MILLSTATT. – Former Benedictine abbey in Carinthia, diocese of Gurk, founded around 1020 by the Bavarian nobles Arbone and Bothone, with monks from Nieder-Altaich (Hirsau reform). In 1469, Frederick III, with the consent of Paul II, suppressed the abbey to establish it as the seat of the Knights of St. George, which he had founded to fight the Turks.
Since the Knights more or less openly embraced Lutheranism, Charles I of Styria diverted most of the revenues of M. to the Jesuits for their college, later the University of Graz; in 1598, after the suppression of the Knights, M. and its district passed into the possession of the same Jesuits. In 1783, following the suppression of the Jesuits, the district passed to the diocese of Gurk, the church became a parish church, and the monastic buildings were converted into hotels and offices (M. is a famous resort on the lake of the same name).
The importance of M. is chiefly artistic: from the Benedictine period is the great church of c. 1150, with three naves, Romanesque (only the vaults are Gothic), with two bell towers, a grand figured portal (c. 1170), a Romanesque cloister (c. 1200), with strange sculptures, all well preserved. Only the interior furnishings are Baroque (in the "Jesuit" style of gold and black). The picturesque monastic buildings are largely from the time of the Knights, in late Gothic style.
According to legend, M. was founded by the Romans under the name "mille statue" by a Roman duke Domitian, whose tomb is venerated in a sumptuous chapel; certainly, remains of Lombard-style chancel screens attest to an earlier church. Famous are the manuscripts of M. now in Klagenfurt; especially the illuminated Sacramentary of the Salzburg school, c. 1160, and the illuminated codices of the Genesis and the Physiologus of M., from the second half of the 12th century.