The monastery was founded in 814 on the river Inde by Benedict of Aniane, an adviser to Emperor Louis the Pious (successor to Charlemagne).

[1] In the mid-9th century, the monastery became an Imperial abbey ("Reichsunmittelbar") and received large endowments of land, as well as Biblical or Saviour's relics: a loincloth, a sudarium and two shroud-like cloths.

[2] In 875, one of the shrouds was exchanged for a relic of the head of the martyred Pope Cornelius (died in 253), after which the abbey was known as Sancti Cornelii ad Indam, and later as Kornelimünster.

(The full official title of the present monastery is the Abbey of the Abbot Saint Benedict of Aniane and Pope Cornelius).

[2] In the 12th century, a Priest of Aachen composed the famous Tafelgüterverzeichnis, a registry of royal estates and what they owed the king's court.

[4] The monastery was re-founded by the Benedictines in 1906 about a kilometre away in the western part of Kornelimünster by monks from Merkelbeek Abbey in the Netherlands.