[1] The abbey contains the tomb of Saint Coloman of Stockerau and the remains of several members of the House of Babenberg, Austria's first ruling dynasty.

In the fifteenth century the abbey became the centre of the Melk Reform movement which reinvigorated the monastic life of Austria and Southern Germany.

[4] In the later eighteenth century, Abbey of Melk became a center of Enlightenment thought and social exchange; there was even a Masonic lodge there, since a number of monks were Freemasons.

[5] Due to its fame and academic stature, Melk managed to escape dissolution under Emperor Joseph II when many other Austrian abbeys were seized and dissolved between 1780 and 1790.

Melk Abbey is also the metaphorical climax ("a peak in a mountain range of discovery") of Patrick Leigh Fermor's autobiographical account of his walking tour across Europe in A Time of Gifts.

The parchment, which had been subsequently recycled into the binding of a much later book, has been dated to around 1300; this is nearly 200 years earlier than it was previously thought to have been written.