MILLSTATT. – Former Benedictine abbey in Carinthia, diocese of Gurk, founded around 1020 by the brothers Arbone and Bothone, Bavarian nobles, with monks coming from Nieder-Altaich (Hirsau reform). In 1469, with the consent of Paolo II, Federico III suppressed the abbey in order to establish it as the seat of the Knights of S. Giorgio, whom he had founded to fight the Turks.
Since the Knights more or less openly converted to Lutheranism, Carlo I of Styria assigned a large part of the revenues of M. to the Jesuits for their college, later University, of Graz; in 1598, after the suppression of the Knights, M. and the district passed into the possession of the Jesuits themselves. In 1783, when the Jesuits too were suppressed, the district passed to the diocese of Gurk, the church became a parish church, and hotels and offices were installed in the cloister buildings (M. is a famous resort on the lake of the same name).
The importance of M. is above all artistic: from the Benedictine period comes the great church dating from around 1150, with three naves,
Romanesque (only the vaults are Gothic), with two bell towers, a magnificent figured portal (around 1170), and a Romanesque cloister (around 1200), with unusual sculptural work, all well preserved. Only the interior furnishings are Baroque (a “Jesuit” style in black and gold). The extremely picturesque cloister buildings date largely from the period of the Knights, in the Late Gothic style.
According to a legend, M. would be of Roman foundation, with the name “a thousand statues,” through the agency of a Roman duke, Domiziano, whose tomb is venerated in a most sumptuous chapel; certainly, remains of screens in Lombard style attest to an earlier church. The manuscripts of M., now in Klagenfurt, are famous; above all, the illuminated Sacramentary, from the Salzburg school and dating from around 1160, and the illuminated codices of the Genesis and the Physiologus of M. from the second half of the twelfth century.