Eibingen Abbey, Benedictine monastery in Rüdesheim am Rhein, Germany.
Eibingen Abbey is a Benedictine monastery for women built in Romanesque Revival style with pale stone facades and two slender towers on a hillside above Rüdesheim am Rhein. The complex includes a large abbey church, working farm buildings, and vineyards stretching down the slopes toward the Rhine Valley.
The current complex was built between 1900 and 1904 as a revival of the medieval women's monastery that Hildegard of Bingen founded in 1165. The original abbey was dissolved following secularization in the early 19th century.
The relics of Saint Hildegard of Bingen are kept in the parish church of Eibingen, not in the abbey church, because the parish acquired the old monastery and church in 1831. The nuns care for pilgrims who come to the shrine there. The abbey church itself is used as a concert venue, including performances for the Rheingau Musik Festival.
The abbey shop is open from Monday to Saturday and sells wines from the estate vineyards as well as handcrafted products made by the sisters. The church is open during the day for quiet visits, though some parts of the monastery remain closed to visitors.
The sculptor Karlheinz Oswald made a life-size bronze statue of Hildegard of Bingen in 1998; one copy stands in the garden in front of the abbey church, another is in the Bingen museum. The nuns have also recorded their Vespers and other parts of the liturgy, beginning with a 1973 recording of two works by Hildegard.
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