Reichenau Abbey and the Great Power Venice: Forged Imperial Charters and Intrigues

The monastery island of Reichenau in Lake Constance (Germany) is celebrating the 1300th anniversary of its foundation in 2024. Reichenau Monastery experienced a rapid rise in the 10th century thanks to its famous book illumination and became immensely rich. But then, soon after the year 1100, a steep decline began that was unrivalled. Spiritual life disintegrated, the wealthy monks of the high nobility turned against their own abbots, waged war against their brother monastery, murdered their own abbot and devastated their own monastery island. The last abbot of Reichenau allowed himself to be bribed, he betrayed and sold his own monastery. The remaining monks later had to be expelled from the island by force of arms. The book describes these circumstances and identifies the causes: The Reichenau monastery was in rivalry with the great European power Venice. Both claimed to possess the relics and corpus of St Mark the Evangelist. The early history of Reichenau is therefore quite different from what has been taught so far. The well-known forgeries of Reichenau documents also take on a different meaning. This is shown for the village of Göggingen on the basis of several forged documents, which were written in the name of two emperors, among others.