St. Matthias' Abbey
St. Matthias' Abbey is a Benedictine monastery in Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The abbey church, a Romanesque basilica, is a renowned place of pilgrimage because of the tomb of Saint Matthias the Apostle, after whom the abbey is named, located here since the 12th century, and the only burial of an apostle in Germany and north of the Alps. The abbey was originally named after Saint Eucharius, first Bishop of Trier, whose tomb is in the crypt. The church has been given the status of a minor basilica. First foundation Monks have lived in the present St. Matthias' Abbey since late antiquity. Cyrillus of Trier built an oratory here in the second half of the 5th century and gave the monks a rule. The monastery adopted the Rule of Saint Benedict in about 977. Since the 10th century the bones of the founders of the Archbishopric of Trier, bishops Eucharius and Valerius, have been preserved here. The bones of the Apostle Matthias were supposedly sent to Trier on the authority of the Empress Helena, mother of the Roman emperor Constantine I, but the relics were only discovered in 1127 during demolition work on the predecessor of the present church buildings, since which time the abbey has been a major centre of pilgrimage. In the 12th century, the manuscript now known as Kues 52, an important witness to the Collectaneum of Sedulius Scottus and the Proverbia Grecorum, was copied at St. Matthias'. Efforts to reform in the wake of the Council of Basel, under Johannes Rode, the Carthusian prior appointed by the bishop, led to spiritual and economic renewal, to the extent that St. Matthias' became an example for other monasteries. In 1433, at the request of Duke Otto of Brunswick, John Dederoth, having effected notable reforms at Clus Abbey, turned his attention to the extremely neglected and dilapidated Bursfelde Abbey. He was able to obtain two exemplary monks from St. Matthias' Abbey to maintain his reformed discipline there. In 1458 St. Matthias' joined the Bursfelde Congregation. The eastern part of the crypt was added around 1500. A Baroque facade was later added to the lower west front of the church. The abbey passed through the Reformation almost unscathed, but it was badly affected by wars and looting, and also by conflicts with various bishops or abbots. The last abbot was relieved of his office as early as 1783, years before the actual dissolution of the abbey, and management from then on lay in the hands of the prior. When the troubles of the French Revolution spilled over onto German territory, the abbey buildings were requisitioned by the French army, and monks were obliged to leave the abbey, at first with the intention that this was to be a temporary absence, living from 1794 to 1802 in the parish house (Mattheiser Pfarrhaus). In 1802 however the abbey was nationalised and secularised. When the premises were sold off, the local businessman Christoph Philipp Nell acquired the bulk of the main building complex and