Kloster S. Salvator auf dem Berg Tabor, Former Benedictine monastery on Mount Tabor, Galilee, Israel
Kloster S. Salvator auf dem Berg Tabor was a Benedictine monastery on Mount Tabor in Galilee, founded in 1099/1100 by Tancred of Tiberias. It stood on the isolated, cone-shaped mountain about 8.5 km east-southeast of Nazareth's Old City, above the town of Daburiyya at its northwest foot. Two churches already existed there before the foundation: an Orthodox monastery with the Church of the Transfiguration and a church dedicated to Moses and Elijah.
Tancred of Tiberias founded the Benedictine monastery in 1099/1100, expelling the Orthodox monks; its abbot held archiepiscopal powers in Galilee until the Latin Diocese of Nazareth was created in 1109. After the Battle of Hattin in 1187 the monks moved to Acre, and in 1255/56 Pope Alexander IV dissolved the monastery in exile, transferring its remaining possessions to the Knights Hospitaller. The Hospitallers retook Mount Tabor for a few years with a garrison, but the mountain fell back into Muslim hands in 1263.
The mountain was identified with the Transfiguration of Christ, and the Benedictine abbey founded by Tancred in 1099/1100 took the Cluniac rule and became a centre of spiritual life in Galilee, with a scriptorium whose manuscript survives. The abbey held a third of the tithe of Tiberias and answered directly to the Patriarch of Jerusalem.
The monastery no longer exists as a standing complex; only the mountain itself and later churches remain. The site lies about 8.5 km east-southeast of Nazareth's Old City, with the town of Daburiyya at the northwest foot. The summit is reached on foot, and the cave with an altar that existed at the start of the Crusades lies beneath the 19th-century St. Melchisedek church.
The monastery was dissolved in exile by Pope Alexander IV in 1255/56, and its remaining possessions passed to the Knights Hospitaller. The Hospitallers retook Mount Tabor for a few years and kept a garrison there until the mountain fell back into Muslim hands in 1263.
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