Fulda

Fulda (German pronunciation: [ˈfʊlda] ^ⓘ; historically in English called Fuld) is a city in Hesse, Germany, on the river Fulda and is the administrative seat of the Fulda district (Kreis). In 1990 the city hosted the 30th Hessentag state festival.

In 744 Saint Sturm, a disciple of Saint Boniface, founded the Benedictine monastery of Fulda as one of Boniface's outposts in the reorganization of the church in Germany. The initial grant for the abbey was signed by Carloman, Mayor of the Palace in Austrasia (in office 741–47), the son of Charles Martel. The support of the Mayors of the Palace, and later of the early Pippinid and Carolingian rulers, was important to Boniface's success. Fulda also received support from many of the leading families of the Carolingian world. Sturm, abbot from 747 until 779, was most likely related to the Agilolfing dukes of Bavaria.

Fulda also received large and constant donations from the Etichonids, a leading family in Alsace, and from the Conradines, predecessors of the Salian Holy Roman Emperors. Under Sturm, the donations Fulda received from these and other important families helped in the establishment of daughter-houses near Fulda. In 751, Boniface and his disciple and successor Lullus obtained an exemption for Fulda, having it placed directly under the Papal See and making it independent of interference by bishops or worldly princes. The monastery school became a renowned center of learning.

After his martyrdom by the Frisians in 754, the relics of Saint Boniface were brought back to Fulda. Because of the stature this afforded the monastery, the donations increased, and Fulda could establish daughter-houses further away, for example in Hamelin. Meanwhile, Saint Lullus, successor of Boniface as archbishop of Mainz, tried to absorb the abbey into his archbishopric, but failed.

Between 790 and 819 the community rebuilt the main abbey church to more fittingly house the relics. They based their new basilica on the original 4th-century (since demolished) Old St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, using the transept and crypt plan of that great pilgrimage church to frame their own saint as the "Apostle of the Germans".

The crypt of the original abbey church still holds those relics, but the church itself has been subsumed into a Baroque renovation. A small, 9th-century chapel remains standing within walking distance of the church, as do the foundations of a later women's abbey. Rabanus Maurus served as abbot at Fulda from 822 to 842. Fulda Abbey owned such works as the Res Gestae by the fourth-century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus and the Codex Fuldensis, as well as works by Cicero, Servius, Bede and Sulpicius Severus.

Prince-abbot Balthasar von Dernbach adopted a policy of Counter-Reformation. In 1571 he called in the Jesuits to found a school and college. He insisted the members of the chapter should return to a monastic form of life. Whereas his predecessors had tolerated Protestantism, resulting in most of the citizenry of Fulda and a large portion of the principality's countryside professing Lutheranism, Balthasar ordered his subjects either to return to the Catholic faith or leave his territories. He also ordered the Fulda witch trials, in which hundreds of people, including a number of crypto-Protestants were arrested on charges of witchcraft alongside others.

The foundation of the abbey of Fulda and its territory originated with an Imperial grant and the sovereign principality therefore was subject only to the German emperor. Fulda became a bishopric in 1752 and the prince-abbots were given the additional title of prince-bishop. The prince-abbots (and later prince-bishops) ruled Fulda and the surrounding region until the bishopric was forcibly dissolved by Napoleon I in 1802.