Viktring

VIKTRING. - Former Cistercian abbey, in the diocese of Gurk (Klagenfurt), in Carinthia, Austria.

The village of V. appears already in the Carolingian age, with a parish church (850), but the foundation of the monastery dates back to 1142, through the work of the Duke of Carinthia, Bernard of Spanheim. The first monks came from Weiler-Betnach (Lorraine), a daughter house of Morimond. The abbey church arose, in the transitional Cistercian Gothic style, very similar to that of Fontenay, with three naves with a transept, raised vaults, typically severe. It was consecrated by the Archbishop of Salzburg, Eberhard, in 1202. The choir had figured stained-glass windows of the 14th-15th centuries. A grandiose Baroque high altar and wooden side altars. Many sepulchral slabs. In the Baroque era the monastery was also rebuilt; but Joseph II in 1786 suppressed the abbey and erected the church into a parish (1787), while the abbey buildings became the seat of a large cloth factory. In 1847 the church was shortened because it was partly unsafe, and it received a new facade. V. is known above all for the abbot John of V. (1213-1345), who left in five successive redactions the Liber certarum historiarum, published several times (most recent ed. by L. F. Schneider, in MGH, Script. rerum Germ. in usum schol., XXXVI [1909-10], 2 vols.). The original is preserved in Munich (Clm 22107).

Giuseppe Löw