HIRSAU, ABBEY OF

The former Benedictine abbey of SS. Peter and Paul near Calw, Würtemberg, in the Black Forest, in the Diocese of Speyer. Originally founded in 830 and dedicated to St. Aurelius, it was not a permanent foundation until Pope Leo IX urged his nephew Count Adalbert II of Calw to construct a new abbey, staffed by monks from Einsiedeln in 1065. The fame of Hirsau (Hirsaugia) is connected almost exclusively with the name of Abbot William, who came from St. Emmeram in Regensburg.

Abbot William reversed the secular trend particularly noticeable in imperial abbeys and revitalized monastic life. He rejected lay investiture, breaking the attachment to the state. He suppressed the numerous lay officials and inaugurated reforms. Gregory VII granted immunity to the abbey in 1075, and in the investiture struggle Hirsau was a center of ecclesiastical reform and resistance to Henry IV.

Abbot William adapted the Cluniac usages to Germany (Consuetudines Hirsaugienses, 1079). The Hirsau reform represented a final blend of the 10th-century reform movements; it was rapidly diffused among the monasteries of southern and eastern Germany and in Austria. The formation of a congregation was opposed by the bishops, but more than 100 houses belonged to the loose confederation when it was at its peak.

In William's time the community numbered about 150 monks. Its library, its style of manuscript illumination, and its music were well known. The abbey church of SS. Peter and Paul was prototype of German Romanesque and fathered a school of architecture.

The direction given to Hirsau's monastic life by Abbot William survived for little more than half a century after his death. The abbey was unable to maintain its independence. It was forced to cede a large part of its possessions to the Emperor in 1215, and ten years later elected him its Vogt. In the 15th century Hirsau took part in the restoration of regular life, and joined the Congregation of Bursfeld in 1458. However, in the next century, its Protestant prince secularized it and made it a school. For practical purposes, 1535 marks the end of the abbey, although the fluctuating fortunes of the religious wars awarded it first to one side, then to the other; the monks were finally banished in 1648.

Bibliography: s. hilpisch, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner, 10 v. (2d, new ed. Freiburg 1957–65) 5:381–382. l. h. cottineau, Répertoire topobibliographique des abbayes et prieurés, 2 v. (Mâcon 1935–39) 1:1421–22. p. schmitz, Histoire de l'Ordre de Saint-Benoît, 7 v. (Maredsous, Bel. 1942–56).

[p. beckman]