Reichenbach Priory (Baden-Württemberg)

The monastery was founded, against the background of the Investiture Controversy and the Hirsau Reforms, as a priory of Hirsau Abbey, from where it was settled, in 1082; in 1085 the church was dedicated to Saint Gregory the Great by Bishop Gebhard of Konstanz.

[1] The Vögte (lords protectors) of the monastery were the Counts of Eberstein, but the equivalent rights over Hirsau lay with the Counts of Württemberg, who considered that as Reichenbach was a priory of Hirsau, their rights should extend there also.

The conflict between the two factions continued until the Reformation, when the monastery was turned into a Protestant establishment in 1603.

[2] It was re-catholicised during the Thirty Years' War and occupied by monks from Wiblingen Abbey, who however had to leave again after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

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