The Monastic Island of Reichenau
14 May 2024
The monastic island of Reichenau (Die Klosterinsel Reichenau, Baden-Württemberg, Germany)
) is one of the most historic places on and in Lake Constance and celebrates an important anniversary in 2024.
One thousand three hundred years ago, in 724, the travelling monk Pirmin founded the monastery, which became an important inspiration for art, culture, and politics in the Middle Ages.
The island had been inhabited before the 8th century. However, with the monastery’s foundation, the island began to flourish. After the monastery, two more churches were built, St Peter and St Paul and St George, in the 9th century.
St George Church
St Peter and St Paul Church
The island and the monastery benefited from its favourable location on the trade routes between the Rhine and the main Alpine crossings of the time.
In 780, Charlemagne (748-814) visited the monastery, elevated it to a royal abbey, and placed it under his protection.
The abbey of Reichenau was a centre of illuminated book publishing. The monks were highly skilled in using parchment, ink and seals, including forging documents that were corrected or wholly rewritten for patrons. People also speak of the ‘Reichenau school of forgery’ (die Reichenauer Fälscherschule).
Writers worked only to a limited extent for the monastery’s needs. Princes and kings commissioned most books. Reichenau’s library was one of the largest in the Carolingian Empire. The island was a centre of knowledge for centuries before there were universities.
Liber Viventium Fabariensis, 810-820, Stiftsarchiv St. Gallen
The Archaeological State Museum in Constance (Das Archäologische Landesmuseum in Konstanz) is dedicated to the history of the monastery and the island from its foundation to its dissolution in the 18th century.
The exhibition ‘Monks, Mission, Adventure, Archaeology & Playmobil‘ shows many manuscripts, sculptures, altars, everyday objects, writing utensils, notebooks and the history of the monastery and the island, among other things. It gives an insight into monastic life and shows that the monastery and monasticism had an extensive network in Europe at the time.
From the early 9th century, the brotherhood book was kept with the names of monks. It included more than 50 monasteries; the lists eventually contained 38,000 names of monks!
The world of monks and abbeys was very European in those days. St Gallen monastery was also among them. In 2000, the monastery island of Reichenau was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List.
(Source and further informations: Das Archäologische Landesmuseum in Konstanz; Thomas Ribi, ´Wo Mönche Urkunden fälschten´, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 25 April 2024).