Lorsch

LORSCH. - A famous Benedictine abbey, later briefly passed to the Cistercians and then to the Premonstratensians, in the diocese of Mainz, not far from Worms, today destroyed.

The act of foundation bears the date of 12 July 764, the year in which Count Cancor and his mother Williswinda had a church with an adjoining monastery erected on their property, on a small island, now vanished, of the river Weschnitz, dedicating it to St. Peter. Its governance was entrusted to Chrodegang (elsewhere Ruthgang or Adalang), archbishop of Metz, who brought there from the abbey of Gorze, which he had founded, some Benedictines, and obtained from Pope Paul I the translation into the new monastery of the body of St. Nazarius, martyr under Diocletian, to whom the abbey was from then on dedicated (12 July 765). The following year the archbishop ceded its governance to his brother Gundeland. The rapid development of the community, to which from as early as 772 immunities and royal protection were granted, counseled the transfer of the seat and of the abbey's governance to L., which took place in 774; the original seat remained a priory of L. until the 12th century (the last mention is from 1179), under the name of Altenmünster. Despite a first reform, introduced toward the end of the 11th century by Adalbero, bishop of Augsburg, the monastery had a period of decline under the governance of commendatory abbots (ca. 890-974), the last of whom, Bruno the Great, later archbishop of Cologne, by bringing there the reform of Gorze, opened an era of great splendor for L., both from the religious point of view and from the cultural one, while the temporal domains were also being extended, which included territories in Holland, in the Ardennes, in Alsace, in Lorraine, not counting the provostships (at least 10) dependent on the abbey. Toward the end of the 11th century the decline began, to which the repercussions of the investiture struggle and the tendency of the archbishops of Mainz to annex ever vaster territories to their see were not extraneous. Not even the introduction of the reform of Hirsau, modeled on that of Cluny, succeeded in raising again the fortunes of L., which in 1226 saw the last Benedictine abbot deposed by Gregory IX. Through the influence of Frederick II, the archbishop of Mainz Sigfrid II obtained in 1229 the submission of the abbey and the exile of the Benedictines, who were succeeded by the Cistercians. But in 1248 Sigfrid III, having obtained the consent of Pope Innocent IV, replaced the latter too with the Premonstratensians called from the abbey of Allerheiligen (All Saints) in Baden. Following the disputes between the bishopric of Mainz and the Palatinate, L. was ceded in pledge in 1461 to the count palatine; in 1555, after the Peace of Augsburg, this prince, of Lutheran faith, removed the Premonstratensians too and installed as provost a married monk, Johann Carpentarius; in 1563 the convent was transformed into a religious house for Protestants. The Thirty Years' War brought grave damage also to the conventual buildings of L.: in 1621 the Spanish troops besieged them and set them on fire, and when in 1623 L. returned to the power of the archbishop of Mainz it was by then no longer able to raise itself again, nor did the Premonstratensians, despite many attempts, succeed in returning there. In 1803 the territory of L. was included in the grand duchy of Hesse: of the abbey nothing remained but the portico, used as a chapel.

The monumental complex of the conventual buildings underwent various vicissitudes over the course of 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, was prey to a fire on 21 March 1090. The new church was consecrated in 1130. During the 12th century there were many works of enlargement, and in the following century the Premonstratensians rebuilt the choir and introduced some restorations, which gave rise to a third consecration in 1266. After the siege and fire of 1621 the state of abandonment began, which only the portico or Königshalle survived, held to be the most ancient monument of Frankish religious architecture (others, however, think that it is later than the fire of 1090; cf. M. R. de Lasteyrie, Architecture religieuse en France à l'époque romane, Paris 1912, pp. 167-71). The excavations carried out in 1927-28 revealed a crypt used as a burial chapel (perhaps of 876) with the tombs of Louis the German, Louis III the Younger and Cunigunde, wife of Conrad I.

Much of the monastery's ancient library has also been lost; the precious and substantial book patrimony was transported 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 at the Vatican Library, in the Palatine fund: to bear witness to the ancient splendor some ancient catalogues remain (cod. Vat. Palat. lat. 1877, ff. 1-34, 44-79; Palat. lat. 57, a quire added at the beginning). The rear leaf of an ivory diptych that covered a gospel book of L. is now at the Vatican Sacred Museum (the other leaf at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London). Among the manuscripts coming from L. not all can be identified as products of that scriptorium: it is demonstrated, however, that it was very active already at the beginning of the 9th century, under the governance of Abbot Adelung, when a type of German pre-Caroline script was in use in which Merovingian influences are evident alongside signs of insular derivation. The script of L. does not, however, have very marked peculiar characteristics that reveal a school direction raised to canonized forms.

minores, ibid., I, pp. 114-23; Annales Nazarii, ibid., XVII, p. 33; Series abbatum et praepositorum Laureshamenium (from 744 to 1167), ibid., XIII, pp. 316-18; Chronicon Laureshamenense, ibid., XXI, pp. 334-453; Codra Laureshamenensis..., ed. Academia elect. scant. et elegant. litt. Theodoro-Palatina, 3 vols., Mannheim 1768-70 (republished by K. Glöckner, Arbeiten der histor. Kommission für den Volksstaat Hessen, 3 vols., Darmstadt 1920-1936). Studies: reference is made to the ample bibl. reported in Cottineau, I, coll. 1636-58, to which may be added F. Behn, Die harolische Klosterkirche von L. an der Bergstrasse nach den Ausgrabungen von 1927-28 und 1932-33, Berlin-Leipzig 1934; id., Kloster L., Mainz 1936; C. R. Morey, Gli oggetti di avorio e di osso del Museo Sacro Vaticano, Vatican City 1936, pp. 11-16. Copious notices, but not all exact and broken up into various entries, are found, edited by H. Leclercq, in DACL, V, coll. 2337-40; VI, coll. 2586-90 (there references to minor treatments). Better, for an overall view even if extremely concise, C. Wolff, s. v. in LThK, VI, col. 648 ff.

Alessandro Pratesi