and sought to recover the Baroque interior.
Former Economic Courtyard
North of the large courtyard, former seventeenth-century economic buildings form another courtyard. A small school gymnasium closes its eastern side, with a larger gymnasium farther east. An eighteenth-century figure of Charlemagne stands in the courtyard’s Karlsbrunnen.
Abbey-Related Churches and Buildings
Metten’s architectural influence extends to buildings commissioned or supported by the abbey. The pilgrimage chapel at Uttobrunn was built between 1699 and 1701 under Abbot Benedikt Ferg. The pilgrimage church of the Holy Cross at Loh was newly constructed from 1689 to 1714 under Benedikt Ferg and Roman Märkl, then redecorated from 1768 to 1772.
The Baroque parish church at Michaelsbuch was begun in 1727 under Roman Märkl and completed in 1751 after an interruption during the War of the Austrian Succession. Further abbey-related construction included the Baroque parish church at Stephansposching, begun in 1739 and demolished in 1891; the Baroque church at Rettenbach, built from 1752 to 1757; the Baroque tower of Saint Vitus Church at Neuhausen; and the summer house and Saint Paul Chapel at Schloss Himmelberg, constructed in 1757.
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