Saint Emmeram's Abbey ( or Reichsabtei Sankt Emmeram) was a Benedictine monastery founded around 739 at Regensburg in Bavaria (modern-day southeastern Germany) at the grave of the itinerant Frankish bishop Saint Emmeram. The original abbey church is now a parish church named St. Emmeram's Basilica. The other buildings on the site form a large complex known as Schloss Thurn und Taxis or Schloss St. Emmeram, which has served as the main residence of the Thurn und Taxis princely family since the early 19th century.
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.
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. St. Emmeram's scriptorium 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).
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, who were great scholars, particularly in the natural sciences. Under their leadership, the abbey's 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 Abbey (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. In 1803, he donated a large garden at the abbey to the Royal Bavarian Botanical Society of Regensburg for construction of a botanic garden that was maintained until 1855. After the Treaty of Paris of 1810, the entire Principality of Regensburg was transferred to Bavaria.
The treasures of St. Emmeram's Abbey (for example, the ciborium of Arnulf, now in the Residenz) and its valuable library (including Muspilli, the Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, and Dialogus de laudibus sanctae crucis) were mostly removed to Munich.