Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/530

 TEGERNSEE

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TEGERNSEE

In the early part of the tenth century the monastery of Tegernsee fell completely into decay on account of the disastrous defeat of the Bavarians by the Mag- yars in 907, whereby nearly all the religious founda- tions of Bavaria were entirely destroyed. Laymen with their wives, dogs, and horses settled in the mon- astery of Tegernsee and finally a fire destroyed the buildings and with them the boolvs and church vest- ments. When the monastery was restored by Em- peror Otto II and Duke Otto of Bavaria in 979 all knowledge of its original foundation had disappeared at Tegernsee. In order to restore and maintain dis- ciphne the Emperor Otto called the monk Hartwich (979-982) of St. Maximinus at Trier to be Abbot of Tegernsee. The same charter that contains this ap- pomtmentof 10June,979(M.G. D.D. II, 1,219, 199), also contains a grant from the emperor of the right of free election of the abbot, as well as freedom from taxes and the imperial protection, by which the abbey was withdrawn from the suzerainty of the rulers of Bavaria. Consequently the abbey became prosper- ous once more. Considerable information as to the efforts for reform of this abbot is given by a note in the manuscript of the Gospels, written in uncial char- acters that belonged to Tegernsee and is now at Munich (Clm. 19101). The note says: "Monastic reform was begun in this monastery by the reverend monk Hartwich of St. Maximinus on 6 May of the year 978. In the year 982 this same Hartwich re- ceived staff and benefice from Emperor Otto II and was consecrated by the very venerable Bishop Abra- ham [of Gorz, Bisliop of Freising]. The monks made their profession". Abbot Hartwich had an excellent successor (982-1001) in the Benedictine monk Goz- bert of St. Emmeram, who had received hi.s religious education at Augsburg. Gozbert introduced the study of the classics at Tegernsee, especially Statins, Persius, the letters of Horace and Cicero, and Boe- thius; the works of these men were read and copied. Particularly distinguished among the monks during the administration of this abbot was the poet and prose writer Froumund (d. 20 October, 1012), who in a manuscript still preserved at Munich (Clm. 19412) made a collection of letters and poems of his own and others. He also copied at Cologne the treatise of Boethius "On the Consolation of Philosophy" and brought the copy to Tegernsee. It was this Frou- mund who brought about the intellectual and literary connexion between his abbey and the monasteries and churches of St. Emmeram at Ratisbon, Feucht- wangen, Augsburg, and Wurzburg. It was at this era also that the glass works were established at Tegernsee to make stained-glass windows for Bishop Gottschalk of Freising. The opinion that glass- staining was invented at Tegernsee is erroneous, for before this in the ninth century stained-glass windows can be proved to have existed at St. Gall and in Westphaha. This prosperous period under the im- mediate successors of Gozbert, namelv St. Gotthard (1001-1002), Eberhard I (d. 4 March, 1004), and Beringer (1004-1012), did not Ia.st long. As soon after this as the year 1031 Tegernsee was reformed, at the command of the Emperor Henry III, by the monks of Niederaltaich from which place monks, who were accompanied by Abbot Elhnger, were sent to occupy the Abbey of Tegernsee. Abbot Ellinger, however, met with opposition at Tegernsee and was obliged to return to his original monastery, from whence he did not venture to come back to Tegernsee until 1056, (lying there in the same year. He was the abbot who began the "Urbar", or book of donations at Tegern- see, and who did so much at Tegernsee to improve and perfect teclmical skill. In 101.5 a colony of monks went from Tegernsee to settle in the mon- astery of Sts. Ulrich and Afra at Augsburg. The prestige of Tegernsee was still maintained in the twelfth century and continued up to the middle of

the thirteenth century. In the imperial documents of the twelfth century the names of the abbots of

Tegernsee are often found signed as witnesses, as they were princes of the empire.

During the rule of Abbot Bertold I (1206-1217) the great minnesinger Walther von der Vogelweide stayed at the abbey. Most probably the hterary importance of Tegernsee had led him to tie his steed at the monastery gate and to claim its hospitality. However, it is evident from Walther's songs that the singer of the Vogelweide, who rejoiced in the wine- cup, was not greatly delighted by the reception at Tegernsee, for he sang:

People often told me of Tegernsee,

How glorious was that house:

So I went to it more than a mile from the road.

I am a queer fellow,

I cannot even understand myself

And why I think so much of pious folks.

I am not grumbling at it, for may God bless us both,

I took the water:

But henceforth

I shall keep away from the monks' table.

The lines mean that according to the custom of the time Walther expected a good bumper of wine after the meal, but to his great astonishment only water was brought for the washing of the hands. This short poem of Walther von der Vogelweide, however, is not, as some have sought to prove, to be taken as a justification of the Abbey of Tegernsee in a lawsuit that was then being carried on over a vineyard.

In the thirteenth and fourteentli centuries the ab- bey suffered greatly from the wars carried on by the princes of Southern Germany, as well as by the prodi- gality of several of its abbots. In t lie reign of the Em- peror Louis, Tegernsee lost its immediacy and became subject to Bavaria. At the time of the visitations in 1426 the Conventual, Caspar Ayndorffer, who was the second founder of Tegernsee and a close friend of the reforming Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, was made abbot (1426^1460) by papal authority. He com- pletely reformed Tegernsee and thus made the abbey a centre of the reform movement of that era. Aju- dorffer was willing to accept as monks men who were not noble, as well as members of aristocratic famihes, consequently monastic discipline was maintained until the abbey was suppressed. The monk Ulrich Stockl (in Latin Trimculus) was the legate of the Benedic- tine abbeys of the Diocese of Freising to the Council of Basle during the years 1432-1437; he wrote a valu- able account of the council. As the researches of Guido Maria Dreves show, Stockl was also a good WTiter of rhyming poetry. The last and sixty-third Abbot of Tegernsee was the excellent Gregory II Rottenkolber (from 1787), who encouraged learning and sent the young clerics to the Universities of Salz- burg and Ingolstadt. He also made a collection of coins and engravings at Tegernsee. The abbey still continued to exist, notwithstantling many changes of fortune, until 1803, in which ytar it was secularized on 17 March. This sealed its fate, and the "Primas Bavaria?", as the Abbot of Tegernsee was called on account of his primacy over all other Bavarian prel- ates, resigned. The monastery became the property of the State; the abbey lands situated in Austria were confiscated by Austria; and the monastic buildings were bought by Freihorr von Drechscl for 3000 florins. In 1805 Abbot Rottenkolber and twenty monks were able to purchase for 5000 florins the monastery build- ing for a house where they could lead a common life. In 1810 the abbot died there. In 1817 the former monastery became the property of King Maximilian I, who also bought the building owned by the Benedic- tines. The king had tin' place altered into a royal summer residciu-e. At prcwnt it belongs to the fam- ily of the lately deceased Duke Charles Theodore who