History
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.
The scriptorium of St. Emmeram's in the Early Middle Ages was a 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).
In 1295 the counter-king Adolf of Nassau granted the abbey the regalia and made it reichsunmittelbar (i.e., an Imperial abbey, an independent sovereign power subject directly to the emperor).
After a decline in its significance during the 16th century the abbey enjoyed a resurgence in the 17th and 18th centuries under abbots Frobenius Forster, Coelestin Steiglehner, Roman Zirngibl and Placidus Heinrich, great scholars, particularly in the natural sciences. Under their leadership the abbey academy came to rival the Münchner Akademie. St. Emmeram's had a long tradition of scientific enquiry dating from the Middle Ages, in witness of which the monastery preserved the astrolabe of William of Hirsau.
In 1731, the abbots were raised to the status of Princes of the Empire (Reichsfürsten). Between 1731 and 1733 there followed the magnificent Baroque refurbishment, by the Asam brothers, of the abbey church, which had been repeatedly burnt out and repaired.
In 1803, St. Emmeram's, along with the Imperial City of Regensburg, the Bishopric of Regensburg and the two other Imperial Abbeys (Niedermünster and Obermünster), lost its previous politically independent status to the newly formed Principality of Regensburg, often referred to as the Archbishopric of Regensburg, under the former Prince-Primate Carl Theodor von Dalberg. After the Treaty of Paris of 1810, the entire Principality of Regensburg was transferred to Bavaria.
The treasures of St. Emmeram's (for example, the ciborium of Arnulf, now in the Residenz) and its valuable library (including Muspilli and the Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram) were mostly removed to Munich.
Read more about this topic: St. Emmeram's Abbey
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