Baiselberg Abbey

The monastery ruin of Baiselsberg is the excavation site of a former monastery of the Regular Augustinian Canonesses in Baden-Württemberg.

The excavation site is located at an altitude of 433–436 m above sea level on the southeast side of the 477 m high Baiselsberg in the Stromberg, within the municipal area of Vaihingen-Horrheim, Ludwigsburg district, Baden-Württemberg. The nearest neighboring villages are Hohenhaslach and Horrheim.

Between 1364 and 1374, some pious women settled on the Baiselsberg as recluses ('inclusae'), i.e., without belonging to an order. They belonged to the upper urban bourgeoisie and placed themselves under a "mater" from the regional lower nobility: Anna von Gemmingen. The oldest known document from 1374 concerns a donation by Countess Mechthild von Zollern, née von Vaihingen, and follows a preceding (not documented) founding act. The pious community acquired modest wealth through donations and contributed assets and lived from the annual income from annuity purchases. In addition, the later monastery had two altar prebends: the Mary Magdalene and Trinity prebends.

In 1478, the pious community was threatened with expulsion when the Augustinian Hermits of Tübingen were to be moved to Baiselsberg, without a new home being provided for the sisters. Soon after, however, the pious women were affiliated with the Regular Augustinian Canonesses (choir nuns) as part of the monastic reforms of Count/Duke Eberhard im Bart, established close ties with the Augustinian Canons' Collegiate Church of Sindelfingen, and were very likely close to the Windesheim Congregation. For a long time, local historians mistakenly considered the monastery to be an "Augustinian Hermit Nuns' Priory". The small monastery church was a place of pilgrimage, was consecrated to the Holy Trinity (St. Trinitatis) and housed a popular relic, a "fist-sized tooth" of St. Christopher. With the affiliation to the Regular Augustinian Canonesses, the sisters took on social tasks such as child education: "book boxes" are documented, and among the burials in the cemetery, two children aged approximately twelve and two years were found. An illegitimate daughter of Count Heinrich von Württemberg-Moempelgard named Katharina was also educated here in 1494/98.

Soon after 1500, the monastery ran into economic difficulties, which dramatically increased after the introduction of the Reformation (from 1535), as all annual income had been confiscated by the ducal administration. Some sisters left, the prioress moved to another monastery. Three old women remained, who in the winter of 1546/47, after a robbery by marauding soldiers (Spanish occupation after the Schmalkaldic War), fell into complete destitution in their monastery. With the secularization of church property during the Reformation, the monastery was dissolved in October 1547 and demolished nine years later. The ruin served the population in the neighboring villages as a stone depot until the 19th century and finally disappeared under the forest floor.