LORSCH. — Celebrated Benedictine abbey, subsequently passing for a short time to the Cistercians and then to the Premonstratensians, in the diocese of Mainz, not far from Worms, now destroyed.
The foundation charter is dated 12 July 764, the year in which Count Cancor and his mother Williswinda had a church with an adjoining monastery built on their property, on a now-vanished islet in the river Weschnitz, dedicating it to St. Peter. Its administration was entrusted to Chrodegang (elsewhere Ruthgang or Adalang), archbishop of Metz, who brought there some Benedictines from the abbey of Gorze, which he had founded, and obtained from Pope Paul I the translation to the new monastery of the body of St. Nazarius, martyred under Diocletian, after whom the abbey was thereafter named (12 July 765). The following year the archbishop transferred its administration to his brother Gundeland. The rapid development of the community, which had been granted immunity and royal protection as early as 772, advised moving the seat and the abbey’s administration to L.; this took place in 774. The original site remained a priory of L. until the 12th century (the last mention dates from 1179), under the name of Altenmünster. Despite an initial reform introduced toward the end of the 11th century by Adalberone, bishop of Augsburg, the monastery experienced a period of decline under the rule of commendatory abbots (ca. 890–974), the last of whom, Bruno the Great, later archbishop of Cologne, introduced the reform of Gorze and thereby opened an age of great splendor for L., both from the religious and the cultural point of view. At the same time its temporal possessions continued to expand, comprising territories in the Netherlands, the Ardennes, Alsace, and Lorraine, in addition to the provostships (at least 10) dependent on the abbey. Toward the end of the 11th century its decline began, to which the repercussions of the Investiture Controversy and the tendency of the archbishops of Mainz to annex ever larger territories to their see were not unrelated. Not even the introduction of the Hirsau reform, modeled on that of Cluny, succeeded in restoring the fortunes of L., which
in 1226 saw its last Benedictine abbot deposed by Gregory IX. Through the influence of Frederick II, the archbishop of Mainz Siegfried II obtained the abbey’s submission in 1229 and the exile of the Benedictines, who were replaced by the Cistercians. But in 1248 Siegfried III, having obtained the consent of Pope Innocent IV, replaced the latter as well with Premonstratensians summoned from the abbey of Allerheiligen (All Saints) in Baden. As a result of disputes between the bishopric of Mainz and the Palatinate, L. was given in pledge in 1461 to the count palatine; in 1555, after the Peace of Augsburg, this prince, a Lutheran, also expelled the Premonstratensians and appointed as provost a married monk, Giovanni Carpentario. In 1563 the convent was transformed into a religious house for Protestants. The Thirty Years’ War inflicted serious damage also on L.’s conventual buildings: in 1621 Spanish troops besieged and burned them, and when L. returned to the power of the archbishop of Mainz in 1623, it was no longer capable of recovering, nor did the Premonstratensians, despite repeated attempts, succeed in returning there. In 1803 the territory of L. was incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Hesse; of the abbey, only the portico, used as a chapel, remained.
The monumental complex of conventual buildings underwent various vicissitudes over the centuries. The original church of St. Nazarius, consecrated on 1 September 774 in the presence of Charlemagne, elected king in May of that same year, fell victim to a fire on 21 March 1090. The new church was consecrated in 1130. During the 12th century many enlargement works were carried out, and in the following century the Premonstratensians rebuilt the choir and undertook several restorations, resulting in a third consecration in 1266. After the siege and fire of 1621, the period of abandonment began; only the portico, or Königshalle, survived. It is regarded as the oldest monument of Frankish religious architecture (others, however, believe that it dates from after the fire of 1090; cf. M. R. de Lasteyrie, Architecture religieuse en France à l'époque romane, Paris 1912, pp. 167–71). Excavations carried out in 1927–28 revealed a crypt used as a funerary chapel (perhaps dating from 876), with the tombs of Louis the German, Louis III the Younger, and Cunegonda, wife of Conrad I.
Much has also been lost from the monastery’s ancient library. Its valuable and substantial collection of books was transferred in the 16th century to the Palatine Library of Heidelberg, and in 1632 Count Ottheinrich ceded it, by then diminished, to the Pontiff. The surviving codices are now in the Vatican Library, in the Palatine collection. Some ancient catalogues remain as testimony to its former splendor (cod. Vat. Palat. lat. 1877, ff. 1–34, 44–79; Palat. lat. 57, notebook added at the beginning). The rear leaf of an ivory diptych that covered a L. Gospel book is now in the Museo Sacro Vaticano (the other leaf is in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London). Not all the manuscripts originating from L. can be identified as products of that scriptorium. It has nevertheless been demonstrated that it was already very active at the beginning of the 9th century, under the administration of Abbot Adelung, when a type of German pre-Carolingian script was in use, displaying evident Merovingian influences alongside signs of insular derivation. The script of L. does not, however, possess strongly pronounced distinctive features revealing a school tradition that had attained canonical forms.