BZ SERIES: The monastery of St. Trudpert in Mnstertal is named after a monk who once came to the region to do missionary work / nuns live there today.
. It doesn’t matter whether you come from Schauinsland or Staufen through the Mnstertal, the mighty baroque monastery of St. Trudpert with the large dome is astonishing. The monastery has been the seat of the German Province of the Sisters of Saint Joseph of St. Marc for 100 years.
As early as 800, Benedictine monks built the first monastery on the spot where the monk Trudpert had founded a hermitage at the beginning of the seventh century. According to legend, Trudpert, who had been sent to Breisgau by an Irish monastery to do missionary work, was murdered by two servants with an axe. The Trudpert Chapel is said to be located exactly where the murder took place.
Around the year 800, the first Benedictine monastery of St. Trudpert on the east bank of the Rhine was built in honor of St. Trudpert at his death site. The monastery complex, near which the former historic city of Mnster was built, has been rebuilt and rebuilt several times. So far, six construction phases have been archaeologically documented.
During the Thirty Years’ War, the church and monastery complex were burned down by Swedish troops. Today you can see the baroque new building, which was built in the first half of the 18th century according to plans by the well-known master builder Peter Thumb. The large domed church was built by the Sisters of Joseph in the 20th century. They use the domed church for church services, while the former monastery church with the striking onion dome has served as a parish church since the monastery was dissolved in 1806 in the course of secularisation. At that time, the Benedictine monks had to give up the monastery. For almost a thousand years it was the starting point of Christianisation in the southern Black Forest and the cultural, political, ecclesiastical and economic center of the valley. The monastery became the property of the Baden state and later came into the hands of the nobility.
The Benedictine abbey had important goldsmith works. The church treasury once included two processional crosses that were made especially for the monastery and are said to contain particles of the “True Cross of Jesus”. The older of the two crosses, the so-called niello cross made of silver, was made in the 12th century and is still owned by the parish today. It is carried at the head of the procession in the processions on Ascension Day and the patron saint, the Trudpertsfest, which takes place on April 24 this year, as well as the reliquary at the Trudpertsfest. The 13th-century gold Gothic processional cross was discovered in 1925 in the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, where it still stands. Both crosses were shown in 2003 in a highly acclaimed exhibition in the Augustinian Museum in Freiburg.
After the monastery was first owned by the state and later privately after secularisation, spiritual life returned in 1920 – after the Sisters of Saint Joseph from St. Marc in Alsace were able to purchase the monastery as their seat on the right bank of the Rhine. The sisters work in the social field, in the 1930s about 450 women belonged to the sisterhood. Today around 70 sisters live in the convent, as well as numerous other sisters in Auenstellen.
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