Corvei

Corvei (Corbeia nova), a Benedictine abbey on the Weser, near Höxter, the oldest and most famous in early Saxony, founded in 822. It was a colony from the monastery of Corbie in Picardy, then part of the country of the West Franks. It received rich endowments; was the centre of great agricultural improvement and prosperity during the earlier part of the middle ages; and the seat of a school, founded by Ansgar, the Apostle of the North, which flourished greatly in the 9th and 10th centuries, and was next in reputation to Fulda. Its abbots were numbered amongst the spiritual princes of the German empire. In 1794 it was made a bishopric by Pius VI. Its territory then extended to about 20 square miles, with 10,000 inhabitants. In 1803 it was annexed to Nassau, from which it was transferred in 1807 to Westphalia, and in 1815 to Prussia. The Gothic church has a magnificent interior, and contains a multitude of princely monuments. The library and archives of the cloister, which contained most valuable records of the early ages of German history, were mostly destroyed—the Chronicon Corbejense, an alleged record of this abbey from its foundation to the end of the 12th century (pub. 1823), being a forgery; but there are some genuine though meagre Annales Corbeiensis (648 to 1148) printed in the Monumenta Germaniæ Historica.