KLÜPFEL, Engelbert. - Augustinian theologian, b. 18 Jan. 1733 at Wipfeld (Franconia), d. at Freiburg in Br. on 8 July 1811. A religious at Oberndorf (1750), he studied at Freiburg in Switzerland, Erfurt, and Freiburg in Brisgau, where for 38 years (1767–1805) he held the chair of theology with great distinction in the local university.
He wrote: *De statu naturae purae* (Freiburg in Br. 1768); *De eximii dotibus humanae naturae ante peccatum* (ibid. 1769); *Christus sacerdos sec. ordinem Melchisedech* (ibid. 1772); *De precibus pro defunctis* (ibid. 1773). In 1775 he founded the *Nova bibliotheca ecclesiastica Friburgensis*, of which seven volumes appeared (ibid. 1775–90), containing many dissertations that strongly attacked Semler’s rationalism; *Institutiones theologiae dogmaticae* (2 vols., Vienna 1789); this work was improved by the bishop of Linz, G. T. Ziegler.
KLOSTERNEUBURG - Interior of the abbatial church (17th–18th c.).
Here the Augustinian Canons settled, apparently coming from Chiemsee, Passau, and Salzburg, whose first provost was the Blessed Artmann (d. 1164), bishop of Brixen. With the favor of noble princes, the convent’s landed endowment quickly increased (as attested by the precious *codex traditionum*, preserved in the monastic archive, rich in papal, imperial, and other documents) and became a cultural center for Austria, as evidenced by the numerous manuscripts and works of art produced in the abbey itself. K. played a significant role in the rise and flourishing of humanism at the University of Vienna.
Despite repeated calamities—wars of the Hussites and the Turks (in 1683, thanks to the lay brother Marcellinus Ortner, it successfully withstood a ten-week siege) and especially the French wars—it always recovered its vigor and firmly reestablished monastic discipline after periods of decline. As the foundation and burial place of St. Leopold, K., under the Habsburgs, became a national sanctuary, thus escaping the suppression of monasteries decreed by Joseph II. Among its provosts, besides the Blessed Artmann, should be noted: the 6th, Werner, elected bishop of Gurk in 1194, and the 62nd, Friedrich Gustav Piffl, cardinal-archbishop of Vienna (d. 1932). In 1735 K. was aggregated to the Congregation of the Augustinian Canons of the Lateran, so that its provosts bear the title of “Lateran abbots.” Since 1796 a philosophical-theological institute has been located there, attended by the professed clergy of the abbey and other houses (since 1852), and it became the official textbook for the seminaries and universities of Austria; doctrinally orthodox, it shows in its methodology the influence of Enlightenment conceptions then prevalent. During the French Revolution K. unfortunately declared, together with his teaching colleagues, the liceity of the civil oath of the clergy.