Saint John's Abbey

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Abbey Church and Bell Tower

Saint John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota is a Benedictine monastery affiliated with the American Cassinese Congregation. The Abbey was established following the arrival in the area of monks from the Saint Vincent Abbey in Latrobe, Pennsylvania in 1856. Saint John's is the second-largest Benedictine abbey in the Western Hemisphere, with 164 professed monks. John Klassen, OSB, currently serves as abbot.

Monks from the Abbey serve parishes in the Diocese of Saint Cloud and in the Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis.

The Abbey's Hill Museum and Manuscript Library houses the world's largest collection of manuscript images, and will also house the St. John's Bible, the first completely handwritten and illuminated Bible to have been commissioned, at a cost of $6.5 million, since the invention of the printing press.

The community operates The Liturgical Press, St. John's University, and St. John's Preparatory School, all located on the grounds of St. John's in Collegeville. The grounds also house the Collegeville Institute of Cultural and Ecumenical Research, the Episcopal House of Prayer (Diocese of Minnesota), a Minnesota Public Radio studio, and the Saint John the Baptist Parish Church. The 2500 acre grounds of the Abbey comprise lakes, prairie, and hardwoods on rolling glacial moraine, and has been designated as a natural arboretum.

The Abbey is the location of a number of structures designed by the modernist, Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer. The Abbey Church, with its banner bell tower, is one of his most well-known works.

The Abbey is also the setting for Kathleen Norris' popular collection of essays on Christian spirituality, The Cloister Walk.