Säben Abbey

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Säben Abbey.

Säben Abbey (Italian: Monastero di Sabiona; German: Kloster Säben) is a Benedictine nunnery located at Klausen in the province of Bolzano-Bozen (northern Italy). It was established in 1687, when it was first settled by the nuns of Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg.

[edit] History

Säben (Italian and Latin Sabiona), situated on the "holy mountain", for centuries a centre of pilgrimage and now an extensive religious precinct, above the town of Klausen, was already inhabited in the New Stone Age. On the site of the present nunnery there was once a late Roman settlement.

Between the 6th century and about 960 there was the seat of a bishopric here, to which belonged the church "im Weinberg", the remains of which have been excavated, and a large burial ground. Bishop Ingenuin is documented as a participant in the Synod of Grado in 579.

On 13 September 901 King Louis the Child granted Bishop Zacharias the farm of Prichsna, later to become Brixen, to which the bishops had moved by, at the latest, 960 under Bishop Richbert.

Säben later became a fortress of the bishops. In the 14th and 15th centuries Säben Castle (Burg Säben) was the seat of the judges of Klausen and the centre of administration of the southern territories of the Diocese of Brixen. The castle was struck by lightning and fell derelict in the years following.

A community of Benedictine nuns was established here in 1686 by the local priest, in premises at the foot of the mountain. The abbey church was dedicated by Johann Franz, Count Khuen von Belasi, then Bishop of Brixen.

Although the nunnery was repeatedly looted during the Napoleonic wars and stripped of its assets during the secularisation of Bavaria in 1803, the community survived in an impoverished state through the 19th century until it gradually revived from about 1880, when, during the period of the Kulturkampf in Germany (1871–1878), the monks of Beuron Abbey were in exile in the Tyrol and were in contact with the nuns at Säben. At this time new premises were built in the ruins of the castle on the mountain. The nuns of Säben adopted the Beuronese mode of life, although the abbey was formally accepted into the Beuronese Congregation of the Benedictine Confederation as late as 1974.