Weissenburg Abbey, Alsace

Thanks to donations from the nobility and local landowners the monastery quickly acquired possessions and estates in the Alsace, Electorate of the Palatinate and in the west-Rhine county of Ufgau.

As a result, manorial farms and peasant farmsteads were set up and agriculture system introduced to create fertile arable farmland.

The Gospel Book (Evangelienbuch) written around 860 by a monk, Otfrid of Weissenburg, represented a milestone in the development of German language and literature.

In 1262–1293, during the time of its decline, Abbot Edelin (d. 15 October 1293) attempted to halt the loss of the monastic estates and to recover its stolen property by compiling a record of the abbey's possessions in a new register.

)[6] In 1524, the abbey, now entirely destitute, was turned into a secular collegiate church at the instigation of its last abbot, Rüdiger Fischer, which was then united with the Bishopric of Speyer in 1546.

In addition Brusch suggests this himself ("Nihil enim de his Abbatibus primis aliud scriptum reperi, quorum seriem etiam ac successionem aliquid erroris habere non dubito".

Source: Caspar Bruschius: Chronologia monasteriorum Gemaniae praecipuorum, Sulzbach, 1681 In 1592 Bernhart Hertzog wrote about Weissenburg Abbey in the Edelsass Chronicle (Edelsasser Chronik) as follows: Das Closter Weissenburg Sanct Benedicten Ordens ist der mächtigsten und ältesten Clöszters eines in Teutschland gewesen; wird unter die vier Abteyen des Römischen Reichs gezahlt, ward gebauen in dem Elsass an dem Berg Vogeseo in der Reichsstatt Weissenburg bey dem Fluss die Lautter genannt, welche mitten durch die Staat fleusst, an einem lustigen Ort des Bistumbs; die Alten haben es Witzenburg oder der Weisheit Burg genannt, dieweil die Münch solches Closters jederzeit in guter Lehr gehalten worden.

Weissenburg Abbey, of the Order of Saint Benedict, has become the mightiest and oldest monastery in Germany; it is one of the four abbeys of the Roman Empire, was built in the Alsace in the Vosges Mountains in the imperial town of Weissenburg by the river called the Lautter, which flows through the middle of the town, in a pleasant part of the Bishopric; the old [folk] called it Witzenburg or Weisheit Castle ["Wisdom Castle"] because the monks had always received good teaching there.