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Founded: 1082Category: Religious sites in Germany
Historical period: Salian Dynasty (Germany)
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Reichenbach Priory was a house of the Benedictine Order located at Klosterreichenbach. The monastery was founded, against the background of the Investiture Controversy and the Hirsau Reforms, as a priory of Hirsau Abbey, from where it was settled, in 1082; in 1085 the church was dedicated to Saint Gregory the Great by Bishop Gebhard of Konstanz.
The Vögte (lords protectors) of the monastery were the Counts of Eberstein, but the equivalent rights over Hirsau lay with the Counts of Württemberg, who considered that as Reichenbach was a priory of Hirsau, their rights should extend there also. The conflict between the two factions continued until the Reformation, when the monastery was turned into a Protestant establishment in 1603. It had been re-catholicised during the Thirty Years" War and occupied by monks from Wiblingen Abbey, who however had to leave again after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.
Since then the village of Klosterreichenbach which had developed around the monastery remained Protestant. The buildings of the former monastery have been partially restored in the 19th and 20th century. The church is now the parochial Lutheran church of the village.
References:The Church of St Donatus name refers to Donatus of Zadar, who began construction on this church in the 9th century and ended it on the northeastern part of the Roman forum. It is the largest Pre-Romanesque building in Croatia.
The beginning of the building of the church was placed to the second half of the 8th century, and it is supposed to have been completed in the 9th century. The Zadar bishop and diplomat Donat (8th and 9th centuries) is credited with the building of the church. He led the representations of the Dalmatian cities to Constantinople and Charles the Great, which is why this church bears slight resemblance to Charlemagne's court chapels, especially the one in Aachen, and also to the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna. It belongs to the Pre-Romanesque architectural period.
The circular church, formerly domed, is 27 m high and is characterised by simplicity and technical primitivism.