Database of Monasteries

Germania Sacra offers an online Database of Monasteries, Collegiate churches, and Convents of the Holy Roman Empire and neighbouring countries. The scholarly database provides a research tool that contains basic data on religious houses in the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, from Late Antiquity up until secularization at the beginning of the nineteenth century.

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The database provides basic information on the following aspects: affiliation to religious orders, duration of this affiliation, dates of foundation and dissolution, geographic location.

The results of queries can be displayed on interactive maps that visualise the monastic landscape of the medieval and early modern periods. Temporal periodisation as well as regional and thematic criteria can be modified by the user.

The database is linked to the project’s monographs on monasteries, collegiate churches and convents. Digitised versions of these publications are freely available. The entries of communities in the database also list those clerics associated with the respective religious houses who appear in Germania Sacra’s publications. Entries on such clerics are linked to the Germania Sacra’s Digital Persons Index as well as the corresponding locations in the digitised volumes. This provides further opportunities for research.

With data on currently more than 4,000 monasteries, collegiate churches and convents, data entry is far from complete. Not every federal state in Germany has "Klosterbücher", reference works detailing regional ecclesiastical history, or equivalent online resources. These, besides the publications of the Germania Sacra itself, form the most central resource for the inventory of data in the Database of Monasteries, Collegiate Churches, and Convents of the Holy Roman Empire. Newly released reference works on monastery are added to the data inventory piece by piece. (Overview of the current content of the database)

Except where otherwise noted, content on this database is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

• Germania Benedictina
• Landesarchiv Baden-Württemberg – Klöster in Baden-Württemberg
• Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Bildung und Kultus, Wissenschaft und Kunst – Haus der Bayerischen Geschichte, Klöster in Bayern
• Hessisches Landesamt für geschichtliche Landeskunde, Marburg – Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS)
• Nordrheinisches Klosterbuch
• Institut für Geschichtliche Landeskunde an der Universität Mainz e.V. – Klöster und Stifte in Rheinland-Pfalz
• Historisches Seminar, Abteilung für Regionalgeschichte an der CAU zu Kiel – Klöster, Stifte und Konvente in Schleswig-Holstein und Hamburg
• Informationsportal des Landschaftsverbandes Rheinland – KuLaDig - Kultur. Landschaft. Digital
• Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Kloosterlijst. Beknopt overzicht van de Nederlandse kloosters tot 1800
• Helvetia Sacra