HEILIGENKREUZ, ABBEY OF

Cistercian abbey in the Archdiocese of Vienna, Lower Austria; founded (1133) by Margrave leopold iii at the request of his son, otto of freising, and settled from morimond. Its name derives from a relic of the Holy Cross received from Leopold VI. Heiligenkreuz founded zwettl, Baumgartenberg, Cikádor, marienberg, lilienfeld, Goldenkron, and Neuberg. Under the first abbot it had 300 monks and lay brothers. gutolf (d. c. 1300) and Nicholas Vischel (d. 1330) wrote important works. The abbey declined because of wars (1462, 1529,1532) and the Reformation, but remained Catholic. In the 16th century it assumed the pastoral care of its villages. In the 17th-and 18th-century revival the buildings were partly restored in baroque. United with Heiligenkreuz were the Hungarian monastery of St. Gotthard (1734– 1878) and Neukloster in Wiener Neustadt (1881). The Romanesque church (1187), with the oldest ogives in Austria, and the Gothic cloister (1240) and hall choir (1295) are famous monuments. The school of theology dates from 1802 and the undergymnasium from before 1558. There are 50,000 volumes in the library and 1,300 parchment documents in the archives.

Bibliography: l. h. cottineau, Répertoire topobibliographique des abbayes et prieurés 1:1393–94. Xenia Bernardina III (Vienna 1891). f. watzl, Die Cisterzienser von Heiligenkreuz (Graz 1898). a. winkler, Die Zisterzienser am Neusidlersee (Mödling 1923). d. frey, Die Denkmäler des Stiftes Heiligenkreuz (Vienna 1926); Das Stift Heiligenkreuz (Vienna 1926). Festschrift zum 800-Jahrgedächtnis des Todes Bernhards von Clairvaux (Vienna 1953). b. kleinschroth, Flucht und Zuflucht: Tagebuch aus dem Türkenjahr 1683, ed. h. watzl (Graz-Köln 1956).

[h. watzl]