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Founded: 1130Category: Religious sites in Germany
Historical period: Hohenstaufen Dynasty (Germany)
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St. Peter's Abbey on the Madron was a Benedictine monastery in Flintsbach. The church, now a pilgrimage church known as the Peterskirchlein, still stands on the site.
The Madron is a mountain known also as the Petersberg. It was occupied in ancient times, showing traces of Bronze Age settlement.
A poorly documented monastic foundation dating from sometime in the 8th century and settled by monks from St. Peter's Abbey in Salzburg was destroyed by the Hungarian invasion of the early 10th century. A supposed resettlement in about 955 by refugee monks from Wessobrunn Abbey is equally poorly evidenced.
In 1130 however the monastery, dedicated to Saint Peter, was definitely (re)founded by Count Siboto of Falkenstein and resettled by monks from Weihenstephan Abbey in Freising. The Counts of Falkenstein-Neuburg were also the abbey's Vögte (lords protector) and endowed it with a number of estates. They gave the abbey to the Bishop of Freising in 1163, but retained the office of Vogt. The monastery was destroyed in 1296 during a dynastic conflict, and never rebuilt. The site became from the 14th century a prebend for a canon of Freising Cathedral, part of whose responsibilities was to oversee the long-established pilgrimage here. It was dissolved in the secularisation of 1803.
The area for which the place had pastoral responsibility was extremely small, but against expectation, the church survived and became shortly afterward the centre of a renewed interest in the tradition of the pilgrimage. The church is today a well-known landmark on its mountain.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.