page_title: Hirsau Abbey
section_title: Sts Peter and Paul
hierarchical_section_title: Hirsau Abbey / History / Sts Peter and Paul
caption_attribution_description: Ehem. Kloster St. Peter und Paul Hirsau, Calw: Relief mit Wappendarstellung
context_page_description: Hirsau Abbey, formerly known as Hirschau Abbey, was once one of the most important Benedictine abbeys of Germany. It is located in the Hirsau borough of Calw on the northern slopes of the Black Forest mountain range, in the present-day state of Baden-Württemberg. In the 11th and 12th century, the monastery was a centre of the Cluniac Reforms, implemented as "Hirsau Reforms" in the German lands. The complex was devastated during the War of the Palatine Succession in 1692 and not rebuilt.
context_section_description: It was however Frederick's successor who revived and even surpassed the former renown and prosperity of the abbey. This was the famous William of Hirsau, a monk descending from St. Emmeram's Abbey in the Bavarian capital Regensburg, who was appointed abbot in 1069. When he came the condition of the monastery was far from satisfactory. The monks were living in cramped conditions, as the buildings were still incomplete and furthermore repeatedly affected by floods of the Nagold river. Count Adalbert still retained possession of some of the monastic property, together with a certain amount of unhelpful influence over the community, and regular discipline was very much relaxed. Abbot William's zeal and prudence by degrees remedied this unsatisfactory state of affairs and inaugurated a period of great prosperity, both spiritual and temporal. During the Investiture Controversy that shook the Holy Roman Empire, he secured the independence of the abbey from the Counts of Calw and placed its finances on a sound footing.
  William completed the buildings already begun and from 1082 afterwards greatly added to them, as the needs of the increasing community required, a new monastery complex on a high plateau on the opposite side of the Nagold river. The Sts Peter and Paul's abbey church, which was modelled on Cluny II finished about 981 under Abbot Majolus, was consecrated in 1091. The convent followed the next year, when it moved into the adjacent new monastic compound designed according to the Plan of Saint Gall, while old St Aurelius was converted into a priory. William also refounded the monastic school for which the abbey had formerly been famous throughout Germany.
  But the abbot's greatest work, perhaps, and that for which his name is best remembered, was the reformation that he effected within the community itself. Cluny was then at the height of its fame and William sent some of his monks there to learn the Cluniac customs and rule, after which the Cluniac discipline was introduced at Hirsau. By his Constitutiones Hirsaugienses, a new religious order, the Ordo Hirsaugiensis, was formed. Known as the Hirsau Reforms, the adoption of this rule revitalised Benedictine monasteries throughout Germany, such as those of Zwiefalten, Blaubeuren Petershausen, Saint Peter and Saint George in the Black Forest in Swabia, as well as the Thuringian monastery of Reinhardsbrunn, Franconian Comburg and St. Paul's Abbey in the Lavanttal in Carinthia. Hirsau priories were located at Reichenbach and Schönrain, in Bavarian Fischbachau and Thuringian Paulinzella.
  A friend and correspondent of Pope Gregory VII and Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury, William took active part in the politico-ecclesiastical controversies of his time. He was also author of inter alia the treatise De musica et tonis, as well as the Philosophicarum et astronomicarism institutionuin libri iii. The abbot then wrote his well-known "Consuetudines Hirsaugienses" which for several centuries remained the standard of monastic observance. Under William monks were sent out from Hirsau to reform other German monasteries on the same lines, and from it seven new monasteries were founded. The numbers of the community increased to 150 under his rule, manual labour and the copying of manuscripts forming an important part of their occupations. Numerous exemptions and other privileges were obtained from time to time from emperors and popes.
  In the twelfth century the autocratic rule of Abbot Manegold caused for a time some internal dissensions and a consequent decline of strict discipline, but the vigorous efforts of several  abbots checked the decadence, and temporarily re-established the stricter observance. About the end of the 12th century Hirsau Abbey was again very perceptibly on the decline both materially and morally. It never afterwards again rose into importance.
  In the fifteenth century, however, the famous "Customs" gradually became little more than a dead letter. Wolfram, the thirty-eighth abbot (1428–1460), introduced the contemporary Melk Reform. A few years later Hirsau adopted 
caption: The Hirsch (deer) on the abbey's coat of arms
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