Kornelimünster Abbey
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Kornelimünster Abbey (Kloster Kornelimünster) is a Benedictine monastery in Kornelimünster, since 1972 a part of Aachen (as Stadtbezirk Kornelimünster/Walheim), in North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany.
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[edit] First foundation
The monastery was founded in 814 by Benedict of Aniane, adviser to Emperor Louis the Pious, successor to Charlemagne, on the little river Inde. The monastery was at first known as the "monastery of the Redeemer on the Inde".
In the mid-9th century the monastery became an Imperial abbey ("reichsunmittelbar") and received not only great endowments of land but also the so-called biblical or Saviour's relics: the loincloth, the sudarium and the shroud.
In 875 half of the shroud was exchanged for a relic of the head of the martyred pope Cornelius (died in 253), after which the abbey was known as Sancti Cornelii ad Indam, and later as Kornelimünster. (The full official title of the present monastery is the Abbey of the Abbot Saint Benedict of Aniane and Pope Cornelius).
In 1500 the princely imperial abbey (Reichsfürstabtei) of Kornelimünster became part of the Lower Rhenish-Westphalian Circle.
In 1802 the territory of Kornelimünster came under French rule and the abbey was dissolved in the secularisation. The abbey church became the parish church, and the remaining abbey buildings state property, now belonging to the Bundesland of North Rhine-Westphalia. Kornelimünster became a mairie in Kanton Burtscheid.
In 1815 Kornelimünster became part of Prussia and of the district (Landkreis) of Aachen.
[edit] Second foundation
The monastery was re-founded by Benedictines in 1906 and is still in operation.
[edit] Abbots
The abbot of Kornelimünster has, after the Archbishop of Cologne, the privilege of crowning the German Emperors.
[edit] External links
