!!!Augustiner-Eremiten

Augustinian Hermits (OESA = Ordo Eremitorum Sancti Augustini; now OSA 
= Ordo Sancti Augustini, Augustinians, Austin Friars). Mendicant order 
adhering to the Rule of St. Augustine, founded in 1256 by the merging 
of hermit congregations; spread quickly throughout the Christian 
Occident (1st monastery in Austria: Voelkermarkt, 1256). The most 
prosperous times of this order were in the 14th and 18th centuries.

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At first the order's branches in the Bohemian and Austrian regions 
belonged to the Province of Bavaria. The monasteries in Lower Austria, 
Upper Austria, Styria and Carinthia were united to form independent 
provinces in 1653, in Tyrol and Salzburg in 1679. In the middle of the 
18th century the Austro-Hungarian order province boasted 290 members 
in 14 branches. Joseph II's closing of monasteries and secularisation 
efforts in the 1st half of the 19th century led to the closing of all 
monasteries in Austria. In 1951, Sudeten German Augustinian Hermits 
who had been driven out of their homeland took over the church of St. 
Augustine in the 1st district of Vienna; this is the only monastery of 
the Augustinian order in Austria today (1994: 6 conventuals; seat of 
regional vicariate with 2 additional branches in Germany).

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The court monastery in Vienna (1327-1812) with its still surviving 
Gothic church near the Imperial Palace was one of the most important 
convents; its monks held a large number of chairs on the University 
faculty, and it had one of the largest monastery libraries in Vienna. 
The magnificent church and the "Augustiner-Braeu" brewery still remind 
us of the branch in Salzburg-Muelln (1605-1855).

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Other branches existed in the 18th century in Lower Austria (Baden, 
Bruck an der Leitha, Korneuburg), in Burgenland (Lockenhaus), in 
Styria (Fuerstenfeld, Graz, Hohenmauten, St. Leonhard), in Salzburg 
(Duerrnberg, Hallein, Salzburghofen) and in Tyrol (Kufstein, 
Rattenberg, Seefeld).

!Further reading
F. Rennhofer, Augustiner-Kloester in Oesterreich, 
1956.


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