METTEN (Lat. Metema). – A Benedictine abbey of the diocese of Regensburg (Bavaria), dedicated to St Michael, founded between 765 and 70 on the estates of the Blessed Gamelbert, between the Danube and the first hills of the Bavarian forest. The Blessed Uto, first abbot, and his monks probably came from the famous monastery of Reichenau. Initially under the protection of Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria, Metten was recognised by Charlemagne as a royal abbey (the legend that Metten was founded by the Emperor is, however, a 13th-century fabrication) and endowed with extensive forests, which were then cleared along the Danube as far as Tullnerfeld in Austria.
At the beginning of the 10th century (Hungarian invasions), a canonical life began at Metten, but in 1157 monks of the Hirsau reform were introduced. Under Abbot Peter I (1389–1427), the art of illumination flourished in the monastery. The present buildings largely date from the abbacies of Giovanni III Nablus (1595–1628) and Romano Mirkl (1706–29).
Suppressed during the Napoleonic secularisation (1803), Metten was restored by King Ludwig I as the first Benedictine monastery in Germany (5 June 1830); it contributed to the restoration of the Benedictine monasteries of Scheyern, Weltenburg, Andechs, St Boniface in Munich, Niederaltaich and the Bavarian Benedictine Congregation (1858). A monk of Metten, Boniface Wimmer, founded in 1846 in the United States the monastery of St Vincent (Latrobe, Pa.), which became the cradle of the flourishing American-Cassinese Benedictine Congregation. The monks of Metten today administer a celebrated grammar school-lyceum (with 400 pupils, almost all boarders) and six parishes. The library, richly decorated, contains about 100,000 volumes.
AGOSTINO MAYER