I get quite a few odd looks when I show pictures or talk about Stift Klosterneuburg.  What people see or hear does not fit with what they imagine a monastery should be.  To some, Stift Klosterneuburg is a museum.  But, it isn’t.  It may have historical items and busses of tourists.  But, it is not a museum.  It is one of the few remaining Stifts.  Before you can understand Stift Klosterneuburg, you need to understand what a “Stift” is and how they came to be.

What is a Stift?. Most people familiar with German will think of a pen or pencil.  The word “der Stift” can mean pen or pencil.  But, the Stift I am talking about is “das Stift”.  If you look this word up in an English/German dictionary, it will probably read “monastery”.  If you were to look it up in a German Dictionary (Wörterbuch) you will find a definition like this:

Stift² das-[e]s/e: auf eine Stiftung zurückgehendes größeres Kloster.

This means: a large monastery that goes back to a charitable gift. In English we lack a word or concept that accurately conveys what a Stift is.  500 years ago an overly amorous English King made sure that they no longer existed in the English speaking world.

Common images of religious and monks are Friar Tuck, Sister Theresa, poverty, sandals, men in orange sheets, etc…  Most Americans view religious life as one of poverty and serving a disadvantage group of people.  They think anything the monastery needs is provided by the generosity of the faithful.  This idea comes from the time that our country was being founded and from the large presence of missionaries in the United States.  This view is also heavily influenced by the 19th Century Romantic Movement which envisions religious life in a rather different way than its much earlier predecessor. But, this idea is actually fairly new in the history of the Church.

Stifts are really only found in the “Old Orders”,  the ones from before the mendicant orders (e.g., Franciscans, Dominicans, Carmelites) . These “Old Orders” are the monastic orders which had a vow of stability to one monastery: those monasteries following Benedict’s rule, as well as the canons regular.  When bishops, nobility and royalty founded monasteries, they came to understand the necessity of endowing them with the ability to survive in an uncertain world.

Poverty was one of the greatest factors in the decline of a monastery. Poverty creates a sense of insecurity about the future.  It becomes difficult for a community to take on new novices, since they may be unable to support them.  Buildings are not able to be repaired. In order to support the community, some members might need to go out of the community to take a position at a distant church or chapel.  Many communities became controlled by wealthy, unscrupulous laymen who used them to their own ends and as pawns in the struggle between Church and temporal powers. All this was destructive to the community’s spiritual life and discipline.

By the 11th Century,  the Church and the temporal powers had learned what can happen to an insufficiently endowed communities of monks, canons and nuns. They started to give monasteries land and some wealth to provide support without the need of donations. There were many reasons why the benefactor would do this.  It was considered a Win-Win situation.  The benefactor got a sacred place for his own burial and for his family. He would be assured that the praise of God and the sacraments would be continually offered for the repose of their souls.  We live in a very secular age so it might seem a bit strange; however, back then this was a big deal.

If you weren’t the benefactor, then you probably would not care about where he was buried.  So, the Stift would be able to provide countless benefits for the area.  The monastery would be a spiritual, cultural and educational center for the area. There would be beneficial social impact with its charitable works as well as its  role as employer.  Every monastery was meant to be self-sufficient, which meant that every community had a host of religious and laypeople working in all the many workrooms and shops of the abbey, not to mention the many laypeople who worked the outlying farms.   The monastic communities frequently exercised a governing role over the local populace.  In the end one of the most important benefits would be their permanence; these communities were built and endowed to last, and most of them did so for several centuries.

So where did all of these Stifts go?  Well, where do think they went?  A group of monks that had enough land and money to support themselves and the local community for an endless amount of time? They were destroyed by the wars of Europe and the constant changes in temporal power.  Their lands were seized and secularized.  Their art and treasures were stolen. For many of the Stifts there are only traces of their existence left. Once gone an endowed monastery can not be revived as they had been before.  Instead, new forms of religious and monastic life were introduced into the areas which religious life had been destroyed.  But, some of these Monasteries were able to survive in Austria and Switzerland, where secularization spared a few communities.

The history lesson is over for today.  I hope that this post gives you some understanding of what a Stift was.  The next installment will be about Stift Klosterneuburg.