Selz Abbey

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Selz Abbey or Seltz Abbey is a former monastery and Imperial abbey in Seltz, formerly Selz,[1] in Alsace, modern France.

The Benedictine monastery, dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul, was founded in about 991 by Adelheid, the second wife of Otto I and dowager empress, who was buried there on 16 December 999.[2]. In January 992 it was granted royal tuitio and immunity (the equivalent of the later Reichsunmittelbarkeit) by Otto III.[3]

The abbey suffered from severe floods in 1307, and the community moved out, some to the abbey's daughter house at Mirmelberg[4], others into the town of Selz itself. The relics of Saint Adelheid, which apparently survived the floods, were translated to the church of Saint Stephen in Selz.

The abbey was eventually dissolved in 1481 and the monks re-formed as a college of canons operating as the chapter of Saint Stephen's, retaining some of the privileges of the former foundation, although not all the possessions.

The community became Lutheran during the Reformation and was mediatised by the Electoral Palatinate[5]. The chapter became an academy, which however reverted to a canonry in 1684 after Alsace had passed to France and was returned to Roman Catholicism.

[edit] Dissolution and after

The community was dissolved during the French Revolution, but the church survived and was afterwards used as a parish church. It was extensively rebuilt by the German Empire (which had regained Alsace in 1870) for the occasion of the anniversary of the death of the Empress Adelaide in 1899.

The church was almost destroyed during World War II; restoration was completed in 1958.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Selz is the German spelling, Seltz the French
  2. ^ see Odilo of Cluny's Epitaph of Adelheid, chapter 20, in Sean Gilsdorf, Queenship and Sanctity: The Lives of Mathilda and the Epitaph of Adelheid (Catholic University of America Press, 2004)
  3. ^ see MGH DD Otto III, no. 79.
  4. ^ founded in 1197, and itself washed away by floods in 1469
  5. ^ Übersicht über die Reichsstände

[edit] Sources

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