Metten

METTEN (Latin Metemn). - Benedictine abbey in the diocese of Regensburg (Bavaria), dedicated to St. Michael, founded in the years 765-70 on the estates of Bl. Gamelbert, between the Danube and the first hills of the Bavarian Forest. Bl. Utto, the first abbot, and his monks probably came from the famous monastery of Reichenau. At first under the protection of Duke Tassilo III of Bavaria, M. was recognized by Charlemagne as a royal abbey (that M. was founded by the Emperor is instead a legend of the 13th century) and endowed with extensive forests, later cleared along the Danube, as far as the Tullnerfeld in Austria.

At the beginning of the 10th century (Hungarian invasions) the canonical life was begun at M., but in 1157 the 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 rule of the abbots John III Nablus (1595-1628) and Roman Märkl (1706-29).

Suppressed in the Napoleonic secularization (1803), M. was restored by King Ludwig I as the first Benedictine monastery in Germany (June 5, 1830); it contributed to the restoration of the Benedictine monasteries of Scheyern, Weltenburg, Andechs, St. Boniface in Munich, Niederaltaich and of the Bavarian Benedictine Congregation (1858). A professed monk of M., 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 M. today maintain a celebrated gymnasium-lyceum (with 400 students, almost all boarders) and 6 parishes. The library, richly decorated, contains ca. 100,000 vols.