The monastery was built next to the then still partially preserved remains of
Castra Regina, a
Roman legionary camp (
castrum) on the
Danube frontier, built for
Legio III Italica during the reign of Emperor
Marcus Aurelius. A civil settlement (
vicus) next to it had remained continuously inhabited ever since. It lay on the northern border of the
Duchy of Bavaria, which was part of the
Merovingian kingdom from the sixth through the eighth century. The monastery of the
Benedictines was founded around 739. The abbey church (since 1964 a
basilica minor) was begun around 780, as a replacement for a previous church dedicated to
Saint George, into which the mortal remains of Saint Emmeram had been transferred from
Aschheim near Munich around 690. In the early times, the
bishops of Regensburg were abbots
in commendam, so in a dual role, a common practice at the time which was not always to the advantage of the abbeys concerned. In 975, Saint
Wolfgang of Regensburg, then bishop of Regensburg and abbot of St. Emmeram's, voluntarily gave up the position of abbot and severed the connection, making the abbots of St. Emmeram's independent of the bishopric. He was one of the first German bishops to do this, and his example in this was much copied across Germany in the years following. The first independent abbot was Ramwold (later the Blessed Ramwold). Both he and Saint Wolfgang were advocates of the monastic reforms of
Gorze. About a century and a half after the monastery was founded,
Arnulf of Carinthia (850-899), the penultimate
Emperor of the
Carolingian dynasty, chose Regensburg as his capital and St Emmeram as his favorite monastery. His imperial residence, a so-called
Kaiserpfalz, stood ″in vicinitate″, in the immediate vicinity, of the monastery, as
Arnold of Saint Emmeram writes. The emperor had gifted the monastery the famous manuscript
Codex Aureus of Saint Emmeram, which originated from the Carolingian palace school in
Saint-Denis around 870. He and his son
Louis the Child were buried in the abbey church. According to recent research, it is considered largely certain that Emperor Arnulf had already built his palace before 892 on the site of the monastery's present-day gatehouse on the square Emmeramsplatz. The palace was thus located north of the monastery church, while the monks' cloister bordered the church to the south. After comparisons with other Carolingian palace complexes and analysis of the building fabric, it was determined that the ceremonial hall of the imperial palace, the so-called
aula regia, once extended between the preserved Romanesque gate house and the present entrance hall of St Emmeram's basilica. The lower part of the gatehouse, built around 1170, still features reused ancient Roman stone blocks and behind them presumably remains of the aula walls. This flat-roofed building had two naves, seven bays and a double apse in the south. The residential and administrative buildings of the Carolingian palace complex were thus located on the adjacent site, where today the freestanding Renaissance bell tower stands. The imperial palace was probably later used by the
Burgraves of Regensburg from the
Babonen family, from which a
famous minnesinger (died after 1185) also came. , produced between 1002 and 1014 for
Emperor Henry II at the scriptorium of St Emmeram's Saint Wolfgang, who was made bishop in 972, ordered that a library be constructed at St. Emmeram shortly after his arrival in Regensburg. An active
scriptorium had existed at St. Emmeram in the Carolingian period, but it is not known whether it occupied a special building, and it appears that relatively few manuscripts, of poor quality, were produced there during the early tenth century. Over time, some works in the
scriptorium were copied by monks, some works were preserved from the Carolingian period, and others were acquired as gifts. After the
Treaty of Paris of 1810, the entire Principality of Regensburg was transferred to
Bavaria. The treasures of St. Emmeram's Abbey (for example, the
ciborium of
Arnulf, now in the
Residenz) and its valuable library (including
Muspilli, the
Codex Aureus of St. Emmeram, and
Dialogus de laudibus sanctae crucis) were mostly removed to
Munich. == Schloss Thurn und Taxis ==